The joint SEGA-SONY hardware system - Sega of America and Sony tried to team up

[A Black Falcon]

According to Game Over and Stephen Kent's journalistic book Nintendo did drop Sony specifically because they wanted royalties on CD-ROM production. Given Nintendo's persistence against optical media until the Gamecube I would not be surprised to find they simply didn't want to pay royalties of any kind per game sold.

It's too bad that most people believe that version of the story, but it's Sony-biased. The actual story is that Sony put a clause in the contract that they'd get all the rights to CD games (licensing, etc. I believe). Once Nintendo noticed that Sony would be getting royalties for a Nintendo console addon, something obviously unacceptable, of course any idea of using Sony was done -- Nintendo would never allow such things. So they dropped Sony for Phillips. The Phillips system didn't release because Nintendo had decided that they didn't really need a SNES CD drive after all.

[Team Andromeda]

According to Sega, M2 was a good bit of technology, but they didn't think it was good enough.
Also, 3DO's Trip Hawkens was supposedly to arrogant that he wanted to become president of Sega of America

No I think it was more to do with branding . If SEGA were going to put their name it to it, SEGA wanted the M2 to be a SEGA branded console and the likes of Panasonic and 3DO couldn't agree on that.

Some of the best attempts on Saturn to recreate the Model 2 experience at home (VF2, Sega Rally, Daytona USA CCE/CE) were still not even remotely close to the Model 2 in terms of visuals

Well that's being a bit unfair . Looking over the vast gulf in costs and power of the systems; SEGA Rally was close, so was Virtual Cop and Last Bronx super close and its not like the PS got close to System 22 at all and the likes of Virtual Cop are far closer ports that Time Crisis and the VF II is a more impressive port that Tekken 3 on the PS despite System 13 having no where near the power of the Model 2.

Nintendo 64 polygon performance with textures, shading, z-buffering, alpha-blending, fog, lighting, texture filtering, mip-mapping, anti-aliasing, etc. applied: 160,000/sec.
Framerates? anything from 60fps to 30fps to 20fps and sometimes less

Framerates on a lot of N64 games were poor;given the supposed power of the system. What did the likes of Pioltwings 64 manage something like 20 fps ?

Even Sega's mighty Dreamcast (with *conservatively* anywhere from 3 to 6 times more power than 3DO M2) while more powerful and better than Model 3 in many ways,
was not capable of reproducing Model 3 Step 2.0 / 2.1 games 100% 1:1 exact

Model 3 was more powerful thanks to memory and its memory speeds , also unlike the DC Model 3 step 2 could handle over a million polygons no matter what effects you layered other each over, unlike the DC ; Well so said one of the programers of Daytona USA 2

As I said recently, I think you're quite wrong on X-Treme, and that it'd have been fine had Sega of Japan not interfered by forcing them to abandon the "levels" engine

No. C'Mon having a game running 2 different engines , developed on 3 different platforms was a complete mess to start with, never mind that after over a year of development you then need a outside engine to help complete your game . The game should have either been made for the 32X or Saturn and that was it; that was the problem and well that was the problem with the 32X and Saturn in how they diverted resources away from each other.

Saturn 2 could've been a new standalone console, or an upgrade to the existing Saturn, saving cost by using Saturn's CD-ROM drive, controller inputs and power supply. This could've been the the so-called "Eclipse",
the famous "Saturn 3D upgrade cartridge".

I think that was just press speculation. Tbh they was never any chance of LM making a console chipset for SEGA, more so after the troubles they had trying to make Model 2 and 3 affordable. And about the rumored upgrade cart I think that was must bullshit and the press confusing the 4-Meg cart before it was officially announced by SEGA

[kool kitty89]

It's too bad that most people believe that version of the story, but it's Sony-biased. The actual story is that Sony put a clause in the contract that they'd get all the rights to CD games (licensing, etc. I believe). Once Nintendo noticed that Sony would be getting royalties for a Nintendo console addon, something obviously unacceptable, of course any idea of using Sony was done -- Nintendo would never allow such things. So they dropped Sony for Phillips. The Phillips system didn't release because Nintendo had decided that they didn't really need a SNES CD drive after all.

