How old is Sonic the Hedgehog?

There’s not a ton of competition for the title of everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog, but Sonic will usually still win that race, like most races he competes in. The speedy mammal has been a fixture in games, television, and film for decades now.

That isn’t going to change anytime soon, either. Sonic Frontiers is now only a couple of months away, promising to be the first open-world Sonic experience. There’s also a Netflix cartoon starring Sonic coming called Sonic Prime, and that’s before we even talk about the multiple Sonic the Hedgehog movies that have been released over the last couple of years.

But just how long has Sonic actually been around? It’s already been quite some time, long enough that the Sonic franchise is older than many of the people who now consume Sonic content. But there’s also the matter of the age of Sonic, the character, who doesn’t seem to age as the series goes on. If he did, he’d probably be having himself something of a mid-life crisis at this point.

If you’re trying to figure out the math on just how long Sonic has been kicking, spinning, and running, we’ve got you covered.

How old are Sonic and the Sonic series?

There are two answers to this question: how long Sonic has been a concept, or how long it’s been since the first Sonic game was released, and how old Sonic the Hedgehog’s character is supposed to be. Canonically, Sonic is usually portrayed as a teenager in most games and properties and has been anywhere between 10 and 18 years old. In most Sonic properties, he’s 16.

If we’re looking for just how long Sonic has been around in the public consciousness, we have to go back to the original game, Sonic the Hedgehog. That game was released on June 23, 1991. If we count that as Sonic’s birth date and count forward to now, that would make Sonic and his series 31 years old.

Of course, if Sonic did start out as a 16-year-old in the first game and aged naturally from there, that would mean he would be 47 years old at this point. And as funny as a middle-aged Sonic game might be, it’s probably a good bet that Sega will simply continue to make him a teenager for the foreseeable future.