Sonic Riders may not have been the most critically-lauded entry in the character's history, but it provided an interesting spin of the racing concept first introduced in Sonic R. However, according to Unseen 64, Riders could well have been inspired by pitch made by a North American studio called Vision Scape.
A prototype for a skateboarding game called Sonic Extreme surfaced recently and, according to Vision Scape's boss, was created in a week from an existing game engine. Vision Scape was working with Sega at the time on the CGI cut-scenes for Sonic Heroes, and began speculative work on the prototype when another project fell through.
The pitch got as far as Yuji Naka at Sega, who was apparently enthusiastic about the idea and seemed keen to move forward with with it, aiming for a release on GameCube, PS2 and Xbox. He requested that Vision Scape put together a design document and a proposed budget for the project, but then things went quiet. Vision Scape's repeated attempts to contact Sega and Naka were both met with silence and Sonic Extreme was forgotten.
Two years later, Sega released Sonic Riders, a game that was thematically similar to Sonic Extreme. Coincidence? Watch the video above and leave a comment to tell us what you think.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 20
"Watch the video above"
But there's no video.
EDIT: Now there is.
Didn't know this even existed
Love this. Look closely for the finer details.
Sonic Extreme (this one, not the Saturn one) has been known about since 2011 😉
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Extreme
Always interesting to see cancelled stuff though
Very interesting story! Obviously it sounds bad that Sega may have stolen Vision Scapes concept & turned it into their own game... but unfortunately this happens all the time. Take Disney who (allegedly) took both Kimba the White Lion & Zootopia... and turned them into The Lion King and Zootopia. The original creators getting nothing.
Not sure why they didn't bother changing the name on the Zootopia pitch.
@OorWullie I love me some Jim'll Paint It.
@AlexOlney Yeah he's brilliant.My favourite still has to be Ted Danson and Moira Stewart at the chicken rave.
http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/post/44855190481/dear-jim-please-paint-me-a-picture-of-ted-danson
@Raylax The game was known about, the prototype wasn't.
@DanteSolablood It's actually Zootopia.
Sonic's Lost GameCube Skateboarding Game Sure Does Look A Lot Like Sonic Riders
The only thing they have in common is they use hover-boards. Sonic Extreme looks like a slow boring version of Tony Hawk's Skater while Sonic Riders is a fast-paced racing game where you have to perform tricks to gain air.
@LiberatedAnimal My bad, it was called Zootropolis when it came out here in the UK due to legal issues (a Zoo already had the name Zootopia) so my brain autocorrected. I'll correct my original post.
@RadioShadow To be fair, Sonic Extreme was a demo thrown together in a week so was always going to be slower & less complex.
I think the main thing to take away from the video was that Sega didn't have a Sonic hoverboard game in development, saw the Sonic Extreme Pitch, went silent on the people who made the pitch & came out with a game that could be seen as a far more developed version of that pitch a lor further down the line. Could have been coincidence... maybe not. Either way Sega is legally in the right.
@DanteSolablood Oh I see. That makes sense.
@LiberatedAnimal It's quite interesting actually, look up the European posters. Same happened with The Avengers (Marvel), which became Avengers: Assemble in the UK due to a movie based on an old UK TV show called The Avengers a few years earlier.
Never heard of this game or the prototype..
@DanteSolablood That is interesting. Reminds me of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
@DanteSolablood but he does have a point. Sonic extreme looks more like a typical score attack Tony Hawk game. While it did impress Naka-san, Naka has already explored the idea of snowboarding in the Adventure games and even built a multiplayer level around it in SA2. If anything else that can be taken away from this is that the Dev team encourage Naka to expand his own ideas further. What we got was a very unique racing game with simple controls but a rather steep learning curve.
@SamirMalik I'd agree to disagree here, there are some relatively core concepts found in the Sonic Extreme demo that you wouldn't find in many other Snowboarding games.. especially the combat aspects which seem to have made it fairly untouched into Sonic Riders battle mode.
Honestly I think the truth lies between the two of us & that Sonic Team were looking for a new game, the Extreme pitch came to mind and they simply thought they could do it better themselves.
Either way, that doesn't take anything away from the final game & it seems the team that worked on Extreme are fine with it now.
I saw a video of this years ago. Nice to hear more about it.
It's seem that the name Sonic Extreme is a curse. Two games with the same name (thus spelled differently) and both got cancelled.
I was gonna say, wasn't there already a Sonic game canceled called Sonic Extreme...? Wait, that was Sonic Xtreme on the Sega Saturn. I guess that name, or any variation, is destined not to be released.
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