There was almost going to be a Sonic game based on skateboarding made for the Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 called Sonic Extreme (not to be confused with the cancelled Sega Saturn game of the same name). This game was developed by a San Diego company called Vision Scape Interactive.

Development began in 2003 shortly after Vision Scape finished up Bare Knuckled Grind. The game was initially planned to be ported to other consoles. There were also going to other skateboarding games using the same engine, but with different intellectual properties, including the Nickelodeon TV show Rocket Power. Unfortunately, budget issues is what resulted in all 13 projects cancelled. They later worked on cutscene animations for Sonic Heroes, and later pitched to Sega the Sonic Extreme prototype.

The prototype was finished in a week, and originally had planned to use hoverboards. The player would be to race against Sonic or Shadow. Yuji Naka, former head of SEGA, was impressed at the time and asked Vision Scape to make design documents for the game. However, when they did show the documents to SEGA, they went silent.

Later on, in September 2005, Sonic Riders was announced. People at Vision Scape believed that SEGA took some of the concept from Sonic Extreme. and used it for Sonic Runners. However, legal issues from SEGA forced Vision Scape to shut down in 2006.