I don't think Sonic would have gone as far or been as popular if he was a rabbit. I'm happy with the way things worked out in the end, I thought some of those other concept characters and designs were quite terrifying to say the least lol. XD Ristar's original design was like a rabbit and his gameplay style is similar to how Sonic's might have been if he were a rabbit. Sadly enough, Ristar only got one game for reasons unknown to me and isn't as well known to many people that weren't Sega geeks as children like the most of us. A lot of people I know at school have never even heard of Ristar which saddens me greatly. Strangely enough is that Sega hints a Ristar 2 when you use one of the cheat codes yet it never comes to be. I wish they did make a sequel. :/
Sonic wouldn't exist today if he was a bunny, he probably would have been rejected after the first game:
I agree with most of you, Sonic wouldn't have gone as far as he did if he was a Rabbit, but hey we'll never know. I mean I know that the rabbit concept turned into Ristar (why this character and so many others from Sega never went far I'll never know), but if they did pick a Rabbit they would have probably ended up with Sonic's gameplay in a sence, though the spinning wouldn't have made sence, maybe the Rabbit concept would have gone on to be something of a temporary mascot like how Alex Kidd was if they kept the Ristar gameplay in tact, and even then it wouldn't be the same as Ristar, eventually after it's short span on the genesis it might have been possible that Sega would look back on the hedgehog concept, and have a 32-bit platformer and traditional Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Saturn, they would have more of an edge with advance 2-D games and have international releases of games that didn't get here in our timeline, like Dodonpachi, Batsugun, Radiant Silvergun, and many other games then didn't get releases here in the US. In this timeline, Sonic's Rabbit predecessor would fare better then Alex Kidd after his run was over, appearing in cameos in these Sonic games, eventually having maybe a title or two saving Princess Blaze from evil as they would team up in the follow up game, eventually these characters would bleed into the Sonic series, with the rabbit being a rival and sometimes friend to our hedgehog. MEANWHILE Sega would fare better with the Saturn in the US, as the new generation of consoles take place Microsoft, interested in the industry earlier, would buy out Sega, and with the joint efforts of both companies release a more powerful Dreamcast in 2000, holding strong competition against Nintendo and Sony's Gamestation 2, as you can see, things would have been A LOT different had Sega chose this Rabbit character over Sonic, as Sega with Microsoft continued to be equal competition against Nintendo and Sony to this very day, by 2012 they would also release their games to the PC, seeing the future of gaming intergrating Consoles and PCs, thus a vicious battle for PC gaming dominance begins... What was I talking about? Oh right the Rabbit thing! Well I don't know how far this Rabbit character would have gone, but things would have been different alright, very different indeed...
Rabbits are too cute; Sonic would lack an edge without the spikes, and his 'tude wouldn't be taken as seriously. Spinning also adds to the theme of speed vs. grabbing and throwing enemies.
