SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (2006) Development Thread

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Discuss anything about Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)'s development, ideas, demos, betas, anything to do with its development and production. Post articles, videos, news, etc related to the game's development if you wish.

The game started out in 2005 as Project SONIC THE HEDGEHOG when SEGA showcased a "Behind Closed Doors" demonstration at TGS 2005, which showed how Sonic could fare on the XBOX 360, and a teaser for Sonic's all-new adventure. The game was supposed to take Sonic in a realistic direction, and bring Sonic "back to his roots", which in other words, emulating the Sonic Adventure-styled gameplay.

The TGS 2005 demo had many features that brought promise to the public, and Sonic fans alike, such as a day & night system, Sonic Adventure-styled running animation, spammable homing attack, RPG-styled gameplay, like gathering the more rings make you go faster, a BEARABLE realistic Sonic model and the action gauge was supposed to limit gem's powers. A "Rainbow Gem" found in the game's data would have allowed you to go Super Sonic in-game. Other features would have included Metal Sonic in the story, and as a playable character and several character stories instead of an amigo system.

The E3 2006 demo brought more promise, showcasing Sonic's new abilities. It would be safe to say that the game was the most hyped Sonic game of all-time. When we got the demo released on XBLA in September of 2006, most of the features were still holding up. But unexpectedly, when the game was released in late November of 2006, these features were either not to be seen anywhere, or buggy/broken. Ever since, it is considered by most to be one of Sonic's worst moments in his history, and one of the worst games ever created, promising too much, and not delivering.

Here are some beta footage of the game from TGS 2005 and E3 2006 demos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y_jxuiklRs&feature=related

Edited March 4, 2012 by Dr. Felix

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Hmm...

This... "Sonic the Hedgehog 2006". Is this a new upcoming game? I've never heard of it.

You know what I mean, bro.

[EXshad]

Y'know, as cool as video 2 looked, with it's improved lighting, skybox, and smoother animations, it's still clear that the game had a lot of issues. Even though it seemed less buggy and had working physics and more speed, the level design still wasn't well-made around Sonic's fast-moving and jittery controls, as the player fell to his death many times thanks to slight twitches of the controller. Also, the mach speed area still had the same problems as the final version; you couldn't control the trajectory of the jump, there wasn't enough of a notice as to WHEN to jump, etc. Also, it seemed like the light-speed dash had issues when it came to working properly.

I really think they should have stuck with this build (physics, speed, etc), but tightened up the controls so players wouldn't have twitched their way off a ledge. Maybe they also could have had Sonic come to a halt when approaching a ledge, doing sort of a "trying to keep balance" animation, like in the Genesis games, so players could fairly come to a stop at a ledge rather then flying off it. Also, for the mach speed areas, maybe they could made it more like an extended quick-time event, to give the player more of a fair indication of what to do and when to do it. For example, the design of the area could be more streamlined, and when the time came to jump, time could slop and a prompt telling you to press the jump button could have appeared. Likewise, if an obstacle was coming up, it could have propted you to hold the spin-dash/spin kick button to do a slide, or something. You could still control which direction you would be moving in, but beyond that, you would have to be prompted to do other manuevers. I know people hate QTEs, but I think this is one of the only ways this could have really worked.

But yeah, there's a lot of other things I would have done differently with the game, and there's a lot that should have done differently. The game had potential, but firing your beta testers, losing your creative director, and scrapping the code months before release is not a way to make a quality title. It also doesn't help that the game HAD to be released in November, regardless of the state it was in. It's tragic, really..

Edited March 4, 2012 by EXshad

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Y'know, as cool as video 2 looked, with it's improved lighting, skybox, and smoother animations, it's still clear that the game had a lot of issues. Even though it seemed less buggy and had working physics and more speed, the level design still wasn't well-made around Sonic's fast-moving and jittery controls, as the player fell to his death many times thanks to slight twitches of the controller. Also, the mach speed area still had the same problems as the final version; you couldn't control the trajectory of the jump, there wasn't enough of a notice as to WHEN to jump, etc. Also, it seemed like the light-speed dash had issues when it came to working properly.

