Madonna

Madonna was supposed to be a love interest for Sonic the Hedgehog during the early development of Sonic the Hedgehog (1991). She was scrapped from the final release along with other ideas, including the early idealized Sound Test with Sonic and his band.

Concept and creation

Naoto Ohshima designed Madonna as "male fantasy", who would chase Sonic around,^[1] although it hasn't been made clear what role she is supposed to play in the game.

Overview

Madonna was a blonde haired skinny human woman in a form-fitting red dress and was actually going to be Sonic's girlfriend. At some point in the early development, Madonna was dropped from the final game along with other Naoto Ohshima's ideas.

There have been two kinds of claims for the removal. Madeline Schroeder from Sega of America claims to be one who removed her from the final release as her reason being to "soften" Sonic for children and foreign countries, because she thought it was too Japanese-esque.^[1] In Summer of Sonic 2011 however, Yuji Naka stated that reason for removing her was to due the overused cliche of saving the kidnapped heroine that is also featured in the rivaling Super Mario Bros. series, so the staff team decided to change the story direction to center around the conflict between Sonic and Dr. Eggman.^[3]

While many concept illustrations of Madonna has circled around the internet for years, two concept art related to her are featured as unlockable content in Sonic Gems Collection.

In other media

Archie Comics

Main article: Madonna Garnet

In the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-offs published by Archie Comics, Madonna, full name Madonna Garnet, is an agent of G.U.N. and a member of the organization's C.L.I.P. division. She first appeared in Sonic Super Digest #12, where she reviewed Dr. Julian Snively's history with G.U.N.

Trivia

• In an episode "Sonic is Running" of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the look of Sonic's female disguise to fool Robotnik was similar to Madonna, but only the hairstyle was different.
  • Also in episode "The Mystery of the Missing Hi-tops", one of Harry the Hucker's ties for sale shows blond woman in a short red outfit which closely looks like Madonna.
  • Additionally, Breezie seems to resemble a hedgehog version of Madonna because they both wear the same clothes.
• Madonna may generally be based on the real-life performer with same name.
• One of Sally's prototype designs was a human woman with blonde hair that looked a bit like Madonna.

References