Did you hear? Sonic the Hedgehog got picked up by comic book publisher IDW. That means it’s only a matter of time until the furry blue runner’s first really weird. Our take on the 'OKNOTOK 1997 2017' reissue that pairs the original album with B-sides and three never-released songs Ranked on a scale from 1 to 10, the trending. Sonic Adventure (

Sonic the Hedgehog (1. Sonic the Hedgehog. North American box art. The game was first released in North America in June 1. PAL regions and Japan the following month. The game features an anthropomorphic hedgehog named Sonic in a quest to defeat Dr.

Eggman, a scientist who has imprisoned animals in robots and stolen the magical Chaos Emeralds. Sonic the Hedgehog's gameplay involves collecting rings as a form of health and a simple control scheme, with jumping and attacking controlled by a single button. The game's development began in 1.

Luke Plunkett is a Contributing Editor based in Canberra, Australia. He has written a book on cosplay, designed a game about airplanes, and also runs cosplay.kotaku.com.

Sega ordered its AM8 development team to create a game featuring a mascot for the company. After considering a number of suggestions, the developers decided on a blue hedgehog with spikes along his head and spine and renamed themselves . Sonic the Hedgehog, designed for fast gameplay, was influenced by the games of Super Mario series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto. Sonic the Hedgehog uses a novel technique that allows Sonic's sprite to roll along curved scenery, which originated in a tech demo created by the game's programmer, Yuji Naka. The game was well received by critics, with praise given to its visuals, audio, and gameplay. The game was also commercially successful, establishing the Genesis as a key player in the 1.

Nintendo and their Super Nintendo Entertainment System console. The game has been ported a number of times, and inspired several clones, a successful franchise, and adaptations into other media. In an attempt to steal the six Chaos Emeralds and harness their power, the game's antagonist, Dr. Ivo Robotnik. The player controls Sonic, who aims to halt Robotnik's plans by freeing his animal friends and collecting the emeralds himself.

If not all the emeralds are collected, Robotnik taunts the player while juggling any of the Chaos Emeralds not collected by the player. The gameplay centers around Sonic's ability to run at high speed through levels that include springs, slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops. Robotnik has trapped animals inside; destroying one frees the creature, but is not necessary to complete the game. This can be performed by jumping in the air or rolling on the ground. If he is hit without holding any rings, he loses a life.

At the end of each zone's third act, the player confronts Dr. Robotnik, who pilots a different vehicle each time, in a boss fight. Lampposts that act as checkpoints allow Sonic to return to the most recently activated post when he loses a life.

In these levels, the player earns a continue with each 5. Chaos Emerald at the end of the maze without colliding with any of the . Sega had competition with Nintendo, who was dominant at the time (particularly after the release of the successful Super Mario Bros. The Art Of Blizzard Entertainment. Development emphasized speed, so AM8 eliminated character designs not associated with fast animals, as well as fast creatures like kangaroos and squirrels. The team narrowed its search to animals that can roll into a ball, their idea for an attacking move. Designers then realized that this would not seem aggressive enough, so they focused on two animals with spikes: armadillos and hedgehogs.

He was working with Naka with a prototype game, and Ohshima was thinking of design ideas with the toy and stationery department. Before Sonic was chosen, other characters, including a rabbit and a bearded man who would ultimately become Dr Robotnik, were created. One summer, Ohshima went on vacation to New York, taking sketches with him. He went to Central Park and asked locals for their opinions on them, and Sonic was the favorite. Ohshima explained that this was because he wanted support for his ideas. On the name, Ohshima stated that .

His shoes were colored red through the inspiration of Michael Jackson's boots on the album cover for Bad and the outfit of Santa Claus, whom Ohshima saw as the most . Needlemouse. Sega of America also expressed concerns that most Americans would not know what a hedgehog is and initially proposed a full- scale recreation of the character, but compromised with Sonic Team to simply make design changes. Catching items and throwing them caused the action's rhythm to break. Naka stated that the rabbit was not suitable for his game engine, and he also wanted the game to be playable with only one button. Hirokazu Yasuhara came onto the team to supervise Naka and Ohshima and develop levels. 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. The trio came up with the idea of him rolling into a ball.

