Current Events > Would you have called Yuji Naka's bluff? (Sonic X-Treme and the NiGHTS engine)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm sure most of you know the story of the ill-fated Sonic X-Treme, but as a summary:

Sonic X-Treme was to be the big Sonic title for the SEGA Saturn, which until then was missing such a thing. It was developed by SEGA of America's Sega Technical Institute, and had a very tight deadline, but STI was struggling to get it together and were not getting any help from SEGA Japan at all. At one point, they requested that then-VP of SEGA America Bernie Stolar get them access to the engine that powered Yuji Naka's newest game NiGHTS Into Dreams which they felt would be a boon in finally making progress on Sonic X-Treme, and he was successful in doing so.

Two weeks later, as STI were getting accustomed to what the NiGHTS engine was capable of, they were suddenly told to stop work on it immediately, as Yuji Naka was upset that SEGA lent STI the engine and threatened to quit SEGA altogether if they continued working with it. Faced with this, the NiGHTS engine was taken away from STI, and Sonic X-Treme ultimate ended up getting cancelled; not only did the SEGA Saturn ultimately not get any big Sonic titles released on it, but this debacle also resulted in STI closing down.

Considering that STI were already struggling to get the game out, and was only cancelled after some members on the dev team developed serious health issues to the point that they were nearly at death's door, if you were in the appropriate position, would you have let STI keep access to the NiGHTS engine despite Naka's threats to leave SEGA, or would you have gone with Naka's wishes and rescinded access to the engine despite STI's hurdles?

Convicted felon Yuji Naka?

"let's make a 3d platformer with only one button" Yuji Naka?

The Saturn was destined to fail in America anyway ironically thanks to the leadership of Bernie Stolar

Be happy we got the Dreamcast.

The entire downfall of Sega can be roughly summarized as "Sega of Japan sabotages Sega of America out of jealousy for their success".

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


He was producer for Phantasy Star Online...

90s Sega was a bunch of morons.

I mean they might still be.

But looking at how often they fucked up makes me think they had IRL plot armor.

You really can't blame Naka for not wanting STI to use his engine for Sonic Xtreme. He came up with the Nights engine as part of Sonic Team to be used on games that he was actually involved with. STI were the ones making Sonic Xtreme, so making an engine for that game was their responsibility. They had a chance to come up with something, and they blew it. There's no reason why Naka should let them take his engine at the last minute just because they didn't know what they were doing. Sonic Xtreme was gonna suck, and Naka knew it; he's not gonna give away his engine to a team of inexperienced developers for the sake of a company that he doesn't even need to be part of.

The game was just doomed from the start. If anything, it's only Sega's fault for tasking STI with making the first 3D Sonic game instead of Sonic Team. You get your best developers to develop your mascot's first big 3D game; you don't fall back on your B-team. The people who worked on the major Sonic games on the Genesis were in Sonic Team; they should have been the ones to make Sonic's Saturn debut. The issue is that Sega prioritized making Saturn a success in Japan before anywhere else; the Genesis flopped in that country, and they wanted their next console to be a success in their homeland. Likewise, Sonic Team wanted to make games that would be popular in Japan; Sonic wasn't popular over there, so they wanted to make a brand new game, which was Nights.

By targeting the Japanese market instead of keeping the momentum they had in America thanks to the Genesis, Sega caused the Saturn to fail. Pretty much every decision they made for that console was wrong.

Damn_Underscore posted...

The Saturn was destined to fail in America anyway ironically thanks to the leadership of Bernie Stolar

The Saturn's fate was sealed before Stolar came into the picture. The console was never going to recover in America after the botched surprise launch that Sega of Japan mandated.

Incredible posted...

The Saturn's fate was sealed before Stolar came into the picture. The console was never going to recover after that botched surprise launch.

I believe it was because of him that there are so many good Saturn games that weren't localized. I read that anyway, might not be true

Damn_Underscore posted...

I believe it was because of him that there are so many good Saturn games that weren't localized. I read that anyway, might not be true

Let's be real, none of those JRPGs were ever gonna catch on in America.

I would have called him a geek and a jabroni

I think the lack of a proper Sonic game doomed the Saturn and, by extension, Sega as a first-party console developer. Bug was originally supposed to be a Sonic game, but Sega of Japan nixed it because they wanted to ditch Sonic as a mascot. (For being more popular in the US than in Japan.)

Instead, they gave us enduring mascot characters like Clockwork Knight and Astal.

Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch. But I think it definitely had a hand in it. Replacing Sonic with "Bug" is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

As big as a dick yuji naka was/most likely still is, phantasy star online episode 1 and 2 did end up as my favorite game of all time. Without that numbnut there this series would never come to be.

The reason Bug wasn't a Sonic game like Realtime Associates originally planned was that Sega didn't trust them with their mascot. Realtime Associates isn't part of Sega at all, and Sonic Xtreme was already in development by this point.

Incredible posted...

The Saturn's fate was sealed before Stolar came into the picture. The console was never going to recover in America after the botched surprise launch that Sega of Japan mandated.

Hell they should have went with sega of america's sega saturn concept in the first place, so even before the launch botch job as far back as the design phase the saturn was screwed lol. Sega of america had already foresaw that 3D gaming was going to be the new hotness and wanted to put together a saturn that focused on that.

Yeah, they should have just teamed up with Sony like Tom Kalisnke wanted, or spent more time deciding the console's hardware, so it'd be released globally in 1995 or 1996, around the same time as the N64. Maybe they should have been the ones to use the Silicon Graphics chip in that case.

Yep. I am thinking in a alternate gaming reality in which sega of japan put their pride aside for a bit and compromised on some design decisions with the american branch (go with their partnership and hardware ideas, but try to keep that expansion slot for the japanese arcade fans) they could have passed nintendo up worldwide, sonic xtreme would have easily came out since the sega saturn we actually did end up getting's hardware wouldn't hold them back, and the japanese 3rd parties that was sick of nintendo's shit when it comes to licensing fees, sticking with cartridges again and their rules in general would have sided with a known entity like sega overall compared to the new console guy sony.

Final fantasy 7 alongside enix also swapping over and bringing stuff like dragon quest, and sega's own franchises on a 3D focused sega saturn.....damn that would have been great.

Ah well. Coulda', woulda', shoulda' but they didn't, lol.