Sonic the Hedgehog

"I'm Sonic, A little ball of super energy, in an extremely handsome package!"

— Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog (2020 movie)''

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ Sonikku za Hejjihoggu) is the video game company Sega's mascot (and also their current and longest-reigning mascot, succeeding Sega's previous mascot, Alex Kidd) and the titular main protagonist of the video game series he is named after.

A blue anthropomorphic hedgehog with plenty of attitude and personality who lives up to his name by being able to run at supersonic speeds.

Why He's Way Past Cool

 * 1) Just like Super Mario and Crash Bandicoot, he is one of the most famous mascots in video game history.
 * 2) *Not only that, but he is also one of the most iconic characters ever created apart from characters such as Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob, Hello Kitty and like the rush of the wind, the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
 * 3) * He could very well be considered the Bugs Bunny of gaming, while Mario is Mickey and Pac-Man is Felix the Cat.
 * 4) As a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog, he has a very creative, cool and appealing character design (although it really doesn't look like a hedgehog).
 * 5) Unlike most other video game mascots, Sonic actually has an interesting personality that can actually be integrated into stories. Thanks to this, he has interesting stories both in his games and in other media, like comic books and cartoons.
 * 6) His famous rivalry/friendship with Mario, which was famous enough to put them both in a crossover game together since 2007: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
 * 7) When there is a crisis, he intensely focuses on the task at hand.
 * 8) He is an unpredictable thrill-seeker and sees his heroics as an opportunity to have fun.
 * 9) He always manages to remain cool under pressure.
 * 10) He often jokes around to lighten the mood and has the tendency to hilariously taunt his opponents.
 * 11) He never forgets about his friends and believes in working as a team or, as he put it, the power of teamwork.
 * 12) He follows his free-spirited nature and does not dwell on the past or allow painful experiences to weigh him down. Instead, he lives in the present and always looks forward to new adventures, which is a good moral for anyone.
 * 13) He is always ready to risk his life for his friends, with little regard for his own safety.
 * 14) He has shown to have a habit of forgiving, with one example being how he forgave Silver for trying to kill him. Twice.
 * 15) He is also shown to be good at swordsmanship, like in Sonic and the Black Knight.
 * 16) Most of his various voice actors have done a good job voice him and capturing his personality.
 * 17) He has a buttload of quotable lines, such as "STRANGE, ISN'T IT??", "That's NO GOOD.", "Ah, yeah! This is happening!", "No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!", "Uuuhh.. meow??" and the fan-favorite "You're too slo-ow!".

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Sometimes, he can be a little too narcissistic, impatient, prideful and even a bit predictable to be likable.
 * 2) He kinda overreacts when his species is mislabeled, like in Sonic and the Secret Rings, when Erazor Djinn called him a "blue rat".
 * 3) Along with his friends and foes, he was horribly flanderized in the video games during the 2010s (also known as the Meta Era by the Sonic fans). He became a smug and overconfident narcissist in Free Riders, never took anything seriously in Colors and Generations which often resulted in him spewing unfunny jokes, was a big jerk in Lost World, an overconfident, unfunny jokester in Boom Rise of Lyric (as well as Shattered Crystal), became blander in Forces and, depending on how you view his character, was overcompetitive in Team Sonic Racing.
 * 4) * Thankfully, he redeemed himself in Sonic Frontiers where his character went back to the way it was, along with his friends and foes.
 * 5) He had an annoying side in Sonic Underground, though he redeemed himself once the series ended.
 * 6) His inclusion in mh:awesomegames:Super Smash Bros. Brawl caused it to take a longer time to release. Not only that, but he has a very poor moveset in all the Smash Bros. games: most of his moves simply consist of him attacking in his ball form.
 * 7) Unlike his other English voices, his voice in the Sonic OVA isn't that good, as it sounds like he has a southern accent.

Legacy
As Sega's mascot and one of the key reasons for the company's success during the 16-bit era of video game consoles, Sonic is one of the most famous video game characters in the world. In 1993, Sonic became the first video game character to have a balloon in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1996, Sonic was also the first video game character to be seen in a Rose Parade. Sonic was one of the three game characters inducted on the inaugural Walk of Game class in 2005, along with former rivals Mario and Link (both from Nintendo). One of a class of genes involved in fruit fly embryonic development, called hedgehog genes, has been named "sonic hedgehog" after him.

