Sonic X-Treme
Image: Sega Forever

Last Friday, Sega gave Sonic fans a reason to get excited when it shared a few screenshots from the cancelled Sega Saturn Sonic project Sonic X-Treme (Thanks Destructoid for the spot!).

The screenshots have likely appeared before in magazines and in scans, as they were intended for the press, but rarely in the past has anyone had the chance to see the originals. That is until Sega's dedicated retro account Sega Forever posted the images on Twitter recently.

In case you're unfamiliar with the story of Sonic X-treme, development on the cancelled project began at the Sega Technical Institute in 1994 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, before shifting to the 32X add-on, and eventually the Sega Saturn.

After moving to the Saturn, it was planned as one of the killer exclusives for the console and Sonic's first full foray into the world of 3D. It was even playable at E3 1996 as an early prototype. However, the game was eventually cancelled sometime between late 1996 and early 1997, after becoming subject to various production issues and suffering from a bunch of delays.

Since then, fans have inevitably been curious about what could have been, with these images giving us a closer, cleaner look at this lost piece of Sonic history.

If you want to see more, you can check out a copy of the promo video of the game produced for E3 1996 below:

[source twitter.com, via destructoid.com]