Check for the kickass concept stuff at the bottom, I stupidly put the questions in quotes.
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Which was your favourite project to work on?
P: Spinball was my first full project, so it was super exciting, but it was also a title we had to get out in something like 9 months, so it showed. ComixZone was a game I was extremely passionate about -- definitely my favorite project while at STI.
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What are your general recolections of the time at STI? Any intresting events, etc
P: I joined in early 1992, when Mark Cerny was in charge. I was very green but I was thrilled to be a part of the industry and working with some of Sega guys from Japan. STI was very experimental back then with many cool and wacky game concepts in the works. This was a time when the Genesis was starting to seriously take off and SEGA was beginning to grow, so there was a lot of excitement around the company – I would always look forward to the SoA employee meetings to see what cool new titles or hardware were in the works. Initially, there was a lot of camaraderie and co-mingling with the Japanese team, but it didn’t last and soon they were moved off to a separate room. By 1995 most of the Sonic Team were back in Japan (working on Nights) and STI became pretty corporate and political. But it was definitely good times!
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Again on X-treme, recently, there was an auction for a demo of the game, what we suspect to be the very last version of the game, after the NiGHTS engine and the fisheye camera, can you shed any light on this? Pictures can be seen here:
http://www.lostlevel...uff/xtremepics/P: Gee, I don’t really recognize these screenshots. Chris Senn is your best bet here. I do remember a very cool level editor Ofer was developing for the game on a Mac, but that’s about it. I do know that there was some serious anxiety about X-treme toward the end and some other programmer within STI hacked together some quick demos to appease the execs; perhaps this is one of those builds?
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1. What's the deal with the text entries in the April '95 beta ROM header which read "JOE PENCIL IN THE COMIX ZONE" and "JEAN CLAUDE CRAYON DANS LE COMIX ZONE"? Were either of these ever seriously put down as the name for the lead character (Sketch Turn) or just put in as a joke?
P: The original concept had the main hero as a scrawny artist dude by the name of Joe Pencil, but we ultimately changed him to be a tough Gen-Xer; the marketing people came up with the name Sketch Turner much later in development. So, the first header must be some legacy text. The second string, I think it was Adrian’s own localization, you know, placeholder text. Obviously, he replaced them for the final release.
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3. How come the "SLAM!" popup graphic (appears when you knock an enemy back against a wall) and the wall + ceiling-climbing Crawlers never made the final version?
P: Don’t remember. We probably needed to get some memory back for stability reasons.
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5. Were there ever going to be any other characters helping Sketch out, apart from Alissa? I ask this because in the first episode of the beta, she tells Sketch that "We have been expecting you", implying that she has accomplices.
P: I think she was speaking on behalf of the ‘empire’ or something like that. She was the only (human) sidekick planned, but of course, Sketch also had his interactive pet rat.
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6. The final ending sequence, in a way, seems to hint at a sequel (quote: "And they all lived happily together, until...") - was one ever planned?
P: There were no concrete plans at that time, but we left it open for that possibility. I even made some quick prelim storyboards for how the Comix Zone concept could work in 3D on the Saturn (see attached), but ultimately Sega wanted us to work on a Sonic property next. Comix Zone 3D:
http://xtreme.projec..._PanelEntry.jpgSonicSaturn BackGround:
http://xtreme.projec..._Background.JPG
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