[2] Sonic the Hedgehog, designed for fast gameplay, was influenced by games by Super Mario series creator Shigeru Miyamoto.

Sonic the Hedgehog received positive reviews for its visuals, audio and gameplay and is widely considered one of the greatest video games.

The gameplay centers on Sonic the Hedgehog's ability to run at high speed through levels that include springs, slopes, bottomless pits and vertical loops.

[4] The player must also avoid touching spikes, falling into bottomless pits, being crushed by moving walls or platforms, and drowning, which may be prevented by breathing air bubbles from vents.

[6] At the start of the game, the player is given three lives, which may be lost if Sonic collides with hazardous enemies or objects while in possession of no rings, falls to the bottom of the level screen, or exceeds an act's ten-minute time limit.

In these levels, the player earns a number of continues for each multiple of 50 rings collected, but the main goal is to obtain the Chaos Emerald hidden within the maze.

[5][6] In his attempt to steal the six Chaos Emeralds and harness their power, Dr. Ivo Robotnik[d] has trapped the animal inhabitants of South Island inside aggressive robots and stationary metal capsules.

[18] His shoes had buckles through the inspiration of Michael Jackson's boots on the album cover for Bad and the red and white color scheme of Santa Claus, whom Ohshima saw as the most "famous character in the world".

[18] With a satisfying protagonist established, Sega turned to the programmer Yuji Naka, who had impressed them with his work on Phantasy Star and the Genesis port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

He became the lead designer due to his greater experience, and found the way to make the game playable with only one button by having Sonic do damage by jumping.

[28] The loop running was implemented in a tech demo by Naka, who developed an algorithm allowing a sprite to move smoothly on a curve by determining its position with a dot matrix.

[29] Yasuhara originally intended to work on the game for three months due to the delay of his planned move to the United States by the outbreak of the Gulf War, but was engrossed in the project for nearly a year.

Admiring the simplicity of Miyamoto's mechanics in complex environments, Naka decided that Sonic would be controlled with only a directional pad for movement and a single button for jumping.

Its checkered ground was inspired by 3D image rendering from computers, an idea Naka obtained from Sega developer Yu Suzuki, who used this technique with Space Harrier.

[28] Sega director Fujio Minegishi had connections to the music industry and suggested his friend Yūzō Kayama write the Sonic score.

However, Sonic Team did not think Kayama's music would fit, and so commissioned Masato Nakamura, bassist and songwriter of the J-pop band Dreams Come True.

The first disc features original tracks from both games, the second contains Nakamura's demo recordings before they were programmed into the Genesis, and the third has songs by Dreams Come True and their associated Akon remixes.

The global head of marketing, Al Nilsen, and the senior product manager, Madeleine Schroeder, became involved in redesigning Sonic for American audiences.

[46] Gameplay as a whole is simplified; the level design is flatter and has a larger focus on exploration, with no vertical loops, and Sonic cannot re-collect his rings after being hit.

This version was developed by Christian "Taxman" Whitehead and Simon Thomley of Headcannon from scratch using the Retro Engine, previously used in the 2011 remaster of Sonic CD.

This port features several enhancements, such as widescreen graphics, the optional ability to Spin Dash, an additional bonus stage, a time attack mode and the unlockable option to play as Tails or Knuckles; it additionally features a heavily expanded debug mode, which allows for use of unused elements and elements from more recent games (such as the characters' super forms).

[84] U.S. Gold acquired the rights to make a version of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari ST personal computers, but these went unreleased.

[5] Frank Ladoire of Génération 4 [fr] believed Sonic the Hedgehog was part of a new generation of games that demonstrate that the Mega Drive is capable of "beautiful things" in the technical department.

[42] The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk) of Dragon claimed the graphics made Sonic a possible contender for the best game of 1991[91] and GameZone called the animation "some of the smoothest and fastest ... ever seen".

[92] Rand said about the gameplay in general that it "plays like a dream";[5] according to GameZone it would enchant players for hours,[124] and Boogie Man praised Sonic Team's ability to provide an engaging experience primarily from running and jumping.

[141] Sonic the Hedgehog inspired similar platformers starring animal mascots, including Bubsy,[142] Aero the Acro-Bat,[12] James Pond 3,[143] Earthworm Jim,[144] Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel,[145] and Radical Rex.

[146] "Animal with attitude" games carried over to the next generation of consoles, with the developers of Crash Bandicoot and Gex citing Sonic as a major inspiration.

It has generated dozens of additional games and a large cast of recurring characters, keeping Sonic and Robotnik (later renamed as Eggman) mainstays, and continued beyond Sega's exit from the console industry after the Dreamcast.

[150] The series has ventured from platformers to fighting,[151] racing,[152] role-playing,[153] and sports games,[154] and also expanded into anime,[155] manga,[156] cartoons[155] comic books,[157] novels,[158] and toys.

[159] Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time,[160] with over 140 million copies sold or downloaded worldwide across consoles, PC's, mobile phones and tablets by May 2014.