It’s had failed right at the start, Sega had

It’s the late 80’s, turning 1990’s, and video gaming is becoming quite the scene, despite the bitter crash it had burnt out from, it’s starting to rage strong, with the help of the gaming giant Nintendo, but of course, where most had failed right at the start, Sega had decided to up their game in the gaming industry, by essentially copying and pasting, or more or less, determing how Nintendo gained such a following and how it still is constantly growing, simply put, Sega had decided to do what any other company would want to do, beat the competition. How would they do this? Well with the huge popularity of Nintendo’s mascot, the lovable plumber who jumps on turtles for a living “Mario”, Sega has thought of upping their game to be on par with the competition, by making their own mascot, or rather making a new mascot entirely, as their current mascot, Alex Kidd, wasn’t near as appealing as Nintendo’s mascot, nor was their current console being sold the “Master System” or Mark 3  in Japan, anywhere near as popular as Nintendo’s NES or Famicom depending on the region.

Which fun fact: the Master System, at least as of 2015 from IGN, the Master System is actually fairly successful nowadays, or atleast in Brazil, as it still continues to be produced in production and sells quite wellWith this mindset put into motion, in the scrapping of Alex Kidd, Sega had to go back to the drawing board and design an entirely unique character, that would not only be appealing to the gaming industry and that would help sell Sega’s soon to be released revolutionary Genesis or Mega Drive (depending on the region) console, but they had to bring a new form of innovation that could challenge Nintendo, or else it would just crash and burn as being another shadow in Nintendo’s rise of fame. With development being put into motion, Sega had held a contest within the company, trying to come up with as much suitable ideas as possible for the mascot.Enter Naoto Ohsh-Ohshi-**that thing** Ohshima was an artist for sega, known for being a designer on Sega’s JRPG Phantasy Star games at the time, and even designing quite a few other Sega games aswell like SpellCaster, thus showing he was indeed quite prominent and quite an asset for sega, and of course with his experience with concept art, and his favorable designs led him to being on the team for designing the mascot, which comprised of not only Ohshima, but two other Sega employee’s aswell, known by the names of Yuji Naka, and Hirokazu Yashuara, who would go on to code the game, and design the levels, respectively.  the designs that were brought in into the team were all a result of Sega having an in-house competition on the basis of concepts for the mascot, of the designs that were brought in from Ohshima, there were five designs, one of them supposively being a direct template later in years for Mighty the Armadillo, and strangely enough, what appears to be an image of Theodore Roosevelt in his pajamas, which in turn was eventually directly implemented into Sonic’s arch nemesis, Dr Eggman.

The most commonly known concept art is of course the infamous napkin sketch drawn by Ohshima himself, personally nicknaming the character as “mr needlemouse”, when glancing upon it, it obvious to tell that this design directly inspired the direction where the team’s development would lead into next. During the development cycle of Sonic’s character, many ideas were brought to the table, with one of the main cores of a mascot having some form of gimmick, or rather (whatever that word is forget oofy’) being presented to separate oneself from other competeting companies. This of course, led to Sonic Team, discussing a backstory, or small tidbit of lore for Sonic’s character, on