From hit video games and cartoons to toys and lunchboxes bearing his image, there’s no doubt the Sonic the Hedgehog series has become one of the most popular franchises today. With the upcoming releases of Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Square for the Sega Dreamcast, there seems to be no end in sight. But how did the legacy of the Blue Blur begin? Read on to learn the “Genesis” of Sonic!
In the late ’80s, with the Master System miserably failing in the US and the ironically named Genesis looming on the horizon, Sega desperately needed a mascot, and fast! The first conceptions of Sonic the Hedgehog were a bit stranger than the final outcome, but ya gotta start somewhere. So artists Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima were put in charge of designing Sonic the Hedgehog (with quite possibly the fate of Sega resting in their hands). Now, don’t get me wrong. . . with hits like Altered Beast, Sega would’ve probably survived, but they might have ended up as a third party developer for Sony or Nintendo (or even quite possibly Microsoft). After going through many different designs, Naka and Ohshima came to rest on a final image: a blue hedgehog with attitude. With that, Sonic the Hedgehog was born. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Gamer Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)!
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