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Sonic Saturn was a project that was in development in 1995 and 1996 by Sega Technical Institute (STI) alongside Sonic X-treme, though no code or assets were shared between the two games.[1] This prototype was created by Peter Morawiec,[2] the lead designer of Sonic Spinball and the coder of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Stages. The game ran on an interesting 3D engine that was more "realistic" than the ones used in Sonic X-treme. It seems that Yuji Naka did not like this prototype,[1] and so the Sonic Saturn engine was never used to develop a full Sonic game. STI tried to use the engine to create some Bonus Stages to add in Sonic X-treme and the Sega Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast: Sonic Pool. Due to the lack of time, they abandoned them in favor of a 3D version of the Special Stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Sonic 3D Blast.

Sonic Pool[]

Sonic Pool

The title screen of Sonic Pool.

Sonic Pool is an unused bonus game, intended for Sonic Saturn, and then for Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Saturn. There were also plans for porting Sonic Pool into Sonic X-treme in its "Project Condor" era, but replacing the Sonic model used in it with the one from Sonic X-treme.

In this bonus game, Sonic the Hedgehog was going to play a game of pool. Due to time constraints, this was abandoned in favor of a 3D version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2's style of Special Stages for the Sega Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast.

As described by developer Peter Morawiec, Sonic Pool was to play as follows:

Yes, the idea was that Sonic would run around to position himself behind a ball, go into a stationary spin-dash, then you could 'aim' your direction and... let go -- the camera went overhead to show the resulting action as he smashes into other balls. The goal was to put all those balls away (into those portals) within one minute, or some such time limit. He could also push into the balls, but that wasn't very fast and thus wasn't the preferred way to play.[3]
In later stages there were little enemies crawling around, making your job more difficult (Sonic would get hurt and lose rings upon colliding with them). There were some other arenas in the works, such as South-Western courtyard etc.[3]

Trivia[]

  • The checked-pattern floor would later be used in Sonic R.

Gallery[]

Concept artwork[]

Gallery

Screenshots[]

Gallery

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Overview. Sonic CulT. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. "Peter Morawiec: This game was going for a more realistic rendition of Sonic’s world, but Naka didn’t like it so the project was axed."
  2. Peter Morawiec Interview. Sonic CulT. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010.
  3. 3.0 3.1 ICEknight . SONIC 3D Pool. Sonic Database. Archived from the original on 19 November 2019. Retrieved on 11 May 2022.
Sonic the Hedgehog scrapped video games

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