Prerelease:Sonic 3D Blast (Sega Saturn)
This page details prerelease information and/or media for Sonic 3D Blast (Sega Saturn).
While the Saturn port of Sonic 3D Blast was a pretty fast effort by Traveller's Tales and Sonic Team, it still has a bit of interesting history that mainly relates to the Special Stages.
Contents
Development Timeline
1996
- July? - Development begins. According to Neil Harding, who worked on this version, the port came about due to internal complaints by Sega about the development of Sonic Jam taking too long.
- August - Following the cancellation of Sonic X-treme, Sega of America gives much more focus to finishing the Saturn port.
- September? - Peter Moraweic starts incorporating the Sonic Pool stages into the Saturn port.
- October? - The Sonic Pool bonus stages are scrapped due to not meeting a deadline, with Sonic Team instead starting work on their own Special Stages for the port.
- November 8 - Development concludes on the Saturn version, according to development text.
- November 20 - The Saturn version is released in North America.
- December 17 - The game is released in Brazil.
1997
- February 13 - The game is released in Europe.
1999
- October 14 - The game is finally released in Japan, on the same day as Sonic Adventure International.
Sonic Pool
Sonic Pool was a bonus game for a cancelled Sonic title called "Sonic Saturn", which was a separate STI project from Sonic X-treme. The main objective was explained by Peter Morawiec, who worked on the game:
“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. 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”
Development would take a bad turn during mid-1996 due to a myriad of issues, with the main ones stemming from Yuji Naka not liking the project and political tensions. The team working on the project would end up being stuck in limbo for a few months. Morawiec then had them be included in Sonic X-treme at some point, and it seemed to have existed for a brief period in the "Project Condor" phase of development, but X-treme would eventually be cancelled by August 1996.
In an attempt to save the project, Morawiec urged the producer of Sonic 3D Blast (Yutaka Sugando) to rework Sonic Pool into a bonus game for the Saturn 3D Blast, but eventually the deadline proved to be impossible to hit which meant Sonic Pool would have to be canned. Sonic Team then stepped in to develop the Sonic 2-esque Special Stages seen in the final game.
Some screenshots of Sonic Pool from near the end of the project's life were shared in early 2000 by Morawiec.
Sonic X-treme Iteration (August 1996)
Not much is known about Sonic Pool's bonus rounds in X-treme, as only one screenshot from the "Project Condor" phase shows a bonus round in action. According to Christiana Coffin, who was the lead developer of the "Project Condor" phase, all the art assets for Sonic Pool were ported over from Sonic Saturn with the exception of Sonic's model due to using a different renderer. From what is seen, it looks like not much was implemented yet at this point as Coffin had to recreate all the gameplay from scratch on the X-treme boss engine. Also, it seems like a proper HUD for the bonus rounds was not implemented yet, and the balls appear to be more transparent in this iteration of the project.
September Mockups
Likely a month after the X-treme iteration and a couple months after 3D Blast began work getting ported over to the Saturn, the project is much further along at this point with its own HUD and arenas. However, it is said that these four screenshots are mainly in-engine mockups instead of being actual gameplay, as indicated by the static timer and screenshot quality.
A spider-like enemy that can be seen.
Looks like there would have been two portals you had to get balls into, and you'd use a teleporter to switch between the two different parts of the Galaxy Arena.
Nothing too notable.
Likely would have had ice physics for everything including the balls.
October Build
Presumably around the time of the prototype, this also was the final month of the project at this point, and a good amount of work was done since September, such as adding a new arena and actually making the game playable. Both screenshots are also captured on analog video this time, resulting in a different resolution.
- This build is now actually playable in-game, however it also resulted in the lighting being simplified.
- The timer now works properly.
- Sonic uses his same pose from the September build which may imply he didn't have animations implemented.
- The HUD was lowered in this build to the bottom of the screen and additionally the ball color in the HUD changed from blue to yellow.
- The camera seems to be more focused on Sonic in this build.
- The desert arena compared to the version in the September build appears to no longer have a green tint on the checkerboard ground and has an added orange pillar, the ball count is also 0/0 compared to the other arenas which likely implies the arena was used for testing.
The pillar might have been able to hurt sonic.
Some type of orb enemy can be seen near the portal, and there are various springboards throughout the arena that might have affected the balls if pushed into.
Title Screen
The title screen for Sonic Pool. Sonic's design here seems to be different from the one seen in-game. The resolution of the screenshot matches the September build screenshots so it certainly from that build.
Concept Art
A shot of a Special Stage, though it's very likely concept art or a mockup.
1996 Trailer
A trailer made by Video Detective. Although the main stages themselves don't seem to have any differences from the final aside from there being no music implemented, two incomplete Special Stages are shown and are quite different from the final game.
- The sound effects are quite different and seem like placeholders.
- Getting the Chaos Emerald is very different as there's no sparkle effects and you shoot up into the air as you obtain it.
- Special Stage 1's first ring requirement is 50, which was changed to 40 in the final. Also, during the stage there are some parts of the half pipe that are completely missing or pop in and out; whether it's intentionally trying to mimic the concept art is unknown.
- Special Stage 2's background seems to be at a different angle, has a final ring requirement of 80 as opposed to 110 in the final game, and it also has the blue Chaos Emerald.
European Magazine Article
This clipping focuses on how Yuji Naka put Sonic X-treme on hold to port 3D Blast to the Saturn. Likely alluding to Sonic Team working on the Sonic 2-esque Special Stages at this point.
