Early concept art images of Sonic the Hedgehog have revealed that the character wasn't originally meant to be a hedgehog. The first Sonic game was released in 1991 as Sega's way of competing with Nintendo's mascot, Mario. Since then, the blue bomber has had quite the history in the video game community, as well as penetrating the film industry with two Sonic the Hedgehog movies.Sonic the Hedgehog has appeared in over 70 games on multiple platforms in his more than 30 years of existence. With the franchise's longevity, the character has even crossed over to rival Nintendo's platforms, signifying his iconic nature. While Sonic as a character has seen some minor redesigns that have transcended from video games to movies and television, he has always been known as a hedgehog through and through. However, a new confirmation by a member of the Sonic team may shed light on the character's origins.According to a tweet made by original Sonic character designer Naoto Ohshima, Sonic was originally meant to be a human boy with spiky blue hair. Sonic the Hedgehog was also originally an action game about twin brothers who protect the dream world from Nightmare World's boss character, who was known as Thirteen. While the concept art attached to the tweet accurately depicts Ohshima's description, no further information was provided about how they ended up with the current design.
Naoto Ohshima had mentioned this bit of info in passing, previously implying that Sonic was originally meant to be a human boy. However, he had also stated before that no images of Sonic's human form existed and that the old concept art was only line drawings. So, this discovery of concept art comes as a bit of a shock to many gamers. Being able to see the main character's origins and inspirations will be a surprising discovery for a lot of fans of the series.
With Sonic Frontiers having a continued presence in the market, it's quite entertaining to see how the titular hero has evolved from being a boy with spiky blue hair to becoming one of the most well-known icons in the industry today. One can speculate whether changing the theme of the whole game contributed to its success. For what it's worth, some elements from the original designs still got implemented in the final release, such as the blue hair and the loops. Whatever prompted Ohshima to embrace the hedgehog design was good, especially because the series as a whole continues to be a well-known fixture at this point in time.