Instead of doing a game review per se, I thought we'd talk about something so completely obscure and forgotten it's tragic: the lukewarm campaign known as Project Sonic. What? You never heard of it? Hmph, and you call yourself a Sonic fan...
The year is 1996 and Sega is in its darkest moment yet: they are financially stuck with a console that nobody likes and that has barely any compelling games to support it. Sound familiar, Wii U owners? =P So after being kings of the world with the Sega Genesis, Sega's continual missteps and questionable decisions ushered in the Sega Saturn, a console that was overpriced, underwhelming and notoriously known in software circles as an absolute pain to program games for. Sure, nowadays people see the Saturn as a misunderstood diamond in the rough, but back in the mid-90s you couldn't even pay people to invest their time and money into it. (Just like the Wii U today... Ok fine I'll stop!) And with Sega of Japan's braindead decision to discontinue all of their other consoles to focus squarely on the Saturn, they were putting all their eggs in a basket that didn't have a bottom. Only one thing in everyone's mind would be able to save the Saturn and Sega as a whole: a new and true Sonic game.
Gamers hadn't had a legit Sonic game since Sonic & Knuckles back in 1994, and their hunger for more Sonic platforming goodness was growing by the day. The closest thing people had to a 'Sonic 4' was the 32X exclusive Knuckles Chaotix which proved to be a little too radical for people's tastes (and was only played by like the 12 people that owned a 32X). And despite the Sega Saturn's unpopularity, it did have one last ace up its sleeve, a new, fully 3D Sonic game that was in development. Though Sonic X-Treme wasn't released yet, its lofty promises and demo footage kept Sega fans satiated and the Saturn relevant until its expected release in late 1996.
Then Sonic X-Treme was canceled.
The sudden and unceremonious announcement left fans furious and Sega in a very bad position: they now had no blockbuster game for the '96 Christmas season to go up against Nintendo's newly-released N64 and Sony's dominating PlayStation. Not to mention they completely let down their Sonic fans and general supporters. It was generally around this time that Sega internally gave up on the Saturn and laid out the groundwork for a new console, which later became the Sega Dreamcast. But the Dreamcast was years away, and although they knew they would never recoup their losses from the Saturn, Sega still had to do the best with what they had to keep themselves in the game (no pun intended) until their new console was ready. The Sega Saturn was dead in the water, and instead of reeling it in they decided to keep it around as a fancy-looking lure for whatever was still biting. One of these lures so-to-speak was a suite of low-profile spinoff Sonic games: aka Project Sonic.
Surely the next-gen Sega console (code named 'Dural' or 'Katana' at that point) would feature a major Sonic game as a launch title, learning from the mistake they made with Saturn by not having one. However, a world that lacked any kind of Sonic game for a few years ran the risk of Sonic being forgotten altogether, and that motivated Project Sonic's main goal: to keep the Sonic brand alive during Sega's tough times and the Saturn's slow and painful death. And hey, maybe they might sell another Saturn or two.
Now keep in mind that 'Project Sonic' was largely an internal name that rarely saw the light of day among consumers. I always looked at it like a PR campaign that never was, something that could have really been a active public movement to keep Sonic in the limelight. The project's logo should have been plastered in the windows of every FuncoLand and EB Games. Instead it was just an internal codename tossed around the corporate offices and umbrella term for the 3 Sonic games the Saturn had the pleasure of hosting. It was probably the overall lack of money that kept Project Sonic from really becoming a thing, as the Saturn was bleeding like a gunshot wound and Dreamcast development no doubt stretched Sega's bankroll beyond its maximum.
With Sonic X-Treme's cancellation, Project Sonic immediately went to work immediately to fill the massive gap in Sega's Christmas catalog. They filled it with a substantially enhanced port of the Genesis' swan song Sonic game: Sonic 3D Blast. The Saturn version was outsourced to a third party designer called Traveller's Tales who spruced up the graphics beautifully and featured a completely redone soundtrack composed by video game music god, Richard Jacques. The game was started from scratch and released to stores in under two months. Talk about a quick fix! A far cry from the open worlds and speed promised by X-Treme, 3D Blast was an isometric platformer that for many people wasn't truly 3D enough, nor a blast to play. It wasn't even a new game, and all of the added graphical touches and CD-quality soundtrack couldn't disguise that it was just a very nice port of a very mediocre game. But it was something, and it got Sega through the season without complete egg on its face.
