Sonic the Hedgehog famously
went through a drastic design change
for his first Hollywood film.
Fans were so upset at this
[screaming]
that the filmmakers went
back to the drawing board
and came up with a much
more familiar design.
But this wasn't the first time Sonic
went through some growing pains.
So, how did we get from this to this?
The story begins in 1990.
♪ Sega ♪
Artist Naoto Ohshima
and programmer Yuji Naka
were tasked with creating
a new mascot for Sega,
a video-game company that was emerging
as a popular contender to Nintendo.
They held a competition
within the company,
which got them a bunch of
characters to choose from,
including this Teddy Roosevelt-looking man
in pajamas who was ultimately used
as the basis for Sonic's
nemesis, Dr. Eggman.
Of 200-plus sketches submitted,
this bunny rabbit in a bow
tie was an early favorite.
Naka imagined the rabbit picking up items
with his ears and
throwing them at enemies.
You can easily see the
rabbit's similarities to Sonic.
Blue fur; big, round eyes;
gloves; and pointy shoes.
However, when programming a demo version
of the game with the
rabbit, it was clear to Naka
that players would be pressing
too many buttons to control him,
so he and Ohshima went back to square one.
They wanted a character that could use
its own body as a weapon.
Because the Sega mascot
needed to appeal to Americans,
Ohshima took some designs to Central Park
and asked random New
Yorkers what they thought.
New Yorkers had a dog, a hedgehog,
and the Teddy Roosevelt
character to choose from,
and they overwhelmingly
chose the hedgehog.
And his name was:
Mr. Needlemouse.
Needlemouse is the literal translation
of the Japanese word for hedgehog.
But, thankfully, that
soon changed to Sonic,
as Naka was keen on making a game
that featured supersonic speed.
Sonic's design was meant to be so simple
that he could be drawn by kids,
similar to Mickey Mouse.
Ohshima said that this simplicity
allowed Sonic to "transcend
race and gender."
Sonic has rounded quills so he can ball up
and pick up speed.
He was given smooth blue fur
to match the color of Sega's logo.
His shoes with the buckle were designed
to be like something
Michael Jackson would wear,
and the red and white color scheme
was inspired by the album cover
of Michael Jackson's "Bad"
and Santa Claus.
He had one large eyeball
with two black pupils
and a bean-shaped nose.
He wore white gloves and socks,
and his body parts were
round and cartoonish.
Then it came time to
give Sonic a personality.
Ohshima credited Sonic's
cool "get it done" attitude
to former President Bill Clinton,
as Sonic's mission in the first few games
is to free woodland
creatures from capture.
Sonic also had an American
girlfriend named Madonna,
but an animal having a human love interest
was deemed too weird by Sega.
More on this later.
This version of Sonic the Hedgehog
proved to last throughout
most of the '90s.
While Sonic's first game came out in 1991,
the character's first appearance
was in a racing game called Rad Mobile.
He was the ornament on
the rearview mirror,
a miniature version of
the classic '90s style.
Sonic went on to star
in a number of sequels
and spinoffs, like Sonic Spinball.
While Sonic's head-to-body ratio
was changed from Sonic the Hedgehog
to Sonic the Hedgehog 2,
his basic design stayed the same.
This version of Sonic was also featured
in two popular TV shows at the time,
"Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog"
and "Sonic the Hedgehog,"
as well as a series of comics
from publisher Archie Comics.
Sonic wouldn't see a
truly major design change
until 1998, with the
release of Sonic Adventure
on the Sega Dreamcast.
Sonic Adventure marks the first game
that features a modern Sonic.
Artist Yuji Uekawa was in
charge of his makeover,
and because of the Dreamcast's
new technical abilities, he found himself
with many challenges to overcome.
For instance, for most Sonic games
before Sonic Adventure,
Sonic is seen from the side.
This time, though, the
camera was behind him.
It was clear to Uekawa
that Sonic's proportions
had to change so you could
see his body more clearly.
His quills became sharper
and doubled in size.
His nose, arms, and legs got longer.
Overall, he became more
angular and less round,
and he lost his potbelly.
Sonic's smooth blue fur
became a darker shade of blue,
and his eyes became green
to contrast with his skin.
Uekawa cites Akira Toriyama's
line calligraphy as his influence.
Toriyama is famous for having created
the characters for "Dragon Ball Z"
and is the reason this new Sonic looked,
as Uekawa has said,
more "graffiti-" or "street"-like.
Sonic was no longer cute.
He was cool.
To double down on this
new Western coolness,
Sonic Adventure 2 in 2001 gave Sonic shoes
that looked more like American sneakers.
Much like the old version of Sonic,
this new version was
featured in peripheral
TV shows and comics.
Sonic games since then haven't delineated
too much on his design.
In 2006, however, Yuji
Naka wanted to create
a Sonic game with a more realistic tone.
The game, simply called
Sonic the Hedgehog,
reintroduced the concept of another
human love interest for Sonic.
Elise is a princess who has a secret power
that Dr. Eggman wants to exploit.
Sonic saves her time and time again.
Because Sonic had to interact with Elise,
a full-sized human,
they made him slightly
taller and more mature.
That game, let alone that relationship,
was seen as a huge
failure and prompted Sega
to return to a lighter
tone for Sonic games.
A 2008 game called Sonic Unleashed
introduce a "werehog" version of Sonic
in which he became furry and muscular.
And the Sonic Boom
franchise launched in 2014.
To make Sonic look more
like what audiences
recognize in a hero,
art director Bob Rafei
gave him bandages,
tattered hair, and a scarf.
This design gave us
another radical deviation
from the traditional Sonic design
in that this version had blue arms
instead of flesh-colored ones.
This franchise is seen as an outlier
in terms of Sonic's appearance, though,
as the modern Sonic is still being used
in other games and media.
That leads us to "Sonic the Hedgehog,"
the film produced by Paramount Pictures.
Initially, the designers for the film
created a Sonic that
was supposed to resemble
a realistic hedgehog.
The eyes were small.
He had creepy, humanlike teeth
and generally looked like
a small child in a onesie.
It was a disaster.
Sonic fans hated the design so much
that director Jeff Fowler
promised he would change it
to better reflect Sega's
modern version of Sonic.
Paramount released a new,
updated trailer in early 2020.
The revamped Sonic looks much better,
but there are still a few differences.
The biggest one is his eyes.
Paramount's version of
Sonic has two eyeballs,
whereas Sega's version famously
only has one with two pupils.
His arms are blue, like
the Sonic Boom version,
and the new design also
fades Sonic's blue fur
into his tan mouth for a slightly more
realistic depiction.
In the movie he has noticeable fur,
versus the smooth skin on
Sega's version of Sonic.
Paramount also gave its Sonic
some cool new sneakers
similar to the ones seen
in Sonic Adventure 2.
Overall, Paramount's version seems to be
a combination of all the
Sonics we've seen thus far
while sticking mostly
to the '90s aesthetic.
Sonic has come a long
way from Teddy Roosevelt
and rabbits to the
live-action form we see today.
But the latest backlash just goes to show
that fans prefer the Sonic
they grew up with in the '90s
and that change isn't always a good thing.
