Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game franchise created by Sega, designed principally by Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka, beginning with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 for the Sega Genesis console, developed explicitly to give Sega a mascot character capable of competing with Nintendo's Mario, built around a fast moving blue hedgehog able to run and roll through looping, physics driven level designs at high speed. The original game's emphasis on speed and momentum based platforming distinguished it from earlier platform games, and the franchise became closely tied to Sega's own console business through the 1990s, continuing across dozens of further games even after Sega exited the hardware business in 2001 and became a third party publisher developing for other companies' consoles. The franchise has expanded into multiple animated television series, comic books published continuously since the early 1990s, and a live action film series beginning in 2020 that became one of the highest grossing video game film adaptations to date, extending Sonic's reach well beyond its original gaming audience.