To do so, the company felt it needed a mascot that could rival Mario. Sega’s hope was to compete with Nintendo with its new console, Sega Genesis. Nintendo, of course, had Mario, the jumping Italian plumber mascot of Super Mario Bros., an incredibly well-made and well-received title that helped propel the company to domination in the console gaming market. Sonic the Hedgehog first came into being in the late 1980s, when Sega, a Japanese company that had made its name in the arcade industry, looked to cut into the market share of home gaming giant Nintendo. But on the other hand, his story will always be somewhat shadowed, tied to the fact that the console that created him lost that war. He also continues to persevere in the video game world, with a new title, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, hitting the Nintendo 3DS this year.įorever an underdog with a fierce bite, Sega’s flagship mascot still survives through the nostalgia of gamers, the excitement of die-hard fans, the uniqueness of his character, and his history at the front lines of a war between video game consoles. The mascot currently stars in a Cartoon Network animated show that’s heading into its second season this fall, his fifth show since 1992. Many have disappeared from the scene altogether, the victims of corporate upheaval, changing tastes, or maybe just too many poorly selling games in a row.Ĭonversely, Sega has sold more than 140 million copies of Sonic games across the franchise’s 25-year run-and he’s still going. In that time, video game mascot characters-Bubsy, Spyro the Dragon, Toejam & Earl, Crash Bandicoot, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Conker the Squirrel-have risen alongside him, but very few have had the endurance that Sonic has. In 2016, Sega will mark the 25th anniversary of the first appearance of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was fast he had attitude, rising to video game icon status by tearing through levels like a pinball, at a speed that was unseen in the early ‘90s. He risks his life for the entrapped wildlife, and instead of sticking around to receive glory, he's off to save another life. ![]() “He believes in himself and is a team leader. Heroism is what Hamilton says draws him, like millions of other fans, to the character of Sonic. “He never gives up,” the rapper says. “I never believed in myself, so when I created the opportunity to believe I was my hero, my self-esteem jumped through the roof.” “The mixtape was basically me believing I'm Sonic,” Hamilton, who signed a deal with Republic and appeared in an episode of Empire last year, explains. ![]() He sampled everything Sonic-from the music that played over levels in 1991’s Sonic the Hedgehog and its 1992 sequel, to sound effects of Sonic grabbing bubbles of oxygen underwater or racing to finish a level before the game’s timer expired, to bits of the character’s self-titled 1993 Saturday morning cartoon show. In 2008, Hamilton released Sonic the Hamilton, a mixtape of tracks entirely inspired by Sega’s speedy mascot character. “Watching Sonic take over the world was all I needed to see to believe I could do anything.”Īlmost two decades after staring entranced at that demo reel, Hamilton landed major-label deals and magazine covers by fully incorporating Sonic the Hedgehog into his identity. All it took was the demo reel the iconic 1991 video game would run through when its main menu sat idle for long enough. Hamilton didn’t need to experience Sonic’s gameplay to fall in love. ![]() He was parked in front of the family TV, but a video game controller wasn’t even in his hands. Rapper Charles Hamilton was only three or four years old, growing up in Cleveland, when Sonic the Hedgehog took hold of him.
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