Yes, though I'd also guess that Nintendo was frustrated over the difficulties in regulating/controlling software manufacturing in the severe way it was used to with carts. (on top of any actual piracy and unlicensed development concerns)
Still, there should have been better ways around that too . . . better than the horrible design of the N64 DD too. (late, overly complex, and both more costly -hardware and media- and less useful than optical contemporaries -the exact same reasons ZIP was so niche, and sold mainly as a hard drive backup media before CD-R drives became common)

According to Game Over and Stephen Kent's journalistic book Nintendo did drop Sony specifically because they wanted royalties on CD-ROM production. Given Nintendo's persistence against optical media until the Gamecube I would not be surprised to find they simply didn't want to pay royalties of any kind per game sold.

That and Nintendo not wanting to lose the degree of control they held over software manufacturing (including royalties coming from 3rd parties, release dates, volumes, etc). From a pure money/profit PoV, CDs made a ton more sense all around by the mid 90s at the very latest. (again, from Nintendo's PoV, developing a proprietary CD-based format would have made the most sense, like they later did from GC onward -and what Sega did with GD)

On topic, I do wonder alterverse style at what would have happened if Phillips or 3DO or any other company had managed to create a system on a chip version of their newest platform back in the 90s. If Nintendo or Sony or Sega could have been forced to buy an "Gizmondo" on a chip upgrade for whatever platform they were currently supporting, it might have been a big win for some megacorp. The CDI "compatible" SNES add-on being developed by Phillips was supposed to do just that. So you could buy a CDI or a SNES plus CD-ROM add-on and get the same games to work. Something like that for the 3DO, NEO GEO or something else entirely might have been a really successful deal for somebody.

I wonder if the main console manufacturers intentionally blocked that idea for no other reason than their bottom line.

I'm really skeptical on whether the SNES CD was going to be CD-i compatible as such . . . I get the impression a lot of that was out of context hype. (given both how it would severely waste SNES hardware and how all the SNES CD hardware specs/lists -including the "CDi compatible" claiming articles- are nothing like the CDi hardware)

It might have just been CDi multimedia disc/data formats (and maybe VCD expansion support), which I'd believe easily.


On the CD-i and 3DO note though, it would have been really interesting had either Sony or the 3DO conglomerate (etc) sold them using typical game console market models with profits tied solely to software sales and perhaps a lower cost optimized manufacturing model (even with identical chipsets and internal hardware).

From a pure hardware PoV, the CD-i would have been OK as an early 90s console with multimedia capabilities, and particularly well suited to PC games (decently powerful CPU and RAM with 256 color framebuffer, basic 2D hardware acceleration, and decent sample based sound hardware).

I haven't paid much attention to this thread but I've seen people mentioning 3DO as an alternative to Saturn. 3DO wasn't a console it was a hardware standard. There never ever was an option for Sega to license it exclusively if that is what people were suggesting here.

No, it wasn't in that context at all. The context was of the (WIP) chipset being offered to Sega early on (probably 1990) for their use, not unlike how the development of the Amiga, Lynx, SGI Project Reality, or Flare/Slipstream (Knoix Multisystem) designs worked. Actually, the Amiga, Lynx, and 3DO shared a good chunk of their engineering staff too, including Dave Needle and RJ Mical.
(oh, and again, compared to Project Reality, I could see the Sega engineers being much more favorable towards the 3DO design in terms of viability and practicality relative to Sega's cost/performance/timescale roadmap for the next generation)

Hence the broader speculation on how development might have differed with some Sega influence (including access to certain tech at better prices -namely the Hitachi connection for CPU and RAM). I've already detailed the tech issue here, so I won't restate myself beyond liking:
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post596174 (initial post referencing Ultimate History of Video Games)
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post599580
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post600082

Oh, and this wasn't regarding the M2, mind you. (that was mentioned briefly here too, and at length elsewhere -and in any case I think Sega was much better off with the DC anyway)

The context of this was detailed on page 484 of Steve Kent's Ultimate History of Video Games. And while that's really a sensationalistic editorial approach on game history (with poor fact checking and plenty of errors), it's at least good for direct quotes, and this ones from Michael Katz himself:

Dave Moris, Who replaced me briefly as president of Epyx, came to me with RJ and Dave Needle when I was president of Sega. They presented to me the concept of paying them $2 million and giving them two years to develop the nest "ultimate revolutionary" video game system; and I was all for it, based on their cridentials, because they had developed the Amiga computer and they had developed the Lynx. I had just paid 1.7 million dollars to Joe Montana to get his picture on a game. I thought it was nothing to pay $2 million to get the next hardware system developed
So I recommended that they go to Japan, which they did two or three times, and present their concepts to Nakayama. They were turned down.

