Over at his NFG Games site, the always geeked out NeoGeoman (is that what his parents named him?) has posted an excellent history of Sonic The Hedgehog sprites, all 8 zillion of them.

Of course, he already did Mario sprites in a similar way, so this latest article is not a massive surprise. "Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog didn't go through as many evolutionary stages as Nintendo's Mario. Fewer Sonic games were released than Mario games, over a shorter timespan, and they were - at least in the 2D era - confined to two consoles."

He continues: "Sega's MegaDrive (Genesis) was where the blue rodent got his start, but in a move unusual in the games industry almost all of the Sonic games were ported backwards to Sega's Master System console, a generation of hardware older than the MegaDrive. This move is not surprising when you consider Sega's massive following in Brazil, Europe and Australia where, even as late as 2003, the Master System was seeing new releases." [Via IC, where Mr. NFG is a co-editor! Also, see some neat Japanese game videos.]