Sonic The Hedeghog – Part One

The first thing to say is Happy Birthday Sonic!  On 23rd June Sonic the Hedgehog was 20 years old so this is a prescient occasion on which to ponder the origins and history of the blue, spiky haired hedgehog.  Sonic appears not to have aged a day in the past 20 years, increased processing power, more powerful graphics and high definition mean he looks better now than ever. For those of us old enough, here’s a clip of the original gameplay:

There’s not too much romance or sentimentality surrounding the creation of the character.  In the late 1980s Nintendo dominated the console market and the Mario Bros. complemented that domination, providing fans with a recognisable character and back-story which would hook them into any future offerings.  As the new entrant into the market Sega needed to compete on this level.  They had tried Alex Kidd with moderate success but realised they needed something more.

A creative team under the management of Naoto Ōshima was formed to design a new character and came up with, among others, Mighty the Armadillo plus several other characters who would go on to feature in various games themselves.  Sonic the Hedgehog of course was the character chosen.  Blue was the colour of the Sega logo and the character was nicknamed Mr. Needlemouse.  As frustrated gamers can testify Sonic could not swim and this was because one of the designers was under the false impression that hedgehogs could not.

We now had a recognisable character but it was refined further for the American market.  Sonic’s fangs were removed and so was his girlfriend, Madonna.  These changes caused some tension between the Japanese designers and their American counterparts but the changes remained and in the long term Ōshima admitted it was probably for the best.

In 1991 the game was released for the Megadrive/Genesis and was a great success.  The high speed gameplay, including supersonic speed boosts was the antithesis of Mario, the slower Nintendo platformer and performed well in Japan, America and Europe.  Sega was now in the game.

Part two follows….