Tom Kalinske loves Sonic the Hedgehog. And he’ll tell you all about it.

Minutes into our interview, he’s listing the Sonic memorabilia in his home office: four plush Sonic dolls, one Tails plush doll, a gold-laminated Sonic the Hedgehog 2 cartridge, multiple Sega Genesis consoles — all that still work, he points out — and even a can of Sonic Soda from Japan he got in the ‘90s, which, unfortunately, is leaking now-spoiled liquid. This is just one of the many rooms in his house, he says, where there’s “lots” of Sonic merchandise.

He has all this decorating his Bay Area home because, as he tells it, the Sonic series has had a huge impact on his 30-plus year career in the video game and toy industries. As Sega of America’s CEO from 1990 to 1996, Kalinske led a team that marketed and sold the character, and the console hosting his first four mainline games, the Sega Genesis, to the United States. An immensely successful effort, the work helped turn Sega from an underdog of the industry into a titan of the console wars. And at the front of it all was Sonic: a blue hedgehog that was cooler and faster than anything else on the market.

“I think we probably would have been successful at a modest level without Sonic. I mean, it would have been better than it was, you know, before I joined the company, but I don’t think we could have possibly passed Nintendo in share of market,” Kalinke says. “And I don’t think we would have reached about a billion and a half in revenue in the United States and 900 million in Europe without Sonic. So Sonic contributed tremendously to that.”

He speculates the series may have been responsible for over 50 percent of the Genesis’ success. “[And] certainly that made me a lot more successful,” he adds, laughing.

But Sega’s meteoric rise didn’t have an extremely long tail. The Genesis’ successor, the Sega Saturn, was a commercial failure due to — among other things — a lack of proper Sonic titles. And when the hedgehog re-emerged on later consoles, his games didn’t fare as well, with many receiving poor critical and commercial reception.

Constantly changing, the series once built all around going fast has had a lot of trouble keeping its footing in the 25-plus years since its launch. We recently caught up with Kalinske to get his take on where the series went after he left Sega.

Jumping ship

Under Kalinske’s direction, Sega and Sonic saw tremendous success on Genesis stateside. But differing strategies between the American and Japanese branches of the company quickly doused that fire when it came time to unveil the Sega Saturn.

Infamously, Kalinske took the stage at Sega’s 1995 E3 press conference to announce that not only would the Saturn cost $399, $100 dollars more than its competitor’s then-upcoming console, Sony's PlayStation, but that it was available immediately in select stores — months before it was originally announced to launch. It was Sega’s rushed defense against the PlayStation, and, as far as he’s concerned, "the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business."

The fact that Sega Japan wasn’t rushing to put its mascot character on the console, too, didn’t help things, which frustrated Kalinske, as the series was a force to be reckoned with in Europe and the United States. But, not seeing similar numbers outside its own window, he says, Sega Japan stopped listening to its American counterpart, meddling with a proven formula for success. Kalinske believes Sonic’s lesser appearance on the Saturn, in part, caused the machine to tank.

“[I] think they resented the fact that we changed him from being aggressive, and having fangs and [a] very sharp personality ...”

“I think they just didn’t understand how powerful Sonic was in the western world,” Kalinske continues. “I mean, it’s kind of a strange thing to say, because they could certainly see the sales numbers and the amount of revenue that was produced, and the passion that players and users had towards the Sonic character, and the TV shows, and the comics and, you know, everything else that [came with] the licensing.”

In 1996, the two attempts Sega finally did make at bringing an original Sonic game to the console were far from successful, though. Sonic X-Treme, the first attempt to bring the character into full 3D, developed by a branch of Sega America called the Sega Technical Institute, was plagued with development issues and ultimately cancelled. Sonic 3D Blast, an isometric platformer developed by Traveller's Tales and Sonic Team, received middling critical reception.

There’s something else Kalinske also considers during our chat, something that may have caused Sega Japan to ignore its mascot character during the Saturn era: an inability to bury the hatchet.

“... to being soft and friendly. I think they resented that.”

Early into development of the first Sonic The Hedgehog game, series artist Naoto Ohshima designed a character much more aggressive than Sonic ultimately ended up being. He had fangs, a busty girlfriend named Madonna and fronted a rock band. Sega America, fearing it wouldn’t be able to market the character globally, went to work softening him, ditching the girlfriend, removing the fangs and breaking up the band. According to Kalinske, Sega Japan wasn’t happy with the character’s new look, pushing back whenever it could.

“[I] think they resented the fact that we changed him from being aggressive, and having fangs and [a] very sharp personality — and to some degree a menacing personality — to being soft and friendly,” he says. “I think they resented that. But I don’t know [if] I’d carry it so far as to why they didn’t do the things that should have been done. I think it might have been part of it, however.”

After multiple fumbles with the Saturn, Sega tried to reinvent itself with its next console, the Sega Dreamcast, and its first tentpole Sonic games in years: the Adventure series. The next two entries into the franchise, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, saw a fully-voiced Sonic, full of personality and attitude. The big-budget games finally brought the series into full 3D, introduced multiple playable characters and had multiple intertwining narratives. It seemed Sega learned from its lessons and was making a real attempt to focus the spotlight back on its hedgehog.

But while, yes, Sonic was back, his issues were far from over.

Going overboard

While Sega was making what appeared to be an honest attempt at bringing its flagship character back to the success it once had on the Sega Genesis, Kalinske had already moved on to the next chapter in his career, and he wasn’t looking back. By the time Sega released the Dreamcast and the Adventure games, Kalinske wasn’t keeping up with the company anymore.

“I really wasn’t involved or aware of all that was going on after I left [Sega],” Kalinske says. “Particularly the three or four years after I left, I was really just so busy I couldn’t follow it.”