On the other hand, Sonic's apparent romantic relationship with Princess Elise in the 2006 video game resulted in major criticism. Sonic's characterization and relationship with Eggman in Sonic Boom earned a positive response by Patrick Lee of The A.V. Club and Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media.

Sonic has also been used as a symbol for Sega's various sponsorships. Between 1993 and 1997, Sega sponsored the JEF United Ichihara Chiba football team, during which period Sonic appeared in the team's uniform. During the 1993 Formula One championship, Sega sponsored the Williams Grand Prix team, which won the Constructors' Championship that year, as well as the team's lead driver, Alain Prost, winning the Drivers' Championship. Sonic was featured in the cars, helmets, and their rivals McLaren used to paint a squashed hedgehog after winning races over Williams. The 1993 European Grand Prix featured a Sonic balloon and Sonic billboards. In 1992, according to Sega of America marketing director Al Nilsen, Sonic was found to be more recognizable than Mickey Mouse in the six-to eleven-year-old demographic, based on the character's respective Q Scores, although this claim could not be confirmed by Q Score developer Marketing Evaluations, Inc.

Nintendo Power listed Sonic as their sixth favorite hero, stating that while he was originally Mario's nemesis, he seems at home on Nintendo platforms. They added that he has remained as one of gaming's greatest icons. In 2004, the character won a Golden Joystick Award for "The Sun Ultimate Gaming Hero". The character's popularity declined in the mid-1990s, and Sonic failed to place in Electronic Gaming Monthly's Coolest Mascot of 1996 in either the editors' or readers' picks, being beaten out by not only competitors Mario and Crash Bandicoot, but Sega's own Nights; however, in a 2008 poll of 500 people, Sonic was voted the most popular video game character in the UK with a 24% vote while his old rival Mario came second with 21% of the vote. Later that year, Sonic was ranked as the most iconic video game character in an MSN rankings list. In 2011, Empire ranked him as the 14th greatest video game character. And he was voted 10th out of the top 50 video game characters of all time in Guinness World Records 2011 Gamers' Edition. Sonic ranked ninth on GameDaily's Top 10 Smash Bros characters list. GameDaily also listed his "next-generation stumble" in their list of video game characters' worst moments, using his relationship with a human female as one of the worst parts of it.

Ken Balough, Sega's former associate brand manager, said that Sonic's appeal endured because the character is "a gaming legend, first and foremost" who originated "from a series of games that defined a generation in gaming history, and his iconic personality was the epitome of speed in the early ‘90s, pushing the limits of what gamers knew and expected from high-speed action and platforming games."

A Japanese team developing the Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation (RPWI) instrumentation for the upcoming Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer spacecraft, to be launched by ESA and Airbus in 2022, was able to gain Sega's approval to use Sonic as the mascot for the device.

An Internet meme called "Sanic" has been used based on a poorly drawn Sonic; typically, the meme uses one of Sonic's catchphrases but with poor grammar. Sega's official Sonic Twitter account has made numerous references to it, and it appeared in official downloadable content for Sonic Forces on in-game shirts. The meme also appears as a drawing in the theatrical film.

Trivia

 * Sonic has a total of 5 animated shows (AoSTH, Sonic SatAM, Sonic Underground, Sonic X, Sonic Boom), 2 web cartoons (Sonic Mania Adventures, Team Sonic Racing Overdrive), a short CGI movie (Night Of The Werehog) an animated movie (Sonic the Hedgehog OVA), and also an exceptionally successful live-action/computer-animated duology of movies in 2020 and 2022.
 * After having been around only three years, he had already surpassed Nintendo's Mario in popularity according to a June 1993 Q-Survey in Gameplayers magazine.
 * Even after Sega settled on the hedgehog, an idea proposed by designer Naoto Ohshima, the company tried out a taxonomically confusing name for the character: Mr. Needlemouse.
 * In keeping with the spirit of the above, Sonic 1's soundtrack was scored entirely by the Japanese pop group Dreams Come True, formed as a trio in 1988.
 * For his cameos, Sonic has proven to be an extremely popular character and he is also a fighter in the Super Smash Bros. games since Brawl in 2008.
 * Sonic's personality is loosely based on Michael Jackson and in Bill Clinton's "get it done" attitude, and his design was inspired by a combination of Mickey's head and Felix the Cat's body.

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