Most people assume that Sonic the Hedgehog made his home video game debut on June 23rd,
1991, when the game with his name in the title was released for the Sega Genesis.
Most people, however, are wrong.
Months before Sega's speedy blue mascot officially made his way to living rooms across America,
he made a cameo in an entirely different game.
As discovered by YouTuber Larry Bundy Jr., Sonic's first real foray into home entertainment
is a weird, unpolished, and borderline illegal project — and one that's been almost entirely
forgotten as the years have passed.
In the late '80s, Sega was in bad shape.
While the Genesis, known internationally as the Mega Drive, hit stores in 1988, two years
before Nintendo released its own 16-bit console, Sega lagged behind Nintendo in both sales
and reputation.
In Japan, the release of Super Mario Bros. 3 completely overshadowed the Genesis launch,
and Sega's current mascot, Alex Kidd, didn't resonate with audiences like Nintendo's portly
plumber.
Sega began searching for a new mascot to head up a franchise and help the company gain a
foothold in the market.
An internal Sega team known as AM8 started developing ideas, and one designer, Naoto
Ohshima, came up with a blue, fanged hedgehog that he called Mr. Needlemouse.
Unlike Mario, a middle-aged man who moved at a relatively languid pace, Mr. Needlemouse
was quick and cool.
He played guitar in a rock band.
He even had a human girlfriend named Madonna.
Most crucially, both Mr. Needlemouse and his game moved really, really fast.
Sega executives liked Mr. Needlemouse, but decided that he was a little too edgy, even
for the '90s.
A redesign ditched the fangs and the band to make him cuddlier and more appealing to
an all-ages audience, and gave him a new name, Sonic, to better reflected the character's
signature speed.
Meanwhile, development on Sonic's first solo title began.
Like Mario, Sonic leaped from platform to platform, collecting coins —or in this case,
rings — while fighting enemies and scoring power-ups.
Unlike Mario's Mushroom Kingdom, Sonic's world was full of curved surfaces and slopes, multi-tiered
pathways, and an unrelenting pace.
As development on Sonic the Hedgehog continued, developers quickly realized that they had
something special.
Sega of America's head of marketing, Al Nilsen, travelled the country, conducting demonstrations
that put Mario and Sonic head-to-head.
Roughly 80 percent of players who participated preferred Sonic.
Sonic stole the Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, while Sega made sure that Sonic graced
the covers of as many video game magazines as possible in the months leading up to release.
If you were into video games in '91, you couldn't escape Sonic.
He was everywhere.
A few months before Sonic the Hedgehog's big debut on the Genesis, the character made his
first video game appearance in Rad Mobile, a racing game produced by Sega's AM2 development
group.
It wasn't much more than a small cameo—a toy Sonic charm hanging from the mirror above
Rad Mobile's virtual dashboard — but as far as debuts go, it's not a bad one.
Like Sonic, Rad Mobile is all about speed.
But in 1991, Rad Mobile it was still an arcade-only release.
For home gaming, Sonic's first appearance didn't come from Sega at all, but a relatively
unknown developer called New Bits on the RAM.
These days, you probably know Factor 5 as the company that helped make Turrican a worldwide
success, or as the developer behind the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron flight simulators.
In the company's early days, however, it produced a number of games that shamelessly ripped
off more successful titles.
One of their first big games, Katakis, was such a blatant clone of Activision's R-Type
that Activision gave Factor 5 an ultimatum: if the company didn't develop R-Type's official
Amiga port, Activision would sue them into oblivion.
In the early 90s, Factor 5 established New Bits on the RAM, a subdivision devoted to
making small, quick games on a limited budget and tight timeline.
Unlike official Factor 5 releases, the New Bits games weren't sold at retail.
Instead, they were designed to be distributed in video game magazines.
Their first game, Quik and Silva, arrived with the June 1991 issue of Amiga Fun magazine,
which actually hit stands in May.
On the surface, it was a well-designed, low-budget platformer with eight stages and a toe-tapping
soundtrack.
Reviewers liked Quik and Silva quite a bit, praising the graphics and the "simple, wholesome
gameplay."
These days, though, it's far more notable for one of its enemies, who has blue hair,
spikes, and big, wide eyes.
That's right: one of Quik and Silva's main villains is Sonic the Hedgehog, who appeared
in the game more than a month before his official console debut.
It's not just Sonic who makes an unauthorized appearance in Quik and Silva.
Almost every enemy is borrowed from another title.
Bub, from Bubble Bobble, and Pogo, the hero of Nebulus, show up as well.
So does the ship from R-Type, and characters from Factor 5's own Turrican.
Even the new characters are borrowed from existing franchises: one enemy is just Super
Mario's head grafted onto a bouncing spring.
Fortunately for Sega, Sonic the Hedgehog quickly overshadowed Factor 5's knockoff.
When Sonic officially premiered in 1991, his game was an instant hit, sparking a franchise
that's spawned over 70 games and sold more than 85 million units, gathering insanely
dedicated fans along the way.
New Bits on the RAM and Factor 5 weren't quite as lucky.
The New Bits label only produced one other game, a platformer called Metal Law, before
disappearing.
Factor 5 became a legitimate game developer, but its success didn't last.
In 2007, their PlayStation 3 exclusive Lair was panned by critics, thanks to a control
scheme so awkward that they sent out a guide after release telling reviewers how to play
the game.
In 2009, Factor 5's American branch closed, and former employees subsequently filed a
lawsuit, accusing the company of cooking the books in order to avoid paying wages.
Still, there's some hope: in 2017, Factor 5 co-founder Julian Eggebrecht revealed that
he'd reacquired the rights to Turrican, and hinted that a Switch version might be on the
way.
It's been a while, but Factor 5 might be poised for a big return — let's just hope that
they don't need Sonic's help to do it.
Sega probably won't be as forgiving the second time.
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