Given that context, this indeed seems to be in 1990, and it also seems to have played out a bit differently than with the SGI situation where SoJ engineers did the primary appraisal, while this seems to have been done by having the prospective US engineers pitching directly to Nakayama.

Seems kind of a shame given, technically speaking, it would have been the polar opposite of what SoJ engineering staff were so concerned over with the SGI design. (it also would have been early enough for Sega to better model Sega CD software/marketing plans to directly line up well with the next gen platform)

Incedentally, this exact same time period is when Flare 2 was formed, after pitching the Jaguar idea to Atari (following consult work on Panther), and when the initial Jaguar design was being laid down on paper. (most of the design was solidified in 1990 with the rest in 1991, and actual hardware design -in TTL and silicon- immediately followed that)
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/179.../#entry2244508

No. C'Mon having a game running 2 different engines , developed on 3 different platforms was a complete mess to start with, never mind that after over a year of development you then need a outside engine to help complete your game . The game should have either been made for the 32X or Saturn and that was it; that was the problem and well that was the problem with the 32X and Saturn in how they diverted resources away from each other.

It was a mess, and Nakayama didn't help things either . . . the Nights engine thing was a disaster. What eventually materialized in mid/late 1996 is what should have been the target MUCH earlier: using a single game engine developed for both Saturn and PC and moving forward with final game development. The early mess of things could have been curtailed around the time Nakayma reviewed things had they (quite reasonably) killed off most/all of the problematic work on the team led by Senn and focused primarily on Coffin's design (which was much better by that point and, of course, also ended up being the final design). The Nights engine fiasco just stalled development by several months and cost them the '96 Chrismas deadline.


However, that's all besides the point being made by Black Falcon and I, which is that after all that mess they at least could have finished the game for an early '97 release. After all, it had finally been going smoothly at the end and all the major mess had been worked though . . . the investment needed to complete development should have been preferable to throwing away all the previous investment put into that game. (which is the argument over Stolar's decision here)

No one is arguing that development of Xtreme wasn't a mess or that it didn't waste resources (the way it was handled).

[Team Andromeda]

It was a mess, and Nakayama didn't help things either . . . the Nights engine thing was a disaster. What eventually materialized in mid/late 1996 is what should have been the target MUCH earlier: using a single game engine developed for both Saturn and PC and moving forward with final game development

Nope. Nakayama-san told the Team to focus on one engine and 1 platform game get the game done; that's exactly what should have happened in the 1st place and you can't blame SOJ for the NiGHTS engine . A game that's been 2 years in development by a 1st party Team should never need a outside engine from Japan to get the game done in time for Christmas 1996

which is that after all that mess they at least could have finished the game for an early '97 release

Well that was SOA call to stop development

[A Black Falcon]

... Seriously, both of you, ignoring the fact that Senn and Alon's current engine was never seen by the SOJ guy who made the decision to force the other engine only on the project is a pretty big omission!

I mean, having only one engine may make sense in theory, but they'd made the two-engines decision some time earlier, and later deciding that the whole game had to be remade in the "bosses" engine, without ever even LOOKING at the current version of the "levels" engine but only at an old and outdated version, is a very bad move, and it's what killed the project, ultimately. Remember that after Senn and Alon's "levels" engine was canned, then they went to the NiGHTS engine and wasted two weeks before Naka's fit forced them to abandon it, and then finally to the decision to redo the entire game into the "bosses" engine. This was a huge task, and probably was the reason why Coffin got sick (likely from overwork).

So yeah, don't make that stupid, ill-informed decision to abandon the "levels" engine without even looking at the current version of said engine, and I think the game finishes in 1996, two engines or no. Both engines were making solid progress at their specific part of the game, and levels and such were in development too.

