FanPost

5.30 OT

On April 1990, SEGA requested a game capable of selling over 1,000,000 copies, a character who could compete against Nintendo's Super Mario, and a character to replace Alex Kidd as the company's mascot. Several character designs were submitted by its AM8 research and development department. These included an armadillo (who was later developed into Mighty the Armadillo), a dog, a Theodore Roosevelt look-alike in pajamas (who was later used as the basis of Doctor Eggman's design), and a rabbit (who would use its extendable ears to collect objects, an idea that was later used for Ristar).[1][2] Eventually, the mascot they selected was Naoto Ōshima's submission, a spiky teal hedgehog codenamed "Mr. Needlemouse", later renamed Sonic.[3] Sonic's color was based on the SEGA logo, his shoe buckles based on Michael Jackson, his shoe color based on Santa Claus, and his personality was inspired by future-President Bill Clinton, who Ōhshima felt embodied a modern sensibility of wanting to get things done right away, righting wrongs as they presented themselves instead of letting them linger.[1][4][5][6] Sonic was created without the ability to swim because of a mistaken assumption by Yuji Naka that all hedgehogs could not do so.[7]

Hyper_sonic_medium

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