Back in the early 90's, Sega and Nintendo were already rivals who gave each other stiff competition. But Nintendo had one advantage that Sega did not and this was letting Nintendo get ahead in the race. This advantage was the lovable little Italian called Mario. Mario was iconic when it came to Nintendo and he became the character for Nintendo's flagship platformer. Mario was a very effective mascot for Nintendo because of his popularity.

The bosses at Sega of course did not like this and hence they assembled team Sonic to make a character that would rival Mario. This was the original motivation behind the creation of Sonic. Now, if it were up to some average game makers then they probably would've come up with a third-rate copy of Mario. Thankfully, that did not happen and team Sonic thought really hard to come up with something original.

During the creative process, a hedgehog wasn't the only option they considered. Before Sonic the hedgehog was born, team Sonic considered a rabbit, a dog and even an armadillo! I suppose the armadillo was much closer to a hedgehog but ultimately the hedgehog won. Initially, there was no name for the hedgehog and many of the initial sketches simply call him 'Mr. Hedgehog'. By and by, Flash Sonic was developed in to a fully formed character.

The blue color was chosen in keeping with the cobalt blue of the Sega logo at that time. Then the name came from the obvious place - team 'Sonic'. Thus, Sonic the hedgehog was born. At the very beginning, our lovable blue hero was a tad bit out of shape. He is depicted as a cartoony figure with a fatter, more rounded figure. Then, he was probably made to look sharper to resemble sharp looking anime characters.

Thus he got taller, slimmer and got longer quills/hair. This is how the modern Sonic the Hedgehog was born. This was going to be the permanent image of Sonic the hedgehog.

When it came to powers, the only thing Sonic has in common with the hedgehog is his tendency fight the enemy by rolling himself in to a ball. By doing so, he becomes an impenetrable mass of spikes that takes down all enemies. So he basically prefers using his body as a projectile (real hedgehogs just lie their in defense). Other that, he hardly has anything in common with a Shadow hedgehog.

Sonic was not created to be alone and even the initial planning phase featured lots of characters around him as his friends. There was one character who has especially drawn a lot of attention but never made it to the final release. This was Madonna, probably a girl in love with Sonic. She was human and reminded a lot of people of Ms. Va Vavoom from the loony tunes. She and a lot of other characters were later scraped from the final version that was released in the U.S.