This article contains minor gameplay spoilers for Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania. Back in the early 1990s, two mascots bestrode the gaming world like platforming colossi. For a few years there in the 90s, before guns and car theft started to dominate public perception, these two basically symbolized the gaming industry. Nintendo’s Mario, the mustachioed patriarch who established the foundations on which all other platformers were built. Sega’s Sonic, the spiky challenger who promised to do what Nintendon’t. Spin dash ahead to the present day, where the gaming landscape is dominated by sports games and online shooters, and Mario and Sonic aren’t quite as central as they used to…