The ESP Guitar Company

Ah, 1991. We remember it like yesterday. Cruising around the Sunset Strip in our ripped jeans and leather jackets with Dokken and Metallica blasting on our Walkman (kind of like an analog iPod; look it up, kids). And when we got home at night and didn't feel like playing our guitars, we fired up the awesome Sega Genesis video game console (known as the Mega Drive outside of North America) to play Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was one of the great platform games of its era. You got to spin, run, jump, and speed-burst your way through all manner of levels, occasionally dealing with some pretty annoying boss battles, and often injuring your thumb from repetitive mashing of the Genesis controller. But you'd keep going because it was 1991, and your car was broken, and there was no Internet. It was Sonic or reruns of Baywatch. Seriously, it was a scary time.

It's hard to believe that 25 years have passed since then, but our friends at ESP Japan have partnered with Sega to offer four limited-edition Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary guitars. First is the ESP SONIC-II, a completely killer guitar from the ESP Custom Shop that features an alder body, a hard maple neck, a 24-fret ebony fingerboard, high-end Seymour Duncan pickups, and more. Similar specifications are offered by ESP's SHADOW-II, which features a graphic of Sonic's archrival.

If your budget for ESP Custom Shop guitars isn't slated for limited-edition Sonic models, we still have some good news for you. The guitars are also being offered as the more affordable SN-25th Sonic the Hedgehog Guitar-II and the SD-15th Shadow the Hedgehog Guitar-II. If you're a huge Sonic fan, or just want to own a super unique guitar that will seriously cause people to freak out, contact your authorized ESP dealer for pricing and availability information outside Japan.