The second game to bear the 'Project Sonic' label was Sonic Jam, released in the summer of 1997. The only game of the group to actually be developed by Sonic Team itself, Sonic Jam was a celebration of Sonic's past and a hint of Sonic's future. Sonic Jam featured Sonic 1, 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles (and its permutations) all on one disc. A little-known fact is that these games are not emulated, but were actually rebuilt to run natively on the Saturn hardware. As a result, Sonic Jam featured modified versions of the games' levels and took the liberty of rewriting some of the games' more sketchy areas (though the original versions of the game are still available). It also allowed for Sonic CD-style time attacks of each zone and Special Stage rush modes.
However that's just half of the game. The other half took the form of Sonic World, a 3D playground of sorts featuring Sonic staples such as rings, lamp posts, platforms and springs. You could even find Tails, who could give you a lift to other areas! Sonic World also featured a variety of missions, asking you to collect X amount of rings, find X number of lamp posts, and et cetera. When you weren't completing missions, you could go to the variety of buildings in the world to look at stock art of Sonic and friends, watch archived commercials, read the timeline of Sonic's history up to that point, and even uncover cheat codes for the original games. It was an incredible bonus, and Sonic Team's way of saying 'I'm sorry' for the death of X-Treme. Sonic World was also considered a prototype for Sonic Adventure, the Sonic launch title of the Dreamcast, so gamers were inadvertently getting their feet wet for the Sonic games to come. Unfortunately Sonic World's main drawback, besides primitive 3D gaming awkwardness, was its small size and limited number of missions. But like 3D Blast, it was something, and the fans took what little Sonic World was and were grateful for every bit of it.
Project Sonic's third and final game was Sonic R, an on-foot racing game that took gamers ever-tantalizingly closer to a fully open-world 3D Sonic game. Again developed by Traveller's Tales, composed by Richard Jacques, and released for the Christmas '97 season, Sonic R featured 5 large open areas with race paths carved into them. All of the Sonic basics were here and realized: rings, alternate paths, loops, springs, even the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic's original friends and enemies also make playable appearances, some for the very first time including Amy Rose, Dr. Robotnik, and Metal Sonic (Sonic Drift notwithstanding). This is also the very last time we see Amy before her major redesign from Sonic Adventure onwards.
Sonic R sounds like it has it all, and to a degree it does, but when gamers finally played it things just didn't click. There's an overbearing blah-ness to the game, and at this point it starts to feel like the Project Sonic games are coming out just for the sake of coming out. The game has no personality, no soul. Sonic R extended the Sonic World idea but really didn't do much with it, and it's a problem when an inferior demo area manages to be more compelling than a full game. Fans took this game and were done with it a half hour later, literally. That's about as long as it takes to unlock everything 100%.
By this point Sonic fans were done with being teased and were more than ready for the next generation of console gaming. By 1998 the tortured Saturn saw less than a dozen first-party releases, though those included the now-legendary Shining Force III, House of the Dead, Burning Rangers (which I've reviewed on this blog!) and the most tragically overlooked RPG of all time: Panzer Dragoon Saga. Project Sonic took the year off, as pre-release coverage of Sonic Adventure slowly started to dominate the gaming world and ignite a fiery desire to enter the new millennium with Sonic and Sega. Project Sonic's mission was complete. It carried a scorned fanbase through the Saturn's 1996 nightmare (Sonic 3D Blast), reoriented fans and newcomers with who Sonic truly is and will be (Sonic Jam), and sent them off with a final taste of what will be (Sonic R) before delivering them to the doorstep of the promised land of Sonic Adventure. It's actually quite beautiful in that context.
So was Project Sonic a success? Well in its limited scope, yes. It set out to do exactly what it wound up doing, and kept the dream alive until the Dream was actually Cast. But as a PR movement it failed miserably. How hard would it have been to create a mystère around the Project Sonic movement with some magazine ads or webpages (which were the new, cool thing at the time). Heck, throw someone in a Sonic suit in the middle of Times Square with a couple hundred flyers! How much could that really cost? Someone already went through the trouble of making that cool logo, and yet it was never used except for on the back covers of the Japanese box arts for each game. The logo also made a final cameo on the title cards for Sonic Pocket Adventure (for the NeoGeo Pocket Color) where it was animated no less!
In the mid-late 90s Sega was lacking an identity and a direction, and when one was created for its flagship mascot, it was effectively wasted. That is why I am writing about it now. I'm certain almost nobody knows that Project Sonic even existed, which is a crying shame. As hindsight is always 20/20, so looking back we could discover and analyze how our favorite blue hedgehog got through its company's darkest era, and even rationalize how universally well-received Sonic Adventure was at the time where nowadays it is panned. It is my firm belief that if Project Sonic took the trouble of going a little more public, the game would have been better understood and more successful, and perhaps a couple dozen more Saturns would have been sold. Let Project Sonic be a lesson for you PR people of today: a little transparency goes a long way, and you can't trust corporate to make the wisest decisions on its own.
We love you, Sonic.
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