I really think they should have stuck with this build, but tightened up the controls so players wouldn't have twitched their way off a ledge. Maybe they also could have had Sonic come to a halt when approaching a ledge, doing sort of a "trying to keep balance" animation, like in the Genesis games, so players could fairly come to a stop at a ledge rather then flying off it. Also, for the mach speed areas, maybe they could made it more like an extended quick-time event, to give the player more of a fair indication of what to do and when to do it. For example, the design of the area could be more streamlined, and when the time came to jump, time could slop and a prompt telling you to press the jump button could have appeared. Likewise, if an obstacle was coming up, it could have propted you to hold the spin-dash/spin kick button to do a slide, or something. You could still control which direction you would be moving in, but beyond that, you would have to be prompted to do other manuevers. I know people hate QTEs, but I think this is one of the only ways this could have really worked.

But yeah, there's a lot of other things I would have done differently with the game, and there's a lot that should have done differently. The game had potential, but firing your beta testers, losing your creative director, and scrapping the code months before release is not a way to make a quality title. It also doesn't help that the game HAD to be released in November, regardless of the state it was in. It's tragic, really..

Yeah, it is really sad how what was supposed to be the best turned out to be the worst. I wonder why SEGA couldn't have just delayed '06 until maybe mid-2007 at least to have more time to work on the project? To be honest, this game is one of the world's biggest mysteries, the trailers and demos made it look so epc and awesome, and now we have a glitchy, buggy mediocre product?How can the game go from what is basically near the finished product (the beta), to the crappier build we have now?

[Semi-colon e]

I always find it kind of bizarre that the second video has more than one homing attack animation and better animations at the wall jump parts in the mach speed section than the "final" product. The control is clearly still too lose, but I guess the game wasn't that much more finished here, but at least the game actually looks much smoother and faster.

Also it's really sad how the guy just keeps talking about graphics and realistic water and particle effects and shit, it's like that's what their next gen console game meant to them at the time. Was all about "plot" and "using the console's power" and "pretty graphics" and seemingly a lot less thought on how the gameplay would work.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Semi-colon e

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I always find it kind of bizarre that the second video has more than one homing attack animation and better animations at the wall jump parts in the mach speed section than the "final" product. The control is clearly still too lose, but I guess the game wasn't that much more finished here, but at least the game actually looks much smoother and faster.

Also it's really sad how the guy just keeps talking about graphics and realistic water and particle effects and shit, it's like that's what their next gen console game meant to them at the time. Was all about "plot" and "using the console's power" and "pretty graphics" and seemingly a lot less thought on how the gameplay would work. And agreed about the game tester.

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This is the demo that was released on XBLA in September 2006. There's still many differences from the final version. The Action Gauge works, the light speed dash, works properly, and it doesn't look like Sonic is being pulled by a rope when doing so. The homing attack has gravity, and goes downwards instead of just a straight line. Sonic also goes slightly faster.

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Weirdly enough.. for the game, Sonic was supposed to actually look more furry than usual, due to the fact that in Heroes and ShTH, the characters looked glossy. Not to mention this model looks closer to the one that was used in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations.

[Chaos Warp]

Weirdly enough.. for the game, Sonic was supposed to actually look more furry than usual, due to the fact that in Heroes and ShTH, the characters looked glossy. Not to mention this model looks closer to the one that was used in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations.

Meh at the fur. Makes him look too realistic to me.

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A bunch of items that were unused, found in the game's data. I recognize most, but some to me are like "?????"

http://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic2006items.jpg

[Mono]

I only played the demo of it. Didn't really like the gameplay and never bought it. It looked solid, though.

