When Sonic the Hedgehog emerged onto the gaming scene in 1991, Sega aimed to use their speedy mascot to compete with Disney, according to the head of Sonic Team.
In an interview with Crunchyroll, Sonic Team director Takashi Iizuka discussed Sega’s aspirations in the ‘90s.
“You know, back when they were making Sonic originally on the Genesis, the passion inside of the team, and what really kind of drove people to go out there and really make Sonic this amazing thing was… they wanted to beat Disney,” Iizuka said.
“They wanted to have content that was gonna be far above and beyond what Disney was doing. And this is, you know, back in the early ’90s. That was the passion that they had when they were making Sonic and bringing Sonic to market.
“I think that’s gonna still kind of carry over. Disney is amazing. They are still up there, and that’s probably the goal that we’re going to keep aspiring to. They are far, far away, right? 10 years from now, it’s like, that’s still what we want. We want to take out number one, because they are so good and so up there.
“That’s what we want to aspire to.”
While Disney remains one of the entertainment industry’s dominant forces, the Sonic film series has enjoyed notable success at the global box office in recent years. Between 2020 and 2024, the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog film trilogy grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide – each installment outperformed each Walt Disney Animation Studios release during the same period before the billion-dollar success of Moana 2 in 2024.
Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto is often described by the Nintendo fanbase as the “Walt Disney of the video game world” – an interesting parallel given Mario’s fierce rivalry with Sonic in the ’90s. In 2023, Miyamoto said he was “very honored to be compared with Disney.”
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Written by Reece Heather
A veteran Zelda Universe editor and First-class journalism graduate, Reece emerged with a Nintendo 64 and a lifelong obsession after a narrow escape from Santa’s Naughty List in 1998. Outside of games, he’s reading Punisher comics, being bossed around by his cocker spaniel, and cornering innocent bystanders to rant about the importance of game preservation.
