In the early 90's, a console war errupted between entrenched
gaming giant Nintendo and a console newcomer known as Sega. In their ad campaign
against Nintendo, Sega made themselves out to be faster, sleeker, and better
of the two. However, they still had no means by which to compare to Nintendo
when it came to gaming characters. Nintendo characters like Link and Mario
were immensely popular and Sega had no mean with which to deal with them.
Their idea: make a blue hedgehog who has a love of adventure and can run really,
really, really fast. They called it Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic the Hedgehog has been around for 13 years now. Created in 1991, Sonic was mde primarily to combat the popularity of Nintendo's popular gaming characters (which is ironic now that there are Sonic the Hedgehog games on Nintendo consoles). Sonic became so popular, so quickly, that he became the mascot for Sega.
As for the games themselves, they have not
changed much from their basic ideas in the first few games. They mostly require
a player to guide Sonic, or sometime another character, through a level of
the game as quickly as possible, while collecting rings and avoiding the robotic
creations of Dr. Robotnik (aka Dr. Eggman). Over the years, many characters
have emerged in the various storylines of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, but
a few have around for a while. These would include Mile "Tails"
Prowler the Fox, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose the hedgehog, and of course
no cast would be complete without a villian, Dr. Robotnik. (Personally, I'm
a big fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as a character known as Shadow the
Hedgehog, a character from "Sonic Adventure 2" and "Sonic Heroes")
Games: