Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game franchise produced by Sega centering on a series of high-speed platform games. Sonic, the protagonist, is an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog with supersonic speed. Typically, Sonic must stop antagonist Doctor Eggman's plans for world domination, often helped by his friends, such as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles. The first "Sonic the Hedgehog" game, released in 1991, was conceived by Sega's Sonic Team division after Sega requested a mascot character to compete with Nintendo's mascot Mario. Its success spawned many sequels and helped Sega become one of the leading video game companies during
Sonic hedgehog B. Lewis, identified genes that control the segmentation pattern of the "Drosophila" embryos. The "hh" loss of function mutant phenotype causes the embryos to be covered with denticles, small pointy projections resembling the spines of a hedgehog. Investigations aimed at finding a "hedgehog" equivalent in vertebrates by Philip Ingham, Andrew P. McMahon, and Clifford Tabin, revealed three homologous genes. Two of these, "desert hedgehog" and "Indian hedgehog", were named for species of hedgehogs, while "sonic hedgehog" was named after Sonic the Hedgehog, the protagonist of the eponymous video game franchise. The name was devised by Robert Riddle, who was a