[Team Andromeda]

Seriously, both of you, ignoring the fact that Senn and Alon's current engine was never seen by the SOJ guy who made the decision to force the other engine only on the project is a pretty big omission

Sorry very, very wrong . On a Vist to SOA Nakayama-san personally saw work in progress of Sonic X and after the mess that was the game in its current state , told the team to use 1 engine (Nakayama-san favoured the boss engine) and get the game the game done; It was confirmed by the STI Team in a feature with EDGE

then they went to the NiGHTS engine and wasted two weeks before Naka's fit forced them to abandon it

Note quite the use of the NiGHTS engine was a moved made by Berrnie after asking the team what they needed to get the game done and out for Christmas 1996 . The very fact that the team needed an outside engine ;given they were a 1st party In House studio was shocking enough and then more shocking was needed a engine that at the time was desgined for a completely different style of game after nearly 2 years of work is shocking and shows what a complete mess the project was in. Dear GOD we have multi platform next gen games made with 2 year development time limits .

The game was a complete mess from start to finish and where very little of the game done .

[A Black Falcon]

Sorry very, very wrong . On a Vist to SOA Nakayama-san personally saw work in progress of Sonic X and after the mess that was the game in its current state , told the team to use 1 engine (Nakayama-san favoured the boss engine) and get the game the game done; It was confirmed by the STI Team in a feature with EDGE

I have no idea what you're talking about, but Senn confirmed many, many times that Nakayama never saw their most recent work on the levels engine, and based his decision on an old and badly outdated version of the engine, Remember, he was so angry at how bad the old version looked that he said "you can't use this", and then refused to listen to any entreaties to look at the newer, much better version of the engine? The decision had already been made, and so Sega mangement would not reverse it, no matter how wrong it was. Yeah, really, really bad management and decision making there!

Note quite the use of the NiGHTS engine was a moved made by Berrnie after asking the team what they needed to get the game done and out for Christmas 1996 . The very fact that the team needed an outside engine ;given they were a 1st party In House studio was shocking enough and then more shocking was needed a engine that at the time was desgined for a completely different style of game after nearly 2 years of work is shocking and shows what a complete mess the project was in. Dear GOD we have multi platform next gen games made with 2 year development time limits .

The game was a complete mess from start to finish and where very little of the game done .

Once again, they would not have needed an outside engine had Nakayama not already doomed the project through his idiotic decision to force them to abandon the "levels" engine.

And second, one division of a company using an engine made by another division of the same company is how things work, at least in the West. Why in the world would you think that sharing an engine is "shocking"? Is it "shocking" to you that so many games today use the Unreal engine, or that several Bethesda games use id engines, or what have you? Stop being silly! It's not "shocking" to share an engine within your company. The only things that are shocking are that Naka was so possessive of his engines that he'd threaten to quit when he heard that another Sega division wanted to use his engine, and that Nakayama would make such bad decisions about what engine the game should use.

And finally, NiGHTS is basically a platformer in the air, so no, that engine wasn't designed for a "completely different style of game" at all.

But finally, the project was only a mess because Nakayama had messed it up! It was on track, finally, before he came in and destroyed the game with that one incredibly bad decision.

[Team Andromeda]

I have no idea what you're talking about

So lets not make out that Nakayama-san didn't see the game or the 2 engines . And well if the Team can't show the BIG boss of SEGA the latest version its just shows what a complete mess the Team and the project was in.

And second, one division of a company using an engine made by another division of the same company is how things work, at least in the West

Not in Japan and SOJ never shared engines or code with between its own In-House teams (at that time)

Is it "shocking" to you that so many games today use the Unreal engine

This was 1994/5 , when the use of middleware and having consoles games run on 3rd party engines just didn't happen . It was the good old days when console programmers coded to the metal.
I mean how many PS or Saturn games made use of the likes of ID Tech engines and so on ? .

NiGHTS is basically a platformer in the air

No its a very simple scoring attack time limit game and what tiny parts were on foot sections of the game, happend to the ropiest part of the engine anyway . Only after a major engine re-write by Matsumoto-san was the game fit for a platform style game

But finally, the project was only a mess because Nakayama had messed it up! It was on track, finally, before he came in and destroyed the game with that one incredibly bad decision

Utter rubbish . Even to this day there's hardly any actual gameplay footage and by that mean proper gameplay with enemy placements and boss battles and the like . Some 2 years worth of work and nothing where you can see what would be a approaching a final product and just a sad tail of a mess of Team that didn't what system to develop on or what game engine to use .

