When Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Mega Drive appeared, Sonic's proportions changed. Artwork featuring this design and drawn by Akira Watanabe was displayed on the package artwork for Sonic the Hedgehog, and most subsequent Sonic video games featured similar designs. In the video games, Sonic's original design by Oshima was quite short and round, with short quills, a round body and no visible irises (see artwork at left). Sonic's appearance varies greatly depending on the medium and the style in which he is drawn. The original concepts had Sonic with fangs and in a band with a human girlfriend named Madonna, however Sega of America "softened" the character up for an American audience by removing these, sparking a heated issue with Sonic Team, although Naka later admitted it was probably for the best. Sega sponsored the group's "Wonder 3" tour, painting Sonic on the tour bus, distributing pamphlets advertising the game, and having footage of the game broadcast above stage prior to its release. The game's soundtrack was composed by Masato Nakamura of the band Dreams Come True. A group of fifteen people started working on Sonic the Hedgehog, and renamed themselves Sonic Team. The character was created without the ability to swim because of a mistaken assumption by Yuji Naka that all hedgehogs couldn't. Sonic's blue pigmentation was chosen to match Sega's blue logo, his shoes were a concept evolved from a design inspired by Michael Jackson's boots with the addition of the color red, which was inspired by Santa Claus and his personality was based on Bill Clinton's fast reaction to trouble. Eventually, Naoto Ōshima's spiky teal hedgehog, initially codenamed "Mr Needlemouse", was chosen as the new mascot. Several character designs were submitted by its AM8 research & development department, including an armadillo (which then developed into Mighty the Armadillo), a dog, a Theodore Roosevelt look-alike in pajamas (which would later be the basis of Eggman's design), and a rabbit (intended to use its extendible ears to collect objects these aspects were later incorporated into Ristar). Sega wanted a game capable of selling over one million copies and a character to replace Alex Kidd as the company's mascot. This is a major part of the gameplay of the series. In 2005, Sonic was one of the first game character inductees into the Walk of Game, alongside Mario and Link.Īrtist Naoto Ōshima, designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and programmer Yuji Naka are generally credited with the creation of the character, a blue-haired, mostly blue-skinned 15-year-old anthropomorphic hedgehog, who has the ability to run faster than the speed of sound and the ability to curl up into a ball, primarily to attack enemies.
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Since then, Sonic has become one of the world's best-known video game characters, with his series having sold 50 million copies. The first game in the franchise was released on, in order to provide Sega with a mascot to rival Nintendo's flagship character Mario (see 1991 in video gaming). Sonic the Hedgehog, trademarked Sonic The Hedgehog, is a video game character and the protagonist of the eponymous video game series released by Sega, as well as in numerous spin-off comics, cartoons and books. Main article: Sonic's page on Sonic News Network
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