Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure
In August 1999, SNK announced that they were collaborating with Sega to develop a "Sonic the Hedgehog" game for their Neo Geo Pocket Color handheld system. The game was developed by SNK, with supervision from Yuji Naka and Sonic Team at Sega. This marked the first time Sega was directly involved in the development of a "Sonic" game for a non-Sega platform. The team planned for "Sonic Pocket Adventure" to be a return to the classic 2D gameplay style found in the "Sonic" games on the Sega Genesis. In particular, many game design and visual elements are borrowed from "Sonic 2". The game's background music tracks are also 8-bit renditions of music from "Sonic 3". "Sonic Pocket Adventure" was released first in North America on December 4, 1999. SNK released a system bundle with the game included for the holiday season. The game was released in Japan two weeks later, and in Europe in February 2000.
Sega
For the North American market, where the console was renamed Genesis, former Atari executive and new Sega of America CEO Michael Katz developed a two-part approach to build sales. The first part involved a marketing campaign to challenge Nintendo head-on and emphasize the more arcade-like experience available on the Genesis,with slogans including "Genesis does what Nintendon't". Since Nintendo owned the console rights to most arcade games of the time, the second part involved creating a library of recognizable games which used the names and likenesses of celebrities and athletes. Nonetheless, Sega had difficulty overcoming Nintendo's ubiquity in homes. Tasked by Nakayama to sell one million units in the first year, Katz and Sega of America sold only 500,000.As Sega sought a flagship series to compete with Nintendo's Mario series, and a character to serve as a company mascot, artist Naoto Ohshima designed "a teal hedgehog with red shoes that he called Mr. Needlemouse". This character was renamed Sonic the Hedgehog, creating one of the best-selling video game franchises in history. The gameplay of "Sonic the Hedgehog" originated with a tech demo created by Yuji Naka, who had developed an algorithm that allowed a sprite to move smoothly on a curve by determining its position with a dot matrix. Naka's prototype was a platform game that involved a fast-moving character rolling in a ball through a long winding tube; this concept was fleshed out with Ohshima's character design and levels conceived by designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. Sonic's blue color was chosen to match Sega's cobalt blue logo. His shoes were inspired by Michael Jackson's boots, and his personality by Bill Clinton's "can-do" attitude.