“Cool” and “challenger” referred to the mysterious qualities that embody coolness and Sega’s role as an underdog in trying to take on the juggernaut that was Nintendo. They also focused on three keywords to define the ideals of Sonic: cool, challenger and history. They chose to make their character blue to match the company’s logo. “The biggest challenge for us was that we need to overcome to create a character that represents Sega,” Oshima said, something that could carry the weight of the company on its shoulders and define what Sega is with one image. The team wanted their new mascot to be instinctively familiar, almost instantly recognizable and affectionate. “We wanted a character kids could draw,” Oshima said, a cartoon animal on par with Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat or Doraemon. A simple, easy to understand form was one of the design directives, Oshima and Yasuhara explained. The hedgehog started off as a simple black and white line drawing, made up of simple shapes. “I reported it back to the company.” via Sonic SceneĮarly illustrations of Sonic were simpler than the version we know today and were introduced to in 1991. was that by a lot of people choosing the hedgehog, it will transcend race, gender, different types of people. I was asking myself ‘I wonder why it is?’ The conclusion to me. “The hedgehog was the most popular,” Oshima said. Oshima said he drew those three concepts on a board and took the sketches to Central Park in Manhattan, surveying random people on which concept they liked best. “They said ‘We definitely want to see something like an old guy with a mustache, we also want to see something spiky, and we also want to see a dog-like character.’” “I planned a trip to New York while this discussion was going on internally,” Oshima recounted. But Sega tested other ideas, including an armadillo, porcupine, dog and “an old guy with a mustache” (who eventually became Eggman) while searching for a mascot. A hedgehog in a video game could curl up into a ball, roll around and do damage with its spiky covering. Sega and the Sonic the Hedgehog development team settled on a hedgehog mascot, in part, because of its form. That thinking was shifting a bit with the advent of Sega’s Mega Drive/Genesis, Yasuhara said, and Sega wanted something that could be representative of the company, something that was iconic and could have a long lifespan. Instead the company treated characters as if they should be used and disposed. Sega had its own stable of characters - Alex Kidd, Flicky - but none of them were able to compete in the 8-bit console market.Īt the time, Sega did not value characters highly in terms of how marketable they could be, Yasuhara said via a translator. The two explained how, in 1990, Sega wanted to create a next-generation character that could stand up to the NES and Mario. Yasuhara, who worked on Sonic the Hedgehog’s maps and game design, is now at Unity Technologies Japan. Oshima, who was responsible for Sonic’s visual design, now works at Arzest Corporation, a developer that works closely with Nintendo. Much about Sonic’s history is well-known, but at GDC 2018 today, Oshima and Yasuhara shared lesser-known anecdotes about the creation of Sega’s famous hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog was born of a desire to create a cool, company-defining mascot for Sega - an icon that could sell millions of Nintendo fans on the Sega Genesis. When Sega and Nintendo battled for dominance in the early days of the 16-bit console era, Naoto Oshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara were tasked with creating a character that could take on Mario.
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