Sonic The Hedgehog Unreleased Tech Demo

[handofg0d]

The people over at Sega-16.com held an interview with former Sega of America employee, Peter Morawiec (link). It's a pretty interesting read, but the best part is at the end when they provide a video of an unreleased Tech Demo he had made for a new Sonic game based on the ABC Cartoon designs. Features include new moves (throwing rings, buzzsaw attack), larger sprites, and "3D" environments.

You can find the wmv of the video linked at the bottom of the article, but here's the YouTube version.

[Barc0de]

impressive, yet slow for a sonic game

[diddydonn]

wow, that looks really great is it based off the original sonic tv show or the awful sonic underground?

[Alchy]

Judging by that brownish fox lady (can't remember the character's name) I'd say the latter.

Anyway, I'm always interested in unreleased Sonic stuff. Was this just a rolling demo or is there playable code as well? I had a quick read of the article, couldn't find much on it.

[3do]

That is a great looking sonic game i must say.

[Twimfy]

Wow, I just purchased the complete DVD boxset of Sonic SatAM, this looks like a game which would have complimented it perfectly had it seen release.

I hope someone finds some playable code sometime soon.

[PhreQuencYViii]

Looks like Sonic Spinball kind of!

[handofg0d]

Looks like Sonic Spinball kind of!

Well, that's probably because Sonic Spinball was 100% created at STI, which is where this came from.



As far as I can tell (they don't actually talk about this in the interview for some reason) I think it was just a rolling demo animation, no actual code. I am only basing this on his statements about the Comix Zone demo which he says was an animation he made on his Amiga, that was the basis for the game. I'm guessing he made this animation, to shop it to Sega and they turned it down (probably because it's too slow and detracts too far from the Sonic franchise (at the time)).

[sirmosh]

Looks pretty, shame about the lack of speed.

[APE]

The tech documents for this game are on the internet, never thought it actually was implemented in any form.

[opethfan]

Am I the only one who perferred AoSTH over SatAM?

[PhreQuencYViii]

Am I the only one who perferred AoSTH over SatAM?

Nope! :nod: I liked funny VS the other as a kid, plus I read the comic, which was pretty much same thing as SatAM.

[handofg0d]

The tech documents for this game are on the internet, never thought it actually was implemented in any form.

Do you have a link, or any info on what the game was being called to help me search for this?

[Taucias]

Well, that's probably because Sonic Spinball was 100% created at STI, which is where this came from.



As far as I can tell (they don't actually talk about this in the interview for some reason) I think it was just a rolling demo animation, no actual code. I am only basing this on his statements about the Comix Zone demo which he says was an animation he made on his Amiga, that was the basis for the game. I'm guessing he made this animation, to shop it to Sega and they turned it down (probably because it's too slow and detracts too far from the Sonic franchise (at the time)).

I don't think the speed was the issue (if it was a tech demo it would have been coded in C, according to practices at STI at the time), as this would have changed during development in ASM. More like Sonic politics got in the way, which the guy goes on to talk about when they set up their satellite studio and the Sonic project got the can.

[Nitrosoxide]

Do you have a link, or any info on what the game was being called to help me search for this?

Sonic Mars

[APE]

http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.ph...bid=1&artid=21

[handofg0d]

Thanks, I actually found the docs after Nitros posted the name- they seem to be from the 32X incarnation of this game - and seem to share very little. I guess it morphed into this over the years. The CulT site says that this eventually became Xtreme, however in the interview posted above he clearly states "Not to be confused with Sonic Xtreme" - so it looks like there were 2 Saturn titles in the works.

While I was looking for these tech docs I also found a screen shot from the 32X game Sonic Mars (or Sonic on Mars according to the storyboard) The screen matches up almost exactly with a screen from those docs as well (page 84).


Still, you can see see some (vague) similarities between the video and these docs. For example, the docs refer to the character designs being based on the ABC cartoon.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Judging by that brownish fox lady (can't remember the character's name) I'd say the latter.

Nope. That's "Sally" from Sonic SatAM.


Interesting that somone at Sega had planned a game based on the cartoon alone.The speed in the demo is definitley a problem, but who knows how it would have turned out if Sega had approved the project and they had been allowed to work out the kinks and turn it into a real game. Could have turned out to be a lot of fun..oh well.

[PhreQuencYViii]

Sally and the other SatAM charectars were in a bonus stage in Sonic Spinball, she looked a lot like that.

Also, I remember a little handheld LCD game called Sonic on Mars (or something space related), dunno if thats signifigant.

[Yakumo]

Wow, nice image. I've never seen that before. Is it taken from code running on the 32X? I alwqays though Sonic Xetreme in it's fish eye form looked shit but this shot looks much nicer. I hate deformed graphics.

Yakumo