10 Things Sega Wants You To Forget About Sonic The Hedgehog

8. Sonic's Main Characteristics Were Influenced By Mario

Sonic was originally created as a character because Sega were finding Alex Kidd to be outdated, which left them in desperate need of a new highly marketable mascot to compete with Nintendo's mustachio'd plumber. After holding a contest among their lead designers and creators, they settled upon a hedgehog originally called Mr. Needlemouse, later changed to the catchier name of Sonic the Hedgehog. Thing is, many of Sonic's qualities were arguably a replication of Mario, rather than anything original.

If you look at Sonic and Mario's designs you'll see that the color palette used is extremely similar, heavy uses of blue with red trim, and small traces of gold on both Mario's buttons and Sonic's shoes. In addition, Yuji Naka claimed that his implementation of Sonic's trademark speed was actually due to his experience with early Mario titles. He said that the inability to save in early Mario games, caused him to repeatedly play through world 1-1, before the ability to warp was available. As a result, he aimed to make the pace of Sonic as fast as possible.

While the iconic mascot Sonic the Hedgehog is beloved to many, he's not really as original as you might think.