Could Sonic 1 have been successful on the SNES?

Sonic The Hedgehog is a legendary platformer from the 16-but era of gaming that still gets talked about fondly to this day. The original Sonic the Hedgehog game was released for the Sega Genesis in ’91 and was mostly created to rival the Super Mario series during the console wars of the 90’s. In terms of quality Sonic the Hedgehog looked like a more superior game in comparison to the Mario Bros trilogy. The soundtracks in Sonic the Hedgehog were more creative and memorable while providing players with faster paced gameplay than Super Mario Bros. While the original Sonic the Hedgehog title was a massive success reaching over 15 million copies in sales; it still paled in comparison to Super Mario World from ’90 which appeared on the Super NES in terms of popularity. Super Mario World had reached over 20 million copies sold on the SNES and ended up becoming the best selling game for that particular console. While Sonic the Hedgehog looked fantastic on the Sega Genesis in ’91 there are many who often wondered how it would have looked and played on the SNES. In terms of fast paced platform-like gameplay Super Nintendo saw titles like Mega Man X-X3 become very popular during the mid 90’s.

The biggest concern in relation to Sonic the Hedgehog being on the Super NES would be the console’s sound-chip and how it would affect the quality of the soundtracks for the game. When you go online and list to various SNES remixes of older Sonic songs such as Green Hill Zone, Marble Zone, Spring Yard Zone and others they all sound uniquely similar but different. While some Sonic soundtracks sound better on the SNES others do not depending on who remixes the music. The level design for an SNES version of Sonic the Hedgehog would probably look more superior due to the console having better sprites & graphics in general compared to Sega Genesis. In terms of sales its quite possible that Sonic The Hedgehog could have sold couple of million copies on the SNES; but the game would not have reached 15 million in sales on the SNES. There were games such as Zelda: Link To The Past, Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country that would have overshadowed Sonic The Hedgehog on the Super NES during the early 90’s. Also, Sonic the Hedgehog was not a Nintendo creation and similar to almost every other third party game on a Nintendo console it would played second fiddle to the likes Super Mario or The Legend Of Zelda, Kirby or Donkey Kong.