After the hedgehog character was chosen, many characters were redrawn, and the team agreed on the environments visual complexity, with particular focus on the colors. After this, four people came onto the team to speed development up. Sonic's default speed was set to that of Mario while running. Increasing Sonic's speed caused animation problems. Naka solved the problem by developing an algorithm that enabled the animation to retain fluidity. Sonic was able to cross levels quickly without the animation slowing down, and all that was left was the optimization of the game's speed to adhere to the staff's expectations. The team then noticed that different people had different perceptions of the game's speed: some believed it was too fast, which caused disagreements.

As a result, the game was slowed down. Naka's prototype was a platform game with a fast- moving character rolling in a ball through a long, winding tube, and this concept was fleshed out with Ohshima's character designs and levels by Yasuhara.

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. He also wanted his creation to be more action- oriented than the Mario series. The developers' efforts were rewarded; and according to Naka, the game had the fastest- ever character speed in a video game and a rotation effect in the special stages that had been considered impossible on the console. A two- player mode appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1. Sonic's sidekick Miles .

He left the company shortly after the game's release, although Sega of America hired him later. Before leaving, however, he defied Sega's prohibition of developer credits by displaying a few names in black text on a black background, identifiable only by looking at the game's code. It took him around eight months to develop Green Hill Zone as he kept restarting from scratch. The backgrounds was also a challenge due to the game's speed causing them to give an impression of going backwards.

According to Ohshima, Robotnik was based on Humpty Dumpty. Sonic Team wanted the level to portray the character correctly. Its checkered ground was inspired by 3. D image rendering from computers, an idea Naka obtained from Yu Suzuki, who used this technique with Space Harrier.

The development team read each issue of Famitsu to stay informed of what their rivals were doing so they can avoid making the same mistakes. He wanted to do it because Sega said the game was going to be better than Mario, and was inspired by the team's desire to outperform Nintendo.

He adapted the Genesis' sound chip, and believed the hardest part of creating the soundtrack was the number of sounds that could play concurrently: he was limited to four, and said that his lack of knowledge of music on computers made it . Nakamura wrote the soundtrack concurrently with . The first disc features original tracks from both games, the second contains Nakamura's original demo recordings before being programmed into the Genesis, and the third has songs by Dreams Come True and their associated Akon remixes. At the show, Sonic the Hedgehog was believed to be the most impressive game shown, and won the CES award for innovation. The global head of marketing, Al Nilsen, became involved, and playtested the game across the United States with Mario fans: they were shown Mario and then played Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic tractor beam that can pull an object using sound waves is 3- D printable. A Ph. D student helped develop the first single- sided acoustic tractor beam - the first realization of a device that can trap and pull an object using sound waves from only one direction. Dr Asier Marzo, who was a Ph. D student at the Public University of Navarre, Spain, at the time, helped develop the beam. Now Dr Marzo, who is now a research assistant at the University of Bristol, has adapted the technology to be 3- D printable by anyone and is explained in a how- to video.

Scroll down for videos 'It can levitate small plastics; it can also levitate a fly and small biological samples. It's quite handy,' said Dr Asier Marzo, the lead researcher of the team HOW DOES IT WORK The tractor beam generates sound from a single source. The device has a metamaterial - a piece of matter with lots of tubes of different lengths  The sound passes through these tubes and exits, creating a tractor beam. The tractor beam can attract particles towards it and hold them static, including small plastics and flies The research, which will be published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters, will outline how the sonic beam was built.

Although using sound waves to levitate and move objects is not a new concept, this technology isn't just using sound to push objects - it can pull objects too, and is able to pull small beads and even insects. Dr Marzo said: 'The most important thing is that it can attract the particle towards the source.'It's very easy to push particles from the source, but what's hard is to pull them toward the source; to attract the particles. It's quite handy. Or what happens if we levitate bacteria? Said Dr Marzo.'For instance, they discovered salmonella is three times more . The technology raises hopes that it may one day be possible to realise similar technology capable of capturing larger objects too like in Star Trek (pictured)However, even for the full lab implementation where the group traps heavier objects and even liquids, trapping objects larger than half the wavelength of sound still poses a challenge.

For practical frequencies, just above what humans can hear, this limits the size of trappable objects to a few millimeters. CHALLENGES IN MAKING THE DEVICE The expensive parts of the device were those that shape the sound waves, manipulating how and where they interfere to create the object- trapping area just above the array. The tractor beam generates sound from a single source which passes through a metamaterial, a piece of matter with lots of tubes of different lengths. When the sound exits these tubes, it creates a tractor beam.