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Today we know that Sonic is such a popular character that young generations manage to identify him better than other video game icons. The idea of the blue hedgehog is well rooted in popular culture, but the original proposal was very different, since Sonic was going to be a human and they just shared the first images.
If you’re a fan of SEGA’s mascot, or if you’ve been following LEVEL UP for several years, you may remember that artist and game designer Naoto Ohshima revealed that sonic the hedgehog it was going to be very different, since its main character would not be a hedgehog, but a boy. But he didn’t share images of the project, so we had to figure that out.
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Sonic was human? Sketches reveal its former appearance
Well, recently Ohshima shared more details about it and released 2 images of human Sonic. But don’t think that the result was going to be something disturbing; not at all, since the design he was going to have was cartoony and very cheerful.
The sketches reveal much more, as we can see that the game that ultimately became sonic was originally called Twin Stars and that not only did he have a human Sonic as the protagonist, but apparently his red-haired twin was going to appear next to him, maybe human Knuckles?
The enemies would be very different, as the opponents of these very expressive twins would be inanimate objects that would come to life. They didn’t have names, instead Ohshima referred to them simply as what they looked like, bats, gloves, and stones, for example.
In case you missed it: sonic prime he remembered the second and unknown name of the blue hedgehog.
Why didn’t human Sonic come true?
According to Ohshima, who kindly answered fans’ questions on Twitter, the twins from Twin Stars they would be tasked with protecting the Dream World from the malevolent villain Nightmare World Thirteen, whose name was used because it is commonly associated with bad luck. Ohsima explained that the sketch of this specific character would be different if the project was approved, since it would make the design of him related to the number itself.
The gameplay of this project would be focused on speed and loops, something that he kept intact in his transition to Sonic. Clearly the world of Twin Stars also stayed in sonic the hedgehog, because we can see the classic spiral of Green Hill Zone. According to Ohshima, one of the pillars of the idea was smooth and circular terrain, something that contrasted with the rectilinear forms of the time.
The project itself, Ohshima’s idea, was approved. However, it then underwent a metamorphosis in which the title and the characters mainly changed to be what we know today as sonic the hedgehog.
Any fan of SEGA fans might think that Ohshima’s idea ended up being split on the one hand. sonic and on the other hand in Nights into Dreams…1996 game for the SEGA Saturn.
However, not the other way around, as Ohshima pointed out that Twin Stars was proposed in 1989, several years before the first game of NIGHTSwhich debuted in 1996.
Ohshima also refers that the idea was originally his, but with the help of other colleagues from Sonic Team it became what it is now. sonic. Something interesting is that before Sonic was a hedgehog and a human he was a rabbit, since he was the first character that Ohshima thought of for Twin Stars. Ultimately, the artist came up with Sonic in an attempt to capture the image of SEGA.
old sketches of Twin Stars came to light
After seeing these sketches of Ohshima, the Sonic community asked if there would be more art of this proposal, to which Ohshima responded negatively, since he had lost it.
However, luckily the former SEGA member who coincided with Ohshima and other SEGA members known as tetsu_skytree on Twitter and is now dedicated to photographing the Sky Tree in Japan.
This creative celebrated the proposal that Ohshima made to him 30 years ago and the best thing is that he shared never-before-seen images of Twins Special Extermination of Demons – Wake Up When You Get Scared!!, the original and provisional full name of this project. The creative refers that there were a total of 22 pages that include sketches and descriptions of gameplay and control.
You can see them below.
What did you think of the proposal? Twin Stars? Tell us in the comments.
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