[Melf]

I think the fact that Sega went 3 years without any formal plan for a Sonic game, and the fact that Japan would let Naka refuse to allow his engine to be used to make that game, shows that yeah, there was some shitty decisions made by Nakayama. Why didn't he just assign the game to Sonic Team? The people who made the past Sonic games using Naka's precious NIGHTS engine would have made things go much smoother. Instead, they didn't know what console to put the game on, how it should play, who should make it or what engine it should use. Yeah, no bad decision-making there.

The BIG BOSS of Sega should have seen the disaster the game's development was becoming and done SOMETHING. He did nothing, and the Saturn went without a game in the series that made Sega the powerhouse it was. Credit should go to Stolar for actually moving to make a Sonic game happen. By the time he did, the Saturn was almost 2 years old, and where was Sonic Team all this time? Where was Nakayama?

[Team Andromeda]

there was some shitty decisions made by Nakayama. Why didn't he just assign the game to Sonic Team? The people who made the past Sonic games using Naka's precious NIGHTS engine would have made things go much smoother.

Nakaymma-san did with 'Project Sonic' sadly Saturn poor performance meant that Sonic Adv for the Saturn was moved to DC production

The BIG BOSS of Sega should have seen the disaster the game's development was becoming and done SOMETHING.

One needs to blame SOA and the producers of Sonic X for that. Where Nakayama-san needs a good kicking is not getting another team to make a Sonic game very early in (like with Sonic CD) while the main Soinc Team were busy with other projects .

By the time he did, the Saturn was almost 2 years old, and where was Sonic Team all this time? Where was Nakayama

In 1996 Sonic Team were already heavily working on Sonic Adv for the Saturn , but it was a little bit too late . But one can't blame Naka-san and ST after 5 years of nothing but Sonic and yearly sequels (a sure Team killer) to want to try and make something new .

[A Black Falcon]

I think the fact that Sega went 3 years without any formal plan for a Sonic game, and the fact that Japan would let Naka refuse to allow his engine to be used to make that game, shows that yeah, there was some shitty decisions made by Nakayama. Why didn't he just assign the game to Sonic Team? The people who made the past Sonic games using Naka's precious NIGHTS engine would have made things go much smoother. Instead, they didn't know what console to put the game on, how it should play, who should make it or what engine it should use. Yeah, no bad decision-making there.

The BIG BOSS of Sega should have seen the disaster the game's development was becoming and done SOMETHING. He did nothing, and the Saturn went without a game in the series that made Sega the powerhouse it was. Credit should go to Stolar for actually moving to make a Sonic game happen. By the time he did, the Saturn was almost 2 years old, and where was Sonic Team all this time? Where was Nakayama?

Seriously, yeah, you're absolutely right! Allowing the Sonic series to just die for years like that was a shockingly bad decision that I can't find any possible explanation for. Even considering that they cared about Japan first, they must have known how important Sonic was overseas. Unconscionably bad management, there.

Also, which Sonic game was Stolar's idea?

So lets not make out that Nakayama-san didn't see the game or the 2 engines . And well if the Team can't show the BIG boss of SEGA the latest version its just shows what a complete mess the Team and the project was in.

You need to actually read the pages you just posted. They explain how Senn makes clear that no, Nakayama NEVER saw the current version of the levels engine. He made his decision to kill the levels engine based purely on seeing the old, not very good version of the levels engine that the other team showed him, and never looked at its most recent revision. And those pages you just posted explain those facts in detail.

Not in Japan and SOJ never shared engines or code with between its own In-House teams (at that time)

The fact that in Japan teams rarely share engines has been a long-term problem, and is posited as being one of the factors why over the past generation Japan has fallen so far behind in console game development...

This was 1994/5 , when the use of middleware and having consoles games run on 3rd party engines just didn't happen . It was the good old days when console programmers coded to the metal.
I mean how many PS or Saturn games made use of the likes of ID Tech engines and so on ? .

I don't know. Probably a few. And teams, or companies, certainly would reuse engines even then, for other games that could benefit from it.

No its a very simple scoring attack time limit game and what tiny parts were on foot sections of the game, happend to the ropiest part of the engine anyway . Only after a major engine re-write by Matsumoto-san was the game fit for a platform style game

It's a 2.5d and 3d platform game, and as you said it already has a 3d engine. Sure it'd need work to turn it into a good 3d platformer engine, but the basics were all there already. But sure, it's not ideal; better would have been to keep the two engines they originally had, because both were in good shape.

