Mighty The Armadillo

[Chiappini92]

Mighty The Armadillo is what you can say a cult classic Sonic character. This guy however has only appeared in a small number of games, mostly as cameos. His star appearance was SegaSonic The Hedgehog arcade game in which he was trapped with Ray The Flying Squirrel and Sonic in Eggmans Prison Island and escapes with both of them. Later on he would be in Knuckles Chaotix for the ill-faded Sega 32X. His inclusion in the game is due to the game being a Sonic game at first, than deciding to make new characters at the last minute and change it into a Knuckles spinoff(Originally Espio The Chameleon was supposed to be the main character with Knuckles supporting him) they simply change the palette of Sonic from blue to red and took out the spikes. What alot of people don't know however is that Mighty The Armadillo is actually the prototype of Sonic The Hedgehog and was going to be the mascot for Sega originally. The reasons for the change were obvious, he was too similar to Mario, being covered in red and having his name begin with "M" as well as not being an original concept compared to Sonic. No one back than knew about hedgehogs really as they werent that popular outside of the exotic pet trade. Armadillos turning into balls is stereotypical, but people never knew hedgehogs existed, let alone curl up into balls. As such they decided to make him a supporting character. Being cast out of the spotlight he had to have a niche so where Sonic is all about speed, Mighty was all about power. They even gave somewhat of a personality stating that despite his super strength he's a pacifist, similar to late characters Tikal and Cream The Rabbit. He, like many other early Sonic characters at the time, was included in both the Archie and Fleetway comic books with Archie having him as a friendly rival of Espio and Fleetway having him keep his crazed dad, Blockhead Bill under control all the time. Unfortunately his niche was short lived as Knuckles had risen to stardom as the most popular character when introduced, more so than Sonic himself mostly due to his focus on power. As such there was no need for a character with super strength. Mighty has since been reduced to cameos such as Gale Racer, Sonic Gems Collection, and recently Sonic Generations on a wanted poster with Ray stating they having been seen since 1993, seemingly forgetting his appearance in Knuckles Chaotix in 1995. He has had a big uproar in the fan community, who often depict him in stylized art and fan fiction. Several hacks have also been created implementing into the very games he was supposed to star in. A recent interview from Sega confirms that Mighty, along with several other classic Sonic characters have disappeared from the main series due to Sonic having no idea where they reside. Some of his moves like the wall-kick have been used by Sonic in Sonic Unleashed and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. As for Mighty himself, safe travels wherever you may be. We hardly knew ya.

EDIT: Oh yeah I forgot to mention, Mighty is generally depicted as being 16 years old and pretty much the same age as Sonic, making more connections between the two.

[DidYouKnowGaming]

Already covered the basics of this in a post.

[Chiappini92]

Damn I totally forgot, I looked through all of these things too at least once :X