Sonic the Hedgehog is a 1991 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis. It was released in North America and PAL regions in June and in Japan the following month. The player controls Sonic, a hedgehog who can run at supersonic speeds. The story follows Sonic as he aims to foil the mad scientist Doctor Robotnik's plans to seek the powerful Chaos Emeralds. The gameplay involves collecting rings as a form of health, and a simple control scheme, with jumping and attacking controlled by a single button.
Development began in 1990 when Sega ordered its developers to create a game featuring a mascot for the company. The developers chose a blue hedgehog designed by Naoto Ohshima of Sega R&D9 after he won an internal character design contest, and named themselves Sonic Team to match their character. It uses a novel technique that allows Sonic's sprite to roll along curved scenery which was based on a concept by Oshima from 1989. Sonic the Hedgehog, designed for fast gameplay, was influenced by games by the Mario creator, Shigeru Miyamoto. The music was composed by Masato Nakamura, bassist of the J-pop band Dreams Come True.
Sonic the Hedgehog received positive reviews for its visuals, audio, and gameplay and is widely considered one of the greatest video games. It sold over 40 million copies across all platforms, becoming one of the best-selling video games. On the Genesis, which it was bundled with, it sold over 15 million copies, making it the best-selling Genesis game. It established the Genesis as a key player in the 16-bit era and made it competitive with the Super NES. It has been ported to multiple systems and inspired several clones, a successful franchise, and adaptations into other media. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was released in November 1992.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a platform game where players control the titular character Sonic, who is tasked with defeating Doctor Robotnik and obtaining the six Chaos Emeralds. The game takes place from a side-scrolling perspective. He is capable of running at high speed through levels that include springs, slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops. The levels are populated with robot enemies, inside which Dr. Eggman has trapped animals; destroying a robot frees the animal, but is not necessary to complete the game. His primary form of offense is a spin attack, in which he curls into a ball and spins his body, damaging enemies and certain obstacles upon collision. This may be performed by jumping or rolling.
Scattered around each level are gold rings that can grant Sonic protection from a single enemy or hazard as well as an extra life if 100 are collected. Also scattered throughout the level are canisters containing power-ups such as additional rings and temporary invincibility. Signposts act as checkpoints where Sonic can respawn after losing a life.
The game is split into six principal zones, followed by a short Final Zone. Each main zone has its own visual style, and while some enemies appear throughout, each zone has unique enemies and obstacles. Each main zone is split into three acts, all of which must be completed. At the end of each main zone's third act, the player confronts Dr. Eggman for a boss fight. For most of the fights, Eggman's vehicle is fitted with different weapons. After completing the sixth zone, the player continues to the single-level Final Zone for a last encounter with Eggman inside a large machine environment. A brief animation shows Sonic's return to the first zone, with animals liberated from Dr. Eggman.
Reaching the end of any zone's Act 1 or Act 2 with 50 rings will cause a large ring to appear through which Sonic can jump to enter a bonus stage. In them, Sonic is perpetually curled up in his Spin Attack animation, and bounces off the bumpers and walls of a fully rotating maze. In these levels, the player earns a number of continues for each multiple of 50 rings collected, but the main goal is to obtain the Chaos Emerald hidden within the maze. Colliding with any of the blocks marked "GOAL" ends the level.
In his attempt to steal the six Chaos Emeralds and harness their power, the mad scientist Doctor Eggman has trapped the animal inhabitants of South Island inside aggressive robots and stationary metal capsules. The titular character, Sonic, a hedgehog named for his ability to run at supersonic speed, aims to thwart Eggman's plans by freeing his animal friends and collecting the emeralds himself. If Sonic collects all the Chaos Emeralds and completes the game, an ending sequence is shown. If all the emeralds are not collected, Eggman taunts the player while juggling any of the Chaos Emeralds not collected by the player in an alternate ending.
Background and character design
In the 1980s, Sega had limited success with Genesis ports of its arcade games, but wanted a stronger foothold against its main competitor, Nintendo. In 1988, Sega of Japan began an in-house competition to create a rival to Nintendo's mascot Mario. For the next three years, programmers and designers at Sega worked on a brand new character to rival Mario. In 1990, Sega ordered its in-house development studios to develop a game featuring a mascot for the company. Sega's president Hayao Nakayama wanted a character as iconic as Mickey Mouse.
Conception of Sonic the Hedgehog began in November 1989, when character designer Naoto Ohshima was working on another project titled Twin Stars. The story focused on a pair of twin brothers from the Dream World defending it against the boss of the Nightmare World, "Thirteen." The game was to feature smooth terrain and loops that the characters would run through. While the gameplay concept was approved by Ohshima's superiors, the characters were not, leaving Ohshima to come up with a new protagonist.
The team developed ideas for characters, an engine, and gameplay mechanics. Development emphasized speed, so Sega considered fast creatures such as kangaroos and squirrels and eliminated designs not associated with fast animals. One idea, a rabbit able to grasp objects with prehensile ears, showed promise but was too complex for the Genesis hardware. The team narrowed its search to animals that could roll into a ball, their idea for an attacking move, and considered armadillos and hedgehogs. The hedgehog character, proposed by employee Naoto Ohshima, prevailed. Ohshima went on vacation to New York, taking sketches with him. He went to Central Park and asked locals for their opinions on them, and Sonic was the favorite. A man with a moustache, who eventually became Dr. Robotnik, was in second place.
Sonic was originally teal-colored, then a light shade of blue, but he was changed to dark blue so he would stand out against certain backgrounds and to match the Sega logo. According to Ohshima, Sonic's basic design was created by combining Felix the Cat's head with Mickey Mouse's body. His shoes had buckles through the inspiration of Michael Jackson's boots on the album cover for Bad and the red and white color scheme of Santa Claus, whom Ohshima saw as the most "famous character in the world". Sonic's spikes were emphasized to make him sleeker, and he was given the ability to spin while jumping (so attacking and jumping could be controlled with one button). The new character was originally named "Mr. Hedgehog", but the eight-member team changed his name to "Sonic" and took the nickname Sonic Team. According to Yuji Naka, Sonic Team was a one-time unofficial nickname for the studio within Sega that was used during the development of the game; it was never mentioned again on the division's releases until Ohshima-directed and Naka-produced Nights into Dreams was released in 1996. The name would permanently stay when its successor Sega AM8 was spun off as Sonic Team Co., Ltd. in 2000.
Ohshima said that "Sonic" was chosen because it represented speed. Ideas proposed to flesh out the character included placing him in a rock band, giving him vampire fangs, and giving him a human girlfriend named Madonna. Sega of America scrapped these ideas to keep his identity simple. Sega of America also expressed concerns that most Americans would not know what a hedgehog is. According to Mark Cerny, who worked in Tokyo as an intermediary between the Japanese and American Sega offices, the American staff felt the character was "unsalvageable". They made plans to educate Sonic Team on character design with the work of Will Vinton, the creator of The California Raisins. They proposed a full-scale recreation of the character, but compromised with Sonic Team to simply make design changes for western audiences. The antagonist was named "Dr. Eggman" in Japan and "Dr. Robotnik" in other regions as a result of a dispute between Sega's American and Japanese divisions.