I got some questions concerning Sonic and Knuckles.

[Whiskers the Wonder Cat]

Did the Dragon Ball Z series influence the character designers any way in making these 2 guys? I always thought Sonic was like Goku, and Knuckles was Vegeta. But, I ignored it. Then, came Super Sonic, and Hyper Knuckles. Ok now, Dragon Ball Z had to do something with this right?

[GrayFox]

Dragon Ball Z - 1989

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 1992

Did DBZ influence Sonic 2's Super Sonic design? I would say its certainly possible.

[kainemaxwell]

Who knows? Akira Toriyama's artwork (He did the char designs for the DQ games, Dragonball and was part of the Chrono trigger "Dream Team") could have influenced Super Sonic's look.

[Haoie]

It was a real innovative piece of work when Sonic & Knuckles was released. The ability to lock onto other previous Sonics, in particular 3, was certainly worth seeing.

[chrisbid]

there are recurring themes in anime that preceded both sonic and dragonball

[MegaDrive20XX]

There exist several similarities in appearance and power between Sonic's "Super" form and the "Super Saiyan" form found in Dragon Ball Z. The creator of Sonic the Hedgehog was a fan of Dragon Ball Z and added the "Super Sonic" ability as a homage to Akira Toriyama's series. This is the descision that led to Super Sonic's golden appearance, as well as the total of 7 Chaos Emeralds (similar to Dragon Ball Z's 7 Dragon Balls.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sonic <-- source