We all know the Blue Hedgehog for who is he. Mario’s rival in many occasions, Sonic the Hedgehog was originally meant to be a boy.

Speaking to John Szczepaniak for his third volume of “Untold History of Japanese Game Developers”, Sonic’s designer, Naoto Ohshima, said that he originally envisioned Sonic as a human boy.

I created the first design proposal for Sonic after three years in the design department. Although it wasn’t Sonic then – the main character was a human boy.

However, we all knew how things went and in an internal design competition, Sonic gained its final form, which is the Blue Hedgehog that we know today. You can check out Szczepaniak’s book on Amazon here.