After leaving Sega, the company Knowledge Universe brought Kalinske on board as its president. There, he oversaw investments into over 35 different companies, all based around education. Most notably, Kalinske invested into the children’s learning company Leapfrog, in which he also became the CEO in 1997. He remained with Knowledge Universe until 2005, and subsequently left Leapfrog in 2006.

“There’s this big, dark Sonic character with a machine gun in his hands. I mean, what the hell is that? That’s not Sonic The Hedgehog.”

At the same time, Sega was seeing some success with the Dreamcast, but not much -- especially compared to its competitors’ consoles. Sonic Adventure became the Dreamcast’s best selling game, selling 2.5 million units, but not many other games were able to reach a similar high water mark. Now recognized as being ahead of its time, featuring experimental, artistic games, the Dreamcast’s poor software sales forced Sega out of the console business.

The Adventure games took the Sonic series in multiple different directions. Sonic was given a personality, a voice and entered three dimensions. But, coming with him was a cast of secondary playable characters, such as series mainstays Tails and Knuckles, and newcomers Big The Cat, Rouge The Bat and E-102 Gamma. Each character had his or her different play styles and stories, and, for the most part, wasn't all about the series’ signature speed. Later games in the series continued this trend, receiving poor critical reception, and some fans wished the series would return to its roots.

Kalinske, out of touch with where the series went after his departure, was left with some strong opinions after a recent encounter with a statue of Shadow the Hedgehog, a character introduced in Sonic Adventure 2.

“[I] walked into a Sega office last year I guess it was — maybe more than a year ago — and there’s this big, dark Sonic character with a machine gun in his hands. I mean, what the hell is that? That’s not Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic The Hedgehog doesn’t need a machine gun, and why [is he all of the sudden] all black instead of blue? So, there’s a lot of things that were done that didn’t make sense to me as I started [getting] back into it and went to Comic Con last year and saw some of the different things they were doing. You know, it just didn’t make sense to me [for] the Sonic characters,” Kalinske says. “I think when you build a brand and a character, you really have to stick with it, and stick with what made that character great, and don’t mess around with the key attributes of the character or the character’s personality.”

That said, Kalinske does recognize there’s no need to remake a game over and over for 25 years; some experimentation and iteration is fine, in his opinion. But to the extent Sega’s taken the series, Kalinske says, “I think they kind of went overboard with it.”

“We all felt certain a few years ago [that] ‘Damn. We could have gone back in and fixed this thing.’”

There were times, he continues, that former Sega of America employees, disheartened by what they were seeing with the Sonic series, would talk about going back, trying to fix what was happening, to rebuild the series to what it once was.

“We get together every now and then. And I do recall a few years ago all of us were together and we were lamenting about, ‘How the Hell could they do this to Sonic? How could they change it to being not perceived in a positive way by the audience that loved him so much,’” he says. “We’ve had that discussion quite a bit over the years.”

Kalisnke says he also thinks there were numerous other great Sega properties the company mistakenly let fall by the wayside. “[I think Sega] kind of lost their way,” he says. “Sonic’s great, but there’s also great properties inside Sega. Overall franchises that nothing much has been done with here [recently].”

“It may be too late now, given the age that we’re reaching, but we all felt certain a few years ago [that] ‘Damn. We could have gone back in and fixed this thing’ … But, you know, that’s probably just wishful thinking on our parts.”

But, Sega is trying to do just that for them, making another attempt at bringing the Sonic series back to its former glory. This time, though, with less experimentation and more backtracking and reflection.

“Let’s just be hopeful”

The Sonic series has had somewhat of an about-face in recent years. The official Sonic Twitter account, run by social media manager Aaron Webber, is self-referential, aware of its shortcomings and makes light of the fact that Sonic has been more or less a punchline for the game industry. Furthermore, Sega recently announced Sonic Mania, a return to form for the series visually and mechanically, adopting the look and gameplay of the original Genesis games. On the surface, it looks as if the company is paying attention to what its fans have been asking for, all the while remaining fully aware of where it’s gone wrong in the past.

Kalinske, for one, remains hopeful for the future of Sonic The Hedgehog. He points to Webber, bringing up his affinity for the company and series he works for. “First of all, he’s been there a long time, so he does understand the entire history,” he says. “And I think it’s good for him to reflect back on [it and say], ‘See, here’s the things that the company did that didn’t work out, and yeah, we should return to some of the things that did do well in the past. And we’re going to, and bring them forward in the future.’”

His own time talking to Webber and other current Sega of America employees about where they hope to take things, he says, keeps him confident for the future. But that’s not to say he doesn’t have his own ideas about where the series could go. According to Kalinske, marrying old and new may be the way to go with Sonic — maintaining the series’ core speed, but bringing it to new, innovative technologies, for example.

“Well, I jokingly said the other day, I’d love to see a Sonic AR version and do something on phones with AR and Sonic The Hedgehog. But it would probably cause people walk into poles or run into buildings or something, so maybe that’s not such a great idea,” he says. “And then I can hardly wait for the day that VR gets inexpensive enough for us all to really enjoy it. Imagine a Sonic world where you’re turning around and he’s whizzing around you. I mean, it would be a pretty amazing experience, I think. … I think it [could] be a very interesting exploration and development path. But I know all that costs a lot of money, but I think that Sega still has that. And who knows? It could turn out to be something great, and certainly we could all use that right now.”

Time will tell if the Sonic series will ever reach the peaks of success it once called home when Kalinske oversaw it. And whether or not Sega can reclaim what made the Genesis games special in fans’ eyes with Sonic Mania remains to be seen. But Kalinske thinks the company is aware of where it lost its way and is now ready to take an honest stab at righting its wrongs.

“Let’s just be hopeful,” he says.