[Dark Sonic]

Personally I'm quite glad Sonic the Hedgehog pro skater never got released. Sonic Riders may be a bit silly, but this is just stupid.

[Black Squirrel]

Personally I'm quite glad Sonic the Hedgehog pro skater never got released. Sonic Riders may be a bit silly, but this is just stupid.

I'd actually disagree on that one. They're both strange ideas (but hey wasn't everything coming out of Sonic Team that was released between 2003 and 2008-ish?), but Sonic Hawk's Pro Skater makes more sense to me than Sonic Riders ever did.

The common complaint about Sonic Riders' premise as far as I know is that it's a racing game... on hoverboards, despite the fact Sonic and pals have made their name through running. So whichever way you look at it something in the game was out of place. I take the view that Sonic was thrown in there to help the game sell in the thousands - would have made more sense to me to introduce a new IP... seeing as they were already introducing three new main characters.

This demo seem to give them more of a practical use, because it's difficult for Sonic to do a 180 kickflip with just his feet... sorta. It's not the greatest concept in the world but I think it fits in better with the rail grinding and snowboard riding of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 than hoverboard racing.

[Techokami]

Small request: Would it be possible to get a capture card to make cleaner videos?

[Band Director III]

Personally I'm quite glad Sonic the Hedgehog pro skater never got released. Sonic Riders may be a bit silly, but this is just stupid.

I agree that it probably wouldn't have been able to stand alone do to it huge parallels to THPS unless it pulled out some really huge differences...

But lets think about the other possibilities it could have ventured into...

It would have been a HELL of a special stage for the modern games had it of been implemented that way.

Even though this looks like its dated post SA2, I could totally see this as a multiplayer option in there as-well.

EDIT:

Sonic Hawk's Pro Skater makes more sense to me than Sonic Riders ever did.

Wait did someone say Sonic Hawk?

This post has been edited by Band Director III: 30 April 2011 - 01:25 PM

[Dark Sonic]

EDIT:

Sonic Hawk's Pro Skater makes more sense to me than Sonic Riders ever did.

Wait did someone say Sonic Hawk?

Oh dear god cannot unsee

[PARASOL]

Personally I'm quite glad Sonic the Hedgehog pro skater never got released. Sonic Riders may be a bit silly, but this is just stupid.

It kind of reminds you of that skateboarding thing with Snake in Metal Gear solid 2 doesnt it?

[Gardow]

Small request: Would it be possible to get a capture card to make cleaner videos?

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32837
2 extra links on there.

This post has been edited by Gardow: 30 April 2011 - 05:07 PM

[SegaLoco]

Looks like it coulda been a fun THPS clone... but it doesn't seem like anything I would have liked to have seen the light of day. Nothing could reek of "I'm Sonic, and I swear I am not trying too hard to act cool" more.

Well considering how early this was, it was probably just an engine test for more stuff if anything. Who knows what became of this :p (Probably Riders, but in code or concept?)

[TeriosLP]

I'll be honest, I would be a sucker for this. I love the Pro Skater series, so I probably would've picked this one up. I honestly don't see how everyone can compare Riders to a Tony Hawk knock-off though. Sure both games, you ride on some sort of board, per-say, but they both are entirely different. One is a game where you can goof off in preform tricks, the other one is Mario Kart without the items, riding boards.

[Neko Kit Su]

So, I played through all parts of the game.
And yes you can ride the rails.

The goal of the missions is to get a key and then open a lock. That ends the misson. I could swear the first time I played it I got to at least misson level 2 and then a 3... but it has been freezing up or sending me back to the game screen when I get the lock... maybe im missing something.

Then the combat is a small area with 4 sub-zones. There are 4 keys, 1 for each zone. There are grenades, firecrackers, homing rockets and mines that can be picked up and used against the other player or to destory crates. Also pressing the R and L triggers at the same time moves both players back to the middle of the level- not effecting key earned or boxes destoryed. I couldn't figure out a way to win/lose/leave without quitting.

Then there is the race level. It feels a lot like Sonic Adventure 2 battle- the first level. You go around a seemingly neverending track, then when you finish it boots you to the game screen.

I will hopefully have some more videos tomorrow about winning the first mission and the race part.

Welcome to Retro, for one. Glad you found your way here.

For two, this looks exciting. I loved the older Tony Hawk games, and this would have fared far better than Riders, IMHO.

Though, can't deny that Un-Gravitify is actually a pretty awesome song...

I can easily see bits of this being used for an Adventure game mode, and would have been quite fun.

I hope we can see more of this.

[Vendettagainst]

I'll be honest, I would be a sucker for this. I love the Pro Skater series, so I probably would've picked this one up. I honestly don't see how everyone can compare Riders to a Tony Hawk knock-off though. Sure both games, you ride on some sort of board, per-say, but they both are entirely different. One is a game where you can goof off in preform tricks, the other one is Mario Kart without the items, riding boards.

They're comparing this to Pro Skater, not Riders.

[TeriosLP]

I'll be honest, I would be a sucker for this. I love the Pro Skater series, so I probably would've picked this one up. I honestly don't see how everyone can compare Riders to a Tony Hawk knock-off though. Sure both games, you ride on some sort of board, per-say, but they both are entirely different. One is a game where you can goof off in preform tricks, the other one is Mario Kart without the items, riding boards.

They're comparing this to Pro Skater, not Riders.

Oops misread some posts. I know about the Pro Skater part, but I misread a part thinking they were comparing it to Riders. :P

[Tamkis]

Ironically and coicidentally, I had a feeling that there would be some big news on Sonic Retro today, guess I was right ! This looks like this would have been a fun THPS clone, too bad it never saw completion. Although, I agree with the others, this cancelled game probably led to Sonic Riders. We won't know for sure though, until the tech members dig in the game dump. Great find people!

I find it somewhat odd that Sega would call it "Sonic Extreme" (with an "E"), with the cancelled Saturn game Sonic Xtreme (no "e"). Since this was a demo, I wonder if this was just the "codename" for the game? Guess we won't know until the tech members dig in the game dump (that we hopefully will get, behave people!) and check the header... This find kind of reminds me of when Sonic Crackers was found, minus the obscurity.

[Shoemanbundy]

Not as exciting as other Sonic protos, but interesting nonetheless. I can see why Sega never greenlighted this thing though, Sonic's already got enough gimmick games now.

[Phos]

Considering the way Sonic Team operated at the time someone must have died to get them to actually cancel a game that reached playability, especially considering that Sonic Team usually used the Gamecube as the lead platform back then. That, or someone pointed out that Sonic doesn't need a skateboard to do any of those things.

Some specific things that we would be able to tell from a dump of this: When this was made, whether it was using technology from an other game (due to model formates or whatnot), and I think that model might be unique to this whatever it is.

The in game loading has me thinking that this is based off the Adventure 2 technology. The Sonic Team of the day usually just dumped you to a loading screen for this sort of stuff, unless Shadow secretly had some sort of really tricky data streaming going on that they never told anyone about.