Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, 'Sonikku za hejjihoggu'?) is a platform video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in North America). Featuring the new mascot of Sega, the titular Sonic the Hedgehog, this game served as the launch title for the famous video game franchise known as the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

The game was originally released for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in North America and Europe on June 23, 1991, with a Japanese Mega Drive release following three days afterward on June 26. Advertising its fast gameplay based on Sonic's extraordinary speed, the concept of a high-speed platform game was unique for its time and solidified the style of gameplay the series would be best known for. Due to the Genesis/Mega Drive's Motorola 68000 processor, the power of the console would allow for faster gameplay, dubbed by some as "blast processing," and impressive 16-bit graphics, making it much more powerful than Sega's preceding Master System.

The game was well praised by critics and was a massive commercial success, which gave the Mega Drive, and by extent Sega, a huge boost in popularity, enough so that Sega could directly compete with Nintendo, who soon followed up with the release of their Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This would result in what would be the first counterattack in a long company rivalry that lasted throughout the 90s. In recent years, the game has been ported numerous times on many other consoles, with some ports adding newer features to the original game.

​Trivia

 * Due to Sega not wanting to fully credit Sonic Team's developers in the Staff Roll, instead choosing to use nicknames for each developer, Sonic Team decided to, without Sega's permission, include a hidden Japanese credit screen in the "Sonic Team Presents" screen.
 * The credits screen, in English, translates to "Program - Naka Yuuji, Plan - Yasuhara Hirokazu, Design - Ooshima Naoto, Ishiwatari (Jina) and Kataoka, Sound Produce - Nakamaru Masato, Sound Program - Kubota Hiroshi and Makino Yukifumi".
 * On all cheat codes containing C, the C's can be inputted almost anywhere during the input.