THATinkjar
10-02-2005, 04:10 PM
I'm far from an expert on prototypes and, generally, I'm not really that interested. Sonic, however, is the exception. Anything unreleased from the Sonic universe gets me buzzing. And today, while catching up with the latest developments over at Secrets of Sonic Team (http://sost.emulationzone.org/) (really the only resource worth your time, in my opinion), I came across something rather startling.
An auction recently took place on The ASSEMblergames forums (http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6648). The item in question? An early, playable copy of Sonic X-Treme! The winning buyer paid an incredible $2,500 for the CD. The seller, who wrote this article on Sonic X-Treme (http://www.lostlevels.org/200403/200403-xtreme.shtml), and who was acting as a middleman for an anonymous party, had this to say (excerpt taken from auction thread):
This disc is not a complete game, the simple reason being that there never was a complete game. What this disc contains is the small playable demo that was produced initially as a proof of concept for Sega of Japan, and then shown to the press at Gamer's Day in 1996. The four screenshots at the bottom of this page are taken from this very same demo.
This is, he assured me, the only playable Saturn build ever seen outside of the development office itself, and I really have no reason to believe otherwise. Furthermore, with the possible exception of one disc under heavy lock and key in Sega's library (according to another anonymous employee, who I spoke to about two years ago), this is very likely to be the only surviving disc PERIOD. Why does he know this? Because he destroyed the others himself, it was part of his job.
These images were provided along with the above extract:
http://www.lostlevels.org/stuff/xtreme/02.jpg http://www.lostlevels.org/stuff/xtreme/01.jpg
Page ten of the auction thread forwarded me toward a reaction thread (http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6680). The final page of this second thread, in turn, provided me with one final link. The following web site, I am led to believe, will in time have further information on this demo. Hopefully good quality in-game footage will follow, too. So, without further ado...
http://www.sonicxtreme.com/ - Bookmark. Bookmark. And, er, bookmark!
An auction recently took place on The ASSEMblergames forums (http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6648). The item in question? An early, playable copy of Sonic X-Treme! The winning buyer paid an incredible $2,500 for the CD. The seller, who wrote this article on Sonic X-Treme (http://www.lostlevels.org/200403/200403-xtreme.shtml), and who was acting as a middleman for an anonymous party, had this to say (excerpt taken from auction thread):
This disc is not a complete game, the simple reason being that there never was a complete game. What this disc contains is the small playable demo that was produced initially as a proof of concept for Sega of Japan, and then shown to the press at Gamer's Day in 1996. The four screenshots at the bottom of this page are taken from this very same demo.
This is, he assured me, the only playable Saturn build ever seen outside of the development office itself, and I really have no reason to believe otherwise. Furthermore, with the possible exception of one disc under heavy lock and key in Sega's library (according to another anonymous employee, who I spoke to about two years ago), this is very likely to be the only surviving disc PERIOD. Why does he know this? Because he destroyed the others himself, it was part of his job.
These images were provided along with the above extract:
http://www.lostlevels.org/stuff/xtreme/02.jpg http://www.lostlevels.org/stuff/xtreme/01.jpg
Page ten of the auction thread forwarded me toward a reaction thread (http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6680). The final page of this second thread, in turn, provided me with one final link. The following web site, I am led to believe, will in time have further information on this demo. Hopefully good quality in-game footage will follow, too. So, without further ado...
http://www.sonicxtreme.com/ - Bookmark. Bookmark. And, er, bookmark!