Sonic The Hedgehog Turns 35: How an Icon Was Born
- Antal Bokor
- 3 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Sonic The Hedgehog is one of the most iconic video game characters ever, and he’s been the star of numerous TV shows, video games, and movie adaptations. Today is the speedy little hedgehog’s 35th birthday, and while he’s gone through many redesigns, his core philosophy of “gotta go fast” has been consistent.
The first time I saw Sonic in action was probably the first or second time I saw a Sega Genesis in all its glory, with its graphics that were superior to Nintendo’s NES, marketing hype with terms like “blast processing” and slogans that promised to deliver a level of action that Nintendo wasn’t capable of:
Sega does what Nintendon’t. I was there for all of it.
But why did Sonic leave such a lasting impression?
Everyone knows the story: Sega President Hayao Nakayama knew that Sega needed a definitive mascot, since Alex Kidd wasn’t edgy enough, and Naoto Ohshima’s Mr. Hedgehog won out, and became the speedster we know as Sonic. But it takes more than an edgy mascot to sell copies, and a combination of technological prowess, clever design, and great music helped propel Sonic the Hedgehog into legendary status.
While Sonic embodied the in-your-face attitude that was so sought after in the ‘90s, he persisted thanks in part to his strong visual identity that oozes out of that 16-bit world. Sonic doesn’t just stand idly by: he reacts to his environment. If he’s on a ledge he waves his arms for balance, and if you put the controller down eventually he loses patience and taps his foot at you, urging you to get him moving again.
If you’ve played Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, you’ll notice that they feel incredibly different to play. That’s because Sonic has momentum. To get Sonic to pass successfully through the game’s iconic loop-de-loops, for instance, Sonic needs to be going fast enough.
Sonic even loses momentum when running up hills, and takes longer to stop the faster he’s going. That’s not just “blast processing.” That’s all possible because developer Yuji Naka pulled off some absolute assembly-level wizardry to utilize the Genesis’ Motorola 68000 processor to the fullest extent. Naka wrote a groundbreaking collision algorithm that allowed Sonic to smoothly traverse curved surfaces and loops, combined with an incredibly efficient way to update the Video Display Processor. This meant the screen could scroll at faster speeds without flickering or dropping frames—a masterclass in rendering and physics that gives Sonic his signature weightiness and makes the speed feel incredibly tactile.
The music in Sonic the Hedgehog is also iconic, especially the Green Hill Zone theme. Composer Masato Nakamura didn’t just make video game music, he was a musician and even a member of a massively popular J-Pop group called Dreams Come True. Fun Fact: Sonic the Hedgehog was originally revealed by being painted on the side of the band’s tour bus during its “Wonder 3” tour. While the first game’s soundtrack isn’t considered the best, it is foundational.
I played through Sonic the Hedgehog to see if it still holds up after 35 years, and I think it does. It doesn’t get as much love as the other entries in the series, but that’s mostly because Sonic continued to find out what was fun to do as Sonic in the 16-bit era.
That’s probably why there’s the strange and jarring change of pace between the fast and open Green Hill Zone and the much slower, precision platforming required immediately after in Marble Zone. Maybe the developers were still figuring out how to make a Sonic level. I can see the logical progression the developers were making by introducing trickier platforming and block pushing in a second level.
Just imagine a Sonic franchise that stuck to this philosophy and how it might have affected the shift into 3D. Instead, the sequels leaned more into crowd pleasing speedy setups with loops and corkscrews–and honestly, I think that’s where Sonic is at his best.
But while speed might seem to be the goal for a character named Sonic, that’s not always true, especially in his first outing. There are plenty of alternate routes and even secrets to find if you decide to practice each level to maximize routes. And while Sonic the Hedgehog only takes about 2 hours for an average player to beat,if you’re playing on original hardware, losing all of your lives and continues means starting the game from the beginning.
And while obtaining a Sega Genesis console and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog isn’t too costly, most will likely choose to play the game through one of the many modern platforms on which it's available.
The bottom line? Sonic the Hedgehog holds up all these 35 years later. And with so many indie retro-like offerings, it’s not even too far off from what you might find as a modern game. While Sega hasn’t made hardware for a long time, Sonic has continued to be a pop culture icon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were still talking about him 35 years from now.