Chris Senn
From Sega Retro
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| Christian Graham Senn |
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| Date of birth: 1972 (age 51-52) |
| Employment history:
Divisions:
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| Role(s): Artist[1], Designer[1], Director[1] |
| Forum user name: kurisu |
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Christian "Chris" Graham Senn is an American video game developer and former Sega Technical Institute senior designer and computer graphics artist[1], most known for his work as one of the driving forces behind the infamously-cancelled Sonic X-treme.
Contents
Career
Chris Senn is a video game artist and development director who worked on a number of games during his time at Sega Technical Institute, such as The Ooze, Comix Zone, and most notably Sonic X-treme. Leaving soon after the project's failure, Senn has since held roles at companies like Treyarch and Bionic Games.
In November 2011 Senn joined Big Red Button Entertainment, where he again returned to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, working as Lead Level Implementer on the Wii U game Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. He would end up leaving the studio in June 2014, five months before the game was released.
Sega Technical Institute
- Main article: Sega Technical Institute.
Although Senn developed numerous titles while working at Sega Technical Institute, his most notable would be his work on the cancelled Saturn mascot platformer Sonic X-treme. Originally joining the project as a member of the development team, internal politics soon saw him promoted to the game's director, with Sonic X-treme becoming somewhat of a passion project for the developer. Notably, his devotion to completing Sonic X-treme in a timely manner caused such a strain on Senn's physical health that he contracted a strong case of pneumonia during development[3], and was told that, should he continue pushing himself like this any longer, he would only have about six more months until his body failed entirely. Faced with this, Senn permanently departed from the project, leaving Sonic X-treme without its lead developer.
Although his placement as head of development did not leave him enough time and resources to pull the game from eventual failure, Senn proved most crucial in the preservation of development images, documents, and data. To this day, he has been the primary source of information related to the game, and additionally ran a website dedicated entirely to Sonic X-treme's development - the Sonic Xtreme Compendium (where he actively engaged with the community under the forum username kurisu.)
Production history
- Comix Zone (Mega Drive; 1995) — Backgrounds[4]
- Comix Zone (Mega Drive; 1995) — Animation[4]
- Comix Zone (Windows PC; 1995) — Backgrounds[4]
- Comix Zone (Windows PC; 1995) — Animation[4]
- Dynamite Cop (Model 2; 1998) — Special Thanks
- Dynamite Cop (Dreamcast; 1999) — Special Thanks
- Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Wii U; 2014) — Principal Designer (as Christian Senn)
- Frog Pond (Dreamcast; unreleased) — Artist
- Geist Force (Dreamcast; unreleased) — Art Team Manager
- Mars Sample Program (32X; unreleased)
- Sonic Mars (32X; unreleased) — Co-Lead Designer
- Sonic Mars (32X; unreleased) — Designer
- Sonic Mars (32X; unreleased) — Director
- Sonic Mars (32X; unreleased) — Animator
- Sonic Mars (32X; unreleased) — Writers (as Christian Senn)
- Sonic X-treme (Saturn; unreleased) — Team Coordinator
- Sonic X-treme (Saturn; unreleased) — Co-Lead Designers
- Sonic X-treme (Saturn; unreleased) — Art Director
- Sonic X-treme (Saturn; unreleased) — Conceptual Music Composer
- Sonic X-treme (Windows PC; unreleased) — Designer
- Sonic X-treme (Windows PC; unreleased) — Artist
- Sonic X-treme (Windows PC; unreleased) — Composer
- Spinny & Spike (Mega Drive; unreleased) — Artist
Interviews
Photographs
- Main article: Photos of Chris Senn
External links
- Official website (Wayback Machine)
- Chris Senn at LinkedIn
- The Sonic Xtreme Compendium (Wayback Machine)