Sonic

Sonic or Sonic may refer to:

Companies

Music

Science and technology

Sonic the Hedgehog (series)

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, Sonikku za Hejjihoggu) is a video game franchise created and owned by Sega. The franchise centers on a series of speed-based platform games, but several are spin-offs in different genres. The protagonist of the series is an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog named Sonic, whose peaceful life is often interrupted by the series's main antagonist, Doctor Eggman. Typically, Sonic—usually along with some of his friends, such as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles—must stop Eggman and foil any plans of world domination. The first game in the series, published in 1991, was conceived by Sega's Sonic Team division after Sega requested a mascot character; the title was a success and spawned sequels, and transformed Sega into a leading video game company during the 16-bit era in the early to mid-1990s.

Sonic Team has since developed many titles in the franchise. Prominent members of its initial staff included Naka, character designer Naoto Ohshima, and level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. Other developers of Sonic games have included Japanese Dimps, American Sega Technical Institute, Backbone Entertainment, Big Red Button Entertainment, and Sanzaru Games, Canadian BioWare, and British Sumo Digital and Traveller's Tales. While the first games in the series were side-scrolling platform games, the series has expanded into other genres such as action-adventure, fighting, racing, role-playing, and sports. Including packaged game software and downloads, the franchise has sold 335 million units as of April 2015, with the mobile game Sonic Dash being downloaded over 100 million times by June 2015, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.

Sonic the Hedgehog (character)

Sonic the Hedgehog (Japanese: ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, Hepburn: Sonikku za Hejjihoggu), trademarked Sonic The Hedgehog, is the title character and protagonist of the Sonic the Hedgehog series released by Sega, as well as numerous spin-off comics, five animated shows, and an animated OVA.

Sonic is a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog who has the ability to run at supersonic speeds and the ability to curl into a ball, primarily to attack enemies. Throughout the course of the video games, Sonic most commonly has to race through levels, collect power up rings and survive against a host of natural obstacles and minions to achieve his goal. While many individuals at Sega had a hand in Sonic's creation, programmer Yuji Naka and artist Naoto Ohshima are generally credited with the creation of the character.

The first game was released on June 23, 1991, to provide Sega with a mascot to rival Nintendo's flagship character Mario (see 1991 in video gaming). Since then, Sonic has become one of the world's best-known video game characters, with his series selling more than 80 million copies. In 2005, Sonic was one of the first game character inductees into the Walk of Game, alongside Mario and Link.

Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)

"Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)" is a 1982 song by A Flock of Seagulls, the opening song and only hit single from their second album Listen. The song exemplifies "synth-pop's spaced-out loneliness" and yearning for imagined absent lovers, and is noted for its Wall of Sound-styled layer of synthesizer padding – a "multi-layered, hypnotic song", according to AllMusic.

Unlike the band's 1982 hit "I Ran (So Far Away)", largely a United States and Australian hit, "Wishing" performed strongly in Great Britain and reached the Top 10; in the US it reached the top 40 on the U.S. Billboard charts in summer 1983. In South Africa, it was enormously popular, reaching the no. 8 position.

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Wishing (A Flock of Seagulls album)

Wishing is a compilation album by new wave band A Flock of Seagulls, released in 1996.

Track listing