Utter rubbish . Even to this day there's hardly any actual gameplay footage and by that mean proper gameplay with enemy placements and boss battles and the like . Some 2 years worth of work and nothing where you can see what would be a approaching a final product and just a sad tail of a mess of Team that didn't what system to develop on or what game engine to use .

The gameplay footage of the game I've seen looks pretty complete to me... and like a lot of fun too. It looks pretty far along.

[Team Andromeda]

Seriously, yeah, you're absolutely right! Allowing the Sonic series to just die for years like that was a shockingly bad decision that I can't find any possible explanation for

But it wasn't years . They was always going to be a Sonic game for the Saturn made at some point . SOJ just didn't seem to get how much Sonic alone sold the Mega Drive to the West.

Nakayama NEVER saw the current version of the levels engine

Nice change of tune . He saw both versions of the game and went with what he thought was best . The fact that 1) you don't have the best version to show your supreme boss on a visit is shocking 2) you had 2 different teams working on 2 different engines on the same game . Just shows the whole mess the game was in and for that blame SOA and the Sonic X producers

The fact that in Japan teams rarely share engines has been a long-term problem, and is posited as being one of the factors why over the past generation Japan has fallen so far behind in console game development

So if you and I know that . You like to think highly paid so-called professional staff at SOA would know that and the trouble of trying to get an In-House Japanese Team share its code with a Western team , more so when SOJ Teams never shared code or engines between themselves, never mind a Western team .

I don't know. Probably a few. And teams, or companies, certainly would reuse engines even then

I can't think of many if any and more so for the Saturn - where trying to get C or PC engine code to run on the system was asking for a whole host of issues .

It's a 2.5d and 3d platform game

No its a very simple score attack game . There's no platforming at all - well unless you want to class running away from the clock as platforming .

The gameplay footage of the game I've seen looks pretty complete to me

Where ? You show me footage of the game that features enemies through out the whole level , boss battle or anything where you could see a level with full enemies, moving platforms from a single level being played from beginning to end. All I seen its incomplete levels and some nice tech demo's and that's it . You know when Smilebit were showing off a 20% complete JSF you had more of a game to see, when Team Andromeda were showing off a 40% complete Panzer you had more of a game to see. Sonic X was very much like BC for the X-Box nice graphics, but where's the game ?

[A Black Falcon]

But it wasn't years . They was always going to be a Sonic game for the Saturn made at some point . SOJ just didn't seem to get how much Sonic alone sold the Mega Drive to the West.

I'm sure they had the sales numbers. That's no excuse.

Nice change of tune . He saw both versions of the game and went with what he thought was best . The fact that 1) you don't have the best version to show your supreme boss on a visit is shocking 2) you had 2 different teams working on 2 different engines on the same game . Just shows the whole mess the game was in and for that blame SOA and the Sonic X producers

Stop calling things which aren't shocking "shocking". Nakayama's decisions were shockingly bad. The X-Treme team's weren't.

Also, I didn't change anything I said, you just don't seem to be reading my posts. I also assumed that you remembered the whole story, since it's been told many times now, so I didn't have to repeat the whole thing.

Please read these quotes again though.

... Seriously, both of you, ignoring the fact that Senn and Alon's current engine was never seen by the SOJ guy who made the decision to force the other engine only on the project is a pretty big omission!

CURRENT engine. As in, the one that was farthest into development which Nakayama never saw, not the old, bad thing Nakayama took a look at.

Senn confirmed many, many times that Nakayama never saw their most recent work on the levels engine, and based his decision on an old and badly outdated version of the engine, Remember, he was so angry at how bad the old version looked that he said "you can't use this", and then refused to listen to any entreaties to look at the newer, much better version of the engine? The decision had already been made, and so Sega mangement would not reverse it, no matter how wrong it was. Yeah, really, really bad management and decision making there!

This is exactly what that article you posted describes. Nakayama looked at the old levels engine and then declared it must be abandoned, and Senn and Alon were not allowed to show him the current version, even though it was vastly improved. Then after that the decision was declared as made and unchangeable, Sega PC wouldn't pick up the game either (probably because of how SoJ had refused that version of it), the other version crashed with Coffin's health because of the massive overwork Nakayama's terrible decision had required, the game would have slipped into '97, and they cancelled it, stupidly (even in '97, it would have been a big boost for the system!).

