Fire up your Saturns! New Sonic X-Treme prototype arrived

[Dee Liteyears]

As a few of you noticed, there is a lot going on right now with the Sonic X-Treme prototype builds. JollyRoger, Andrew75 and co. are working hard to unearth what was thought to be lost to time, and finally we see prototype v40, which, opposed to the last release, also implements the the fisheye camera. Anyway, I just quote Andrew's post from Sonic Retro

== V40 Engine for PC And SEGA SATURN ==

K guys !
2 new simultaneous releases for Engine v040! The First Release is for the PC. And YES SEGA SATURN TOO!!!! (Again lets thank JollyRoger for his hard work)
Both releases Support Fisheye ! YES I said it Fisheye and SEGA SATURN together! Did I say Fisheye with good FPS! ? !
The PC release generally looks better with more frames of animation for Sonic, enemies and the rings. The PC ver Also sports higher res with better color than the Saturn version which looks a bit washed out, but that is to be expected. Improvements for both 040 versions are planned including frame rate improvements and more frames of animation for sprites like rings for the Saturn build among too many other improvement to list.

Here is the video for 040 running on Sega Saturn!
youtu.be/ATcm_1oneb0

The video shows the engine essentially unmodified from the way it was found.
As you can see, this is a very early build of the Saturn version. The v40 engine is very different from v37: many features had been removed or simplified to streamline portions of the code and data structures to increase the performance, so that it could run on Saturn at an acceptable speed.
The engine was clearly in the middle of heavy refactoring and basic functionality such as player control and collisions were disabled. The code for those features had not been ported to use the new data structures and functions, and was completely commented out, so it had to be partially rewritten/ported.
The engine was also prone to constantly crashing due to several bugs, so the code has been altered further, but only to make it more stable, no other changes were made to its appearance or functionality.
The level displayed is a test level that was used to debug the engine, and it is the only level that was found with this particular version of the engine. The engine only loads and displays one animation frame every eight, this explains the mostly non-existent animation.

Please keep in mind that there are visual differences between Saturn and PC build of v040 so try them both if you can.
PC Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega
Mediafire

SEGA SATURN Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega
Mediafire

I used ImgBurn for burning the iso.
If attempting the swap trick or installing a Mod chip , please be careful not to bust your Saturn, all parties involved with this release are not to be held accountable.

Link to the original Thread on Sonic Retro
forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=34038&st=0

[Ike]

Good God that doesn't even look like an alpha, it's more like a half-finished proof of concept.

[1upsuper]

^ That's basically what it is, IIRC. It's been a while since I read up on its history, but it can't even begin to be called a game at this point.

[Bobinator]

Sadly, I don't think X-Treme ever reached any point where it ever even resembled a finished game. I mean, have you ever looked online at how many design documents they went through, starting from the Genesis? Or back when it was going to be a 32X game that had the SatAM characters? It's honesly pretty fascinating stuff.

EDIT: Actually, have a link. I like Sonic Twist's concept especially well. Sonic wants to go on a date, and Robotnik basically spends the whole game apparently trying to cockblock him.

[Snarboo]

I'm starting to understand why they cancelled this: even from the early tech demos, it looks pretty unimpressive. It reminds me of Bug! more than anything else, just with a Sonic makeover.

[kal]

The only Sonic Extreme product that ever looked alright was the PC version they tried to get SEGA interested in after Sonic Extreme itself was cancelled.

[jorpho]

It's nice that Sega at least isn't C&D-ing all over this sort of thing.

[Lash]

Silly Sonic fans; there is no going back.

[kal]

Apr 6, 2015 22:25:46 GMT -5 jorpho said:

It's nice that Sega at least isn't C&D-ing all over this sort of thing.

SEGA have always appeared to be extremely tolerant of Sonic related fan guff, I hope it's because they understand their audience in this case and know that if they attacked the fan community there would be a pretty massive backlash. Also these assets are so old and unusable in a modern context I'd hope they wouldn't care.

[Joseph Joestar]

Apr 6, 2015 19:49:42 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

Sadly, I don't think X-Treme ever reached any point where it ever even resembled a finished game. I mean, have you ever looked online at how many design documents they went through, starting from the Genesis? Or back when it was going to be a 32X game that had the SatAM characters? It's honesly pretty fascinating stuff.

EDIT: Actually, have a link. I like Sonic Twist's concept especially well. Sonic wants to go on a date, and Robotnik basically spends the whole game apparently trying to cockblock him.

Robotnik hates race mixers.

[cambertian]

MAKE SONIC SLOW, DAmnit- oh shit sonic labyrinth
JUST PUT SONIC ON RAIls- damn it, sonic runners
MAKE IT LIKE THE CLASSICS- SONIC FUCKIN' FOUR? MY GOD, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Hmm.

You know what? I think Sonic, as is, doesn't really gel into a video game for me - especially since every concept we as fans are presented with makes us more indecisive.

What DO we want as Sonic fans, anyway? Fast platforming action? Puzzle-solving? Something even wackier?

[Bobinator]

I just want Generations 2. That's all. I mean, it had its issues, sure, but in terms of controls, level design, and content, it was way better than any of the 3D games before it, easily. If we lived in a perfect world, we'd have a new 2D Sonic that actually looked and played like the Genesis games before it, done by the guys who did the recent ports of 1, 2, and CD. But Sega are terrible, so we don't.

[jorpho]

Apr 7, 2015 19:54:15 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

If we lived in a perfect world, we'd have a new 2D Sonic that actually looked and played like the Genesis games before it, done by the guys who did the recent ports of 1, 2, and CD. But Sega are terrible, so we don't.

That would be Retro Sonic Nexus, no? I guess it's been put on hold since, well, the guys have been doing the recent ports of 1, 2, and CD instead.

[Bobinator]

Apr 7, 2015 20:53:09 GMT -5 jorpho said:

Apr 7, 2015 19:54:15 GMT -5 Bobinator said:

If we lived in a perfect world, we'd have a new 2D Sonic that actually looked and played like the Genesis games before it, done by the guys who did the recent ports of 1, 2, and CD. But Sega are terrible, so we don't.

That would be Retro Sonic Nexus, no? I guess it's been put on hold since, well, the guys have been doing the recent ports of 1, 2, and CD instead.

Last I heard, somebody else took over that particular project and it became Sonic XG, which is apparently still being worked on...?

[jorpho]

Huh. Apparently so. He's looking for funds..