Before I discovered anime, there was another nerdy passion that entered my life: video games. While that journey started with Nintendo and a plumber named Mario, it took off at super sonic speed in the 90s when my stepbrother got a SEGA Genesis. For me, the Genesis felt like the more “grown-up” console, probably because I had to ask my stepbrother if I could go into his room and play one game in particular: Sonic the Hedgehog . From there, Sonic became one of my favorites, but it wasn’t just the video games that solidified my love for the fastest thing alive . I read the comics. I watched any and all forms of animation from Sonic SatAM to Sonic X . Sonic was, frankly, on all the kinds of media I liked (kinda like Pokémon , now that I think about it), and it's been that way for decades. As amazing as that is for me to think about, there’s someone else who’s even more surprised with how far Sonic’s bright red shoes have gone: Sonic the Hedgehog Creative Director Takashi Iizuka. “I've been with Sonic, really, longer than I've been with my own children,” Iizuka said in our interview.