So if you and I know that . You like to think highly paid so-called professional staff at SOA would know that and the trouble of trying to get an In-House Japanese Team share its code with a Western team , more so when SOJ Teams never shared code or engines between themselves, never mind a Western team .

That doesn't make Naka's throwing a fit when he heard about it any more defensible... but anyway, take back Nakayama's bad decision and that whole debacle never happens.

I can't think of many if any and more so for the Saturn - where trying to get C or PC engine code to run on the system was asking for a whole host of issues .

I'm sure lots of teams reused their own engines multiple times on Saturn. As for whether anyone used outside engines, though, is there any way that we could know? That kind of thing wasn't talked about then like it is now.

No its a very simple score attack game . There's no platforming at all - well unless you want to class running away from the clock as platforming .

The flying plays sort of like a platformer, just in the air. You have to reach a goal, go around obstacles, move to the right parts of the screen... "platformer" is the closest genre to NiGHTS. James Pond 1 for Genesis is another game that has this issue... it's a "platformer", but you've got free movement around the screen at all times since it's set underwater. I'd still call the game a platformer regardless, ultimately. What would you call them? "Score attack" is not a genre.

Where ? You show me footage of the game that features enemies through out the whole level , boss battle or anything where you could see a level with full enemies, moving platforms from a single level being played from beginning to end. All I seen its incomplete levels and some nice tech demo's and that's it . You know when Smilebit were showing off a 20% complete JSF you had more of a game to see, when Team Andromeda were showing off a 40% complete Panzer you had more of a game to see. Sonic X was very much like BC for the X-Box nice graphics, but where's the game ?

Videos of X-Treme for the 32X show levels fully populated with enemies... but as for the Saturn game, given that they had a bunch of complete levels, I'm sure adding a few enemies here and there would have been easy. We know they had enemy designs, the art exists, as do the 32X enemies. And anyway, 3D platformers often have many fewer enemies than 2d ones do, you wouldn't need all that many... Sonic 3D Blast has what, like 10 enemies per level, for instance? And it works fine.

[Melf]

One needs to blame SOA and the producers of Sonic X for that. Where Nakayama-san needs a good kicking is not getting another team to make a Sonic game very early in (like with Sonic CD) while the main Soinc Team were busy with other projects .

That's what I meant by Sega going almost 3 years without a game in development. Sonic Team should never had been doing anything BUT Sonic. Nakayama had to know how important the series had been to the Genesis. How could he not have seen the need for a Saturn one to come out as soon as possible? If he was so wise, why did he leave the company's most important franchise to be done by Americans well into the console's lifespan? Why didn't he order Naka to cooperate?

The whole "Japanese teams don't share engines or code" argument holds no water, because Sega had already established a precedent for U.S./Japan sharing with the STI. Hell, Naka was a part of that group. To spend all that time having Americans and Japanese working together only to then deny the Americans the use of Japanese assets was a dick move, plain and simple.

In 1996 Sonic Team were already heavily working on Sonic Adv for the Saturn , but it was a little bit too late . But one can't blame Naka-san and ST after 5 years of nothing but Sonic and yearly sequels (a sure Team killer) to want to try and make something new .

Then he shouldn't have been a little diva and not let someone else make the game. If the company really valued a Sonic title for Saturn and wasn't willing to have Sonic Team do it itself, then it should have done everything possible to allow another team make the game. The overall goal was a Sonic title for Saturn, and SOJ's lack of vision and selfishness hurt the Saturn dearly. Of course, by '96 you have the PS kicking Saturn's tail, the N64 out, and Bernie Stolar already losing faith in the machine - it's kind of hard to look at Senn and his group and fault them for not doing in a few months of what Sega as a whole had failed to do in 3 years. Sonic should have been EVERYONE'S priority - SOA and SOJ's - and it wasn't. As head of Sega, Nakayama was responsible for what his people did, and I can't believe he would allow the Saturn to go so long without Sonic.

[saturndual32]

Saturn should have launched on the USA with a 2d Sonic game, sporting the most glorious 2d graphics ever at that time, while sporting some kick ass 3dish effects here and there. That should have been the priority for the USA launch, an amazing Sonic game. Oh and of course the USA release date should have been the original proposed one, or course.