Josh Pinski, a 12-year old son of a divorced couple, is presenting his incomplete school paper about a historic event he was tasked to write about. The unamused teacher warns Josh to finish his paper by tomorrow or face being referred to by his parents. After school, Josh goes home to an apartment owned by his father, Hal, an unemployed computer scientist who is doing research for his grand invention, a supercomputer called the XRI (X-tremely Radical Intelligence) that possesses artificial intelligence with the ability to project virtual reality. After dinner, Hal leaves to gather research on a piece of hardware, leaving Josh with the XRI. A curious Josh encounters the XRI and, after being unable to get it to help finish his school work, hooks up his Sega Saturn to play Sonic X-treme. After he started playing something was off the game was stuck in a black screen, 2 seconds later a familiar red shoe came out of the screen... it was sonic! But it wasn't, this sonic look-alike was taller, had a sinister grin, its eyes were just, empty, black, sockets, and had no hands. 4 hours Later the police found the bodies of Josh Pinski and his father, both mangled, necks snapped, bones broken, and missing teeth,eyes,and tounges, and all the police found was a Sega Saturn with sonic X-treme in it.