Taking on the plumber

From 1985 to 1989, Nintendo dominated the Home Console Market. The Nintendo Entertainment System trounced its main competitor, the Sega Master System, and was owned by a staggering 25 percent of US households. Sega knew that if it was going to have any hope of reversing the company's fortunes, it would have to beat Nintendo to market with a next-generation machine. It released the 16-bit Sega Genesis in the fall of 1989, and by 1990 Sega had indeed started to chip away at Nintendo's midshare thanks to a steady stream or arcade ports. But with the launch of the Super Nes looming the following year, and alongside it a new Super Mario title, Sega president Hayao Nakayama decided that the Genesis needed a mascot of its own to take on the mustachioed plumber (and Master System poster Alex Kidd just wasn't going to cut it).He wanted a character that would be to Sega what Mickey Mouse was to Disney. Answering Nakayama's call were a character designer named Naoto Oshima and a talented young programmer named Yuji Naka, who had previously collaborated on the Phantasy Star series. The two started brainstorming ideas for the project, but couldn't move forward in earnest until they found a game designer. That's when world events unexpectedly teamed them with Hirokazu Yasuhara. "At the time, I was supposed to go to the United States to establish a new R&D team [at Sega of America] with Mark Cerny," recalls Yasuhara." But then the [first] Gulf War Started, and my move to the US was postponed for three months. Work was progressing on the [new mascot] game, but Naka and Oshima needed a full-time game designer on the project. They saw that i was free, and looked to me for help designing the game until my departure. So I Officially joined the project as a game designer, planning to work on it only until i went to the US. But I ended up staying in Japan for a year until we finished the project." And thus was formed what would eventually become known as "Sonic Team."

The Need for Speed

The team realized that for Sega's new mascot to reach the same level as Mario, the game had to offer players something fresh and exciting. As Yasuhara puts it, "Almost all the game companies at that time were trying to make Mario-like action games. Mario is great, but people wished to see something new." The developers needed to come up with a strong game concept first, then design the game character around it. Yuji Naka suggested speed as the main focus. "When i first started working on the project, I remember looking at the various games that were out at the time and wishing that they were cooler and that the characters moved faster," says Naka. So the programmer almost single-handedly created a game engine that took full advantage of the Genesis's speedy CPU (a blazing 7.6 MHz). "Naka gave me a demonstration of the game engine that showed a new method of scrolling the background at a very fast speed," recalls Yasuhara. "I then began thinking about how we could create a game using this technology." But executing the concept proved difficult. According to Yasuhara, "The biggest challenge was fighting with out to make the best use of a 'speedy' character in gameplay." One idea was to have a rabbit that could pick up objects with its ears and throw them at enemies. But the team decided that particular mechanic slowed down the game too much and was to complex. " The concept of speed can be difficult for some gamers, "says Naka, "and I didn't want it to be a game only for the really good players."

Sonic the Armadillo?

A breakthrough occurred when Naka proposed that the character be able to attack enemies without needing to stop. One way to do that, he offered, was to give the ability to curl into a ball. That way, Naka argued, the player could move through the entire level and defeat enemies in a whole new way. Oshima designed two characters around the idea: an armadillo and a hedgehog. Because it's covered in spikes and therefore looks more dangerous, the team ultimately decided to go with the hedgehog. They made him blue to match the color of Sega's logo.

"I remember looking at the various games that were out at the time and wishing that they were cooler" -Yuji Naka

In addition to his speed, the developers wanted the hedgehog to stand out by way of his personality."[Ours] was the first action-game character to display an 'attitude' towards the player," nots Yasuhara. "It meant that [he] was more then a mere cursor for the player." The hedgehog's finger-wagging antics may seem lame for today's standards, but they were pretty edgy compared to the lifeless avatars that populated most games at the time. All that was left was to give the character a moniker that reflected his unique traits. " After long consideration," recalls Yasuhara, "almost at the end of the project, the name of the hedgehog was decided: Sonic."

Genesis Does

Since Sonic would be going up against Nintendo's newest hardware, it was crucial for his game to look and sound as good as possible.Naka's engine pushed the Genesis further than any previous game, and the team started experimenting with an emerging visual technique that hadn't been seen in home-console games before. " It was not common to use 3-D computer graphics at the time," says Naka, "but that [visual style] influenced us a lot. If you take a look at the plam trees at the very beginning, for instance, you can see that they are depicted in an early 3-D polygonal style. " To help with the graphic design for the stages, the team brought in Reiko kodama, who had worked with Naka and Oshima on the Phantasy Star series. "It was still hard to display polygons back then, but the graphics in Sonic the Hedgehog were designed incorporating polygonal styles," explains Kodama. "[When designing levels], I drew the whole field using CG-like images. We intentionally created the designs as if they were illustrated artificially with CG tools. To tell you the truth, we drew

"Ours was the first action-game character to display an 'attitude' towards the player." -Hirokazu Yasuhara

them bit-by-bit because the software for computer graphics had not been developed much at the time.[Laughs]" As a result, the game's visuals boasted an incredible sense of depth. Combine that with Sonic's unparalleled speed, and Sega's new mascot had more then enough graphical punch to stand toe-to-toe with Super Mario World. The team was determined to attain that same cutting-edge quality for the music. " Instead of ordinary FM-synthesized video game music [prevalent] at the time, we wanted to use radio-quality music to show off the performance of the new 16-bit hardware," says Yasuhara. So they looked to an up and coming Japanese pop star to compose the soundtrack." When we started the project, we didn't plan on using a famous composer from outside of Sega," comments Naka. "However, my boss introduced me to Mr. Masato Nakamura, who was a member of [the popular Japanese band] Dreams Come True. It was his first time working on a game, but i remember the entire staff being impressed by his simple music the first time we heard it," for Nakamura, the project's allure stemmed from the passion he saw in the development team." The thing that made me want to the music for Sonic was that everyone at Sega was so intent on the whole, 'This is going to beat out Mario!' feeling," recalls the Musician. " I figured that, sure, I'd do whatever i could to help with that goal. " Nakamura created the game's tunes, ironically, on an Atari computer. " At the time, the key point was the number of sounds that could play simultaneously, and so it was really hard deciding what sounds you could get out of it at once since it was so limited. And unfortunately, what i had to work with, i had a limit of only four sounds that could play at the same time. " But despite those limitations, Nakamura created one of the most dynamic and memorable soundtracks in video game history. " I wanted melodies that the player could hum along with while they were playing, dramatic music for when the scenes were intense, climactic music for when bosses would show up, and then tie it all together with an uplifting theme for the end credits. I also wanted to make sure that the music didn't lose its groove. After all, one of Sonic's key elements lies in speed."

Sonic Boon

The rest, as they say, is history. Sonic the Hedgehog was released on June 23,1991, and led to Sega's success during the 16-bit era. Nakayama didn't just get his Mickey Mouse; he got something bigger. By 1992, Sonic was, amazingly, recognizable among kids 6-11 than Mickey himself. Over the past 15 years, the series has gone on to sell more then 44 million units worldwide. And the hedgehog shows no signs of slowing down. His original classic will be available on both the Game Boy Advance and the Wii's Virtual Console this fall, and next year he'll star in an all-new Wii adventure. Though many of the original Sonic Team members have moved on, they all look back fondly on the project that changed not only their careers, but the entire video game industry. " I discovered many things about gaming from that project, and I'm still standing on those experiences today," reflects Yasuhara. " It is a game that i always look back on whenever i choose a way to design a new game. Sonic is always with me."

The End