h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice to see a Sega article... just thought I'd chip in and say that the Sega Saturn did have a Sonic title... several in fact -

- Sonic Jam (Compilation of Sonic 1, 2, 3, Knuckles and a newly created 3d world)
- Sonic R (Racing Game)
- Sonic 3d

Other than that, a concise article!

Oh, well, yes, they did have Sonic in them so you're right. In fact they'd kind of started spinning off into lots of subgenres after Sonic 3, didn't they? Knuckles started getting his own games, and then they did that backwards compabtibility thing too, so it was hard to tell what the "next" Sonic game really was. There was a Sonic pinball too, wasn't there?

I suppose I meant there wasn't a "proper" Sonic title, because the flagship Sonic game intended to be the saturn sequel to the original series of megadrive platform games wasn't released. It looked really interesting too, as it was going to be a 3-d game done entirely in a fisheye lens with a very strange system of gravity. The screenshots I saw looked completely different to anything I've seen on a console before or since, but apparently the quality of the moving 3-d sucked compared to the playstation so the head office ordered it to be scrubbed...

After Sonic 3 on the Megadrive, there was Sonic & Knuckles (Megadrive), Knuckles Chaotix (32X) and as you say, Sonic Spinball (also on the megadrive). I can only assume that the game you saw either ended up as the 3D world tagged onto Sonic Jam or perhaps the gravity system could be Chaotix, as in that one, there are two characters joined together by a chain, leading to all sorts of gravity swinging stuff... I couldn't be more specific, as I've not got round to playing my copy of it for ages!

Hi,

The 3-d thing I referred to was just abandoned forever. When they dropped the Saturn, and the Dreamcast came along with its superior 3-d technology, they just threw the prototype Saturn game in the bin.

I've found a website all about it. It was codenamed Sonic Xtreme, and from the screen shots it looked rather good. Shame.

Have a look at:

[URL removed by moderator]

Hang on, why did they remove that URL? Are there special terms about what we can link to in conversations?

I think Sonic died after Sonic and Knuckles. It was a great game, and combines with Sonic 3 (which could plug into the top of the cartridge) it was unparalleled! Sonic 3D was something of a let-down, and I dare not mention the Saturn and Dreamcast attempts...
Any yes, they did make a pinball game. Sonic Spinball, which was actually not that bad...