Last year, Nintendo, the gaming giant announced that they’d be re-releasing their classic 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System with modern specifications. Which, to the surprise of no one, were sold out immediately when it went on sale on November 11, last year.
Not even a week after the announcement of the re-releasing of classic 8-bit gaming console, it was said that Nintendo also took pre-orders for the 16-bit Sega Genesis. It happened because of the craze of the gaming console in Brazil. Given that the gaming console’s biggest star game, Sonic the Hedgehog which turned 29 in June 2011. It was the best time to re-release one of the 90s best video game machines.
For those people who forgot or were too young to experience Sonic Mania as a kid, Sonic was the man, the real superhero of the 90s. Sega has sold more than 140 million copies of Sonic games in the past decade. The sonic character has also been a part of many successful comic books and many animated series.
Well, we can talk about the success of Sonic here all day long. But today we want to talk about Sonic as a cartoon character specifically. You might not have realized that in the 90s, Jaleel White, the actor most famously known for portraying Steve Urkel on the American sitcom, Family Matters, he was also the voice behind Sonic in the Sonic Cartoon series.
About Jaleel White
Jaleel Ahmad White is an American comedian, actor, writer, and producer.
It was in 1989 when he was cast in the role of Steve Urkel on the ABC’s sitcom Family Matters. Though the character was initially intended to be a one-time guest appearance, audiences liked the character so much that it became a regular member of the show.
The series was broadcasted for nine seasons, out of which seven seasons were aired on ABC, and two seasons were broadcasted on CBS. White was again portraying Urkel for the first time since 1998 in the Scooby-Doo and Guess who tv series in 2019.
White is also famous as the first English-speaking actor to voice the character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Jaleel White is still very much part of the show-biz industry. He has been part of a number TV series in the past few years like Survivor’s Remorse, Castle, Hawaii Five-O, and many others. To many of his followers, he’ll always be the uber-nerd Steve Urkel, but for the gaming fans, Jaleel White will always be the real voice behind the Sonic the Hedgehog.
Bonus fact
The glasses Urkel wore in the Family matters, were a pair of Jaleel’s dad’s glasses. When he auditioned for Urkel’s role, he wanted to wear old-style black glasses with tape in the middle, but couldn’t find them, so he just grabbed his dad’s glasses instead. They were over-sized because his dad was a dentist. And he used those glasses to keep random particles from flying into his eyes while he worked on people’s teeth.