In the early days of the 16-bit console era, when Sega and Nintendo were battling for dominance, Naoto Oshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara were tasked with creating a character to rival Mario Bos5000. Sonic the Hedgehog was born from a desire to create a cool mascot that would characterize the Sega company, an icon that would draw millions of Nintendo fans to the Sega Genesis.

Much of Sonic’s history is known, but at GDC 2018 Oshima and Yasuhara shared a now lesser known anecdote about the creation of Sega’s famous hedgehog. Oshima, who was responsible for Sonic’s visual design, now works for Azest Corporation, a development company that works closely with Nintendo. Yasuhara, who was responsible for Sonic the Hedgehog’s map and game design, now works for Unity Technologies Japan.

The two explained how in 1990, Sega created a next-generation character to rival the NES and Mario. Sega had its own roster of characters, including Alex Kidd and Flicky, but none of them could compete in the 8-bit console market.

At the time, Sega didn’t care much about marketability, Yasuhara said through an interpreter. Instead, the company treated characters as if they were to be used and then discarded.

Yasuhara said that mentality changed a bit with the release of Sega’s Mega Drive/Genesis, and Sega wanted something that could represent the company, something iconic and with long life.

Sega and the Sonic the Hedgehog development team decided on a hedgehog mascot because of its shape; hedgehogs in video games can curl up into a ball, roll, and inflict damage with their spiky shells. However, Sega also tested other ideas in its search for a mascot, including an armadillo, a porcupine, a dog, and an “old man with a moustache” (who would eventually become Eggman).

“While this discussion was going on internally, I was planning a trip to New York,” Oshima said. “They said, ‘We definitely want to see something like an old man with a mustache, we also want to see something spiky, and we also want to see something dog-like.’”

Oshima said he set out these three concepts himself: he wrote the sketches on a board and took them to Manhattan’s Central Park, where he asked random people which concept they liked best.

“The hedgehog was the most popular,” Oshima said. “People pointed it out and loved it. Second was Eggman.” The third place was dogs. That was a pleasant surprise. I asked myself, “Why?” and the conclusion for me was that the reason so many people choose hedgehogs is beyond race, gender and different types.

“I reported it to the company.”

Sonic’s earliest illustrations, simpler than the version we know today, were introduced in 1991. The hedgehog began as a simple black-and-white line drawing made up of simple shapes. A simple, easily recognizable form was one of the design guidelines, Oshima and Yasuhara explained.

“We wanted a character that kids could draw,” Oshima said. It was an animal cartoon equivalent to Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, or Doraemon. The team wanted the new mascot to be instinctively familiar, almost instantly recognizable and beloved.

“The biggest challenge for us was to create a character that represents Sega,” said Oshima. One that could carry the weight of the company and define what Sega is in an image. They decided to make her character blue to match the company’s logo.

They also focused on three keywords that define Sonic’s ideals: cool, challenger, and story. “Cool” and “challenger” referred to the mysterious nature that embodies coolness and Sega’s role as an underdog trying to compete against the dominant name of Nintendo. Regarding “story,” the team tried hard to establish Sonic as a character with a background of cartoon characters from Disney, Marvel, Hanna-Barbera, Sanrio, and others.

Sega was a company with an American history. It was founded by an American in Hawaii and imported jukeboxes and pinball tables to Japan. Oshima’s idea of ​​”cool” at the time, such as leather jackets and airplane nose paint, and the fact that Sega was trying to create a character with a Western appeal led him to create a story for Sonic with an American influence. He approached his boss with a backstory for the Sonic the Hedgehog character that he had “discovered” in old documents about airplanes.

According to Oshima’s invented story, there was a pilot in the 1940s who liked to fly fast and whose hair stood on end, earning him the nickname “Hedgehog”. The plane’s nose had a hedgehog on it, as did the pilot’s leather flight jacket. This speed-obsessed pilot later married a woman who wrote and illustrated children’s books. She wrote a story about a hedgehog based on her husband, and this story became the basis for the original Sonic the Hedgehog.

The team was also influenced by early 1990s trends, such as the boom in environmental consciousness and green thinking. The original Sonic, with its cool furry mascot and friendly forest creatures fighting robots, was based on the idea of ​​”nature” versus “ecological development.”

“It was a time when we started thinking more about the environment,” Yashuahara said. “This idea is rooted in [Sonic].”

During his talk, Oshima showed early concept sketches of Sonic and how the character moves through the game’s environment, which consists of hills, loops, and winding tunnels. He also showed unused drawings of animation ideas he had in mind for Sonic, including an entire sheet that depicted only the dance moves he wanted Sonic to do. Unfortunately, Oshima said there was no room for Sonic’s dance routine.

In the end, they said, Sonic Team’s efforts paid off. In the holiday sales war between the brand new Super NES and the cheaper Sega Genesis two years earlier, Sega’s console had the upper hand in the US. Sonic the Hedgehog, which was bundled with the $149 Genesis at the time, played a key role in that war.

“I can’t leave this room without mentioning that the most important factor today is that Sega of America was very confident in what we were trying to do,” Oshima said. “The fact that they believed in our work was validation for us. They took it into account and really incorporated it into their strategy. I think that’s contributed greatly to Sonic’s popularity here.”