DIC originally made a deal to produce only a Saturday morning Sonic series for ABC, timed to coincide with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but wanted to also produce additional weekday syndicated episodes similar to what it had done with The Real Ghostbusters.

ABC executive Mark Pedowitz rejected DIC's plan to syndicate a Sonic show alongside the ABC series, telling producer Robby London, 'If you guys want to do syndication, be our guest, go with God, but you won't be on our network,' prompting DIC to create a separate, distinct show, which became Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

After the two shows were split, the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon was made darker and more serious, while Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was deliberately made bright and light-hearted, homaging the style and humor of golden-age American theatrical shorts like Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Popeye and Betty Boop.

Jaleel White voiced Sonic in both Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Saturday morning ABC Sonic series, while simultaneously playing Steve Urkel on Family Matters, which aired on the same network as the ABC Sonic show.

The show's animation was outsourced to four different studios across China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan, including Telecom Animation Film (a subsidiary of Tokyo Movie Shinsha), which would later become part of Sega and produce its own Sonic cartoon, Sonic X.

The theme song, composed by Clark Gassman, combines the main theme from the 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog video game with Edvard Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee'.

Robotnik's line 'Snooping as usual, I see?' from the episode 'Boogey-Mania' gave rise to the internet meme 'pingas', which first appeared in a 2007 YouTube Poop and has since been referenced widely on YouTube and even in the Sonic Boom TV series and Archie comics.

Ian Flynn, writer of the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, said Adventures came closest to 'getting Sonic right' despite 'failing on the details', while GamesRadar listed it among 'the worst things to happen to Sonic', comparing its supporting cast unfavorably to Ren & Stimpy.