SEGA Technical Institute had a short life at SEGA with the team being responsible for games like Kid Chameleon, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic Spinball, and a lot of canceled project. Some of these we know about, one that we didn’t know about has made it online for the first time ever. This canceled game was called “Astropede’ and was shared by artist Craig Stitt on the Facebook group ‘SEGA Retro Gamers’
“The only surviving video of ‘Astropede’, a game I pitched and went into production at SEGA (STI) circa 1994. Unfortunately after 14 months it was shelved after being starved to death by a lack of resources. The character had a train of pods with various power ups that would be pulled behind him. If hit, the pods would fly apart similar to Sonic and his rings. (my original intent was to have it be part of the Sonic universe) Somewhere I have a playable prototype… I just have to find it and hope it can be made to work!“
We have some assets that Craig has shared, including this concept art that really makes it seem like a ‘Sonic type’ game (hit the break to see that!), the animation loop on top of the page and he even found a protoype of the game… will he share it online tho?
Craig Stitt on this concept art: “He was supposed to be microscopic.“
“I don’t think I posted this already, but this was one of the pieces of concept art I did to pitch the idea of ‘Astropede’ to SEGA (another working title was ‘SEGApede’)
The segments in his body worked as power ups which you would find along the level. They would detach and start rolling away if you took a hit. You then had to snatch up the pods before they rolled too far away.
You also needed to find a ‘caboose’ pod to secure the other pods to the train or they could fall off if you got going too fast or took a turn too sharp. He was also going to have a play two character that was little hornet/wasp whose abdomen could be swapped out with the same pods the main character carried in his train.”
As far as that prototype:
At first:“This, and a few other boards/prototypes are in a box… somewhere. They weren’t in the box I thought they were, so that has me a little worried that the box is ??? lost.“
Then an update:
“Actually, I just realized the box that is missing has ALL my SEGA games in it… which might be a good thing, since it shouldn’t have been tossed out my accident, and is probably just mislabeled somewhere in the garage.”
Its crazy how many older developers have literal treasures in their garage like this. I will have to leave this gif that describes how I feel about all this:
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Boy I’d love of this and other prototypes get dumped. I hope they’ve got some Comix Zone stuff too.
It was called Joe Pencil back then.
This looks interesting
muito bom so que seria ainda mais bom se tivese o download do game