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#21 Sonic the Hedgehog (inducted in 2016)
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The early 1990s were a weird, but pivotal, time for the gaming industry. While the gaming industry had bounced back, commercially, after the floor fell out from under the business in 1983, the company that made that happen, Nintendo, pretty much had an iron grip on it. Not just in the US, but in Japan and, arguably, in the world, as well.
Sure, companies like Sega and, to a lesser extent, Atari, attempted to compete with the juggernaut that was the Nintendo Entertainment System, it just wasn't happening. It would take years for another company to catch up, much less pass them, but Sega finally did it in 1991 - with the help of a blue -and very fast - hedgehog.
Sega released their 16-bit console, the Genesis (just in the U.S. as it was called the Mega Drive everywhere else, but that's a whole other story), in 1989 with an aggressive ad campaign and a bunch of arcade hits converted into cartridges for the home. The system was more powerful and faster than the NES (16-bits, baby!), but they needed a game to demonstrate it.
Enter Sonic the Hedgehog.
We could go on for hours (seriously, just ask us, we will) about the story behind this game (or check out the book Console Wars, which is awesome), but the fact of the matter is that this game was faster and more intense than anything Nintendo was offering at the time.
Even after Nintendo launched their own 16-bit system, the Super NES, Sega was still outselling them - and that was great news for third party developers.
See, Nintendo had a very strict policy when it came to letting studios that weren't Nintendo develop games for Nintendo's hardware. Very strict. Sega's success in the 16-bit market gave them another system to publish games for, forcing Nintendo to reconsider their policies.
Eventually, Nintendo "won" the early 90s "console war", but the landscape of the business had changed. And it was that little blue hedgehog that helped facilitate it.
It also doesn't hurt that the game was (and still is) a lot of fun.
