Sonic the Hedgehog is known for getting around quickly enough with just his red sneakers, but on a few occasions we've seen him whisk about his colorful landscapes on a hoverboard. The first time that happened was 2006's Sonic Riders, but before that we almost had Sonic Extreme from developer Vision Scape Interactive, which already had a couple of other early 2000s skateboarding games under its belt. Unfortunately, while Sega initially seemed interested in Vision Scape's pitch, Sonic Extreme soon found itself extremely canceled.YouTube's DidYouKnowGaming channel has the full scoop on the surprisingly sad story of Sonic Extreme, along with footage from the prototype Vision Scape made for Sega. The video relates how Sega went dead silent with Vision Scape not long after the hopeful first series of discussions and then in 2006 released Sonic Riders, which Vision Scape found a little too similar to Sonic Extreme.As it turns out, Vision Scape's attorneys found a clause of the non-disclosure agreement the studio had to sign with Sega for their work on the cutscenes for Sonic Heroes saying (in Unseen64's words) "if any page submitted to Sega used their intellectual property—in this case, Sonic—Vision Scape would automatically surrender ownership of it."Ouch. And thus, however sleazy it may seem from the outside, Sega was already the legal owner of Sonic Extreme. Unseen64 tried to get in touch with former Sonic Team chief Yuji Naka to see if this story of Sonic Riders' origins was as dark as it sounds, but Naka-san declined to comment.Sonic Extreme itself would have let players play as either Sonic or Shadow Sonic and simply race against each other or duke it out in a combat mode with rockets and grenades.
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