[Vertekins]

Kingdom Valley had a different-sounding theme in the E3 version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJRdgeLxxBI

And Sonic's eyes appeared to be different on the beta model

The model still looks atrocious :X

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Kingdom Valley had a different-sounding theme in the E3 version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJRdgeLxxBI

And Sonic's eyes appeared to be different on the beta model

The model still looks atrocious :X

I posted the E3 Kingdom Valley BGM, complete with ~ Water ~.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL8C3iRIitg&list=UUZB8uO037l5Hya7-NUCkOqg&feature=plcp&context=C3d41fa2FDOEgsToPDskIMCNhHAJ5xpiogUa2-sHd1

The model looks a lot better in the TGS 2005 demo, and in that screenshot, Sonic isn't carrying Elise. O-o

[Vertekins]

The model looks a lot better in the TGS 2005 demo, and in that screenshot, Sonic isn't carrying Elise. O-o

The eyes might look a little more soulful than final but that's pretty offset by his lack of mouth. Sonic still looks as if he got hooked on a Taffy Pull and stretched, his ears look like polygonal triangles plonked non-carefully on his head and the legs look incredibly awkward both where they attach to his overly oblong torso and how they're placed.

[Soniman]

I remember way back in 2005 seeing the first screenshots for the game and it looked pretty cool, but it was on a 360 so I couldnt get it.

Funny enough, it wasn't until 2 or 3 years later that I learned what a massive failure the game was.

[Marcello]

Here is an exclusive picture from it's development:

Weirdly enough.. for the game, Sonic was supposed to actually look more furry than usual, due to the fact that in Heroes and ShTH, the characters looked glossy. Not to mention this model looks closer to the one that was used in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations.

I'd actually prefer this to what we have.

Meh at the fur. Makes him look too realistic to me.

Yeah, totally realistic...

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Here is an exclusive picture from it's development:

I'd actually prefer this to what we have.

Yeah, totally realistic...

I lol'd at the toilet image macro.

[Detective Shadzter]

Every time I see this topic come up, I wish I had had a video camera back when I played an early build demo at an Xbox 360 tour in Birmingham a month or 2 before the game's release. I took a lot of pics with my mobile phone camera which I shared on here, but one big thing I forgot to investigate that no one else seemed to have either is the 'Customisation' part of Sonic's pause menu. It was probably just the gems, but I'd have liked to have seen if there were any unused in the final build or the rainbow gem in that demo.

[...]

Every time I see this topic come up, I wish I had had a video camera back when I played an early build demo at an Xbox 360 tour in Birmingham a month or 2 before the game's release. I took a lot of pics with my mobile phone camera which I shared on here, but one big thing I forgot to investigate that no one else seemed to have either is the 'Customisation' part of Sonic's pause menu. It was probably just the gems, but I'd have liked to have seen if there were any unused in the final build or the rainbow gem in that demo.

Sadly, I don't think there is any footage or pictures of that. In a project I'm working on to remake Sonic '06. It's going to have how the RPG-styled customization mechanics would have worked, I already have the scripts ready for the Rainbow Gem, and Super transformation.

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My friend.. MADE THE ACTION GAUGE WORK?! ALL OF YOU, I DEMAND YOU. GIVE HIM A MEDAL, DANG IT.

[Phos]

Hmmmmm, where to begin?

First off, all the info I've heard about the TGS demo was that is was supposed to be a demonstration of what the PS3 could do, and that video was pre rendered similarly to that infamous Killzone 2 trailer.

Whatever you might say about the model used in Sonic 06, it wasn't realistic. Stretched, sure, but not realistic.

Weirdly enough.. for the game, Sonic was supposed to actually look more furry than usual, due to the fact that in Heroes and ShTH, the characters looked glossy. Not to mention this model looks closer to the one that was used in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations.

That's a picture blur made to show off their ability to render fur, that didn't come from Sega.

[...]

Hmmmmm, where to begin?

First off, all the info I've heard about the TGS demo was that is was supposed to be a demonstration of what the PS3 could do, and that video was pre rendered similarly to that infamous Killzone 2 trailer.

Whatever you might say about the model used in Sonic 06, it wasn't realistic. Stretched, sure, but not realistic.

That's a picture blur made to show off their ability to render fur, that didn't come from Sega.

[A Spray Can in Tokyo-to]

My friend.. MADE THE ACTION GAUGE WORK?! ALL OF YOU, I DEMAND YOU. GIVE HIM A MEDAL, DANG IT.

[Phos]

ic wut u did there.

Oh, well I thought it did. It said so on Sonic Retro. O_o

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Explorationfags will raeg. if you know what I'm saying~