Why is Sonic considered Mario's rival?

I really like Classic Sonic, but I never understood this. Mario was ultimately the more successful franchise.

It's not like he really had a chance. Even in Japan, Mario is more popular. He never really posed a threat.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It was Sega USA trying to force it. Japan doesn't give a shit about Sonic.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I really like Classic Sonic, but I never understood this. Mario was ultimately the more successful franchise.
      That depends on how old you are...

      It was one sided by Sega. You can tell Nintendo never cared since they allowed the two to crossover later on

      Sega originally wanted their mascot to be Wonder Boy or Alex Kidd, but nobody gave a shit about those two games

      I legit can't think of a time where Sonic ever risked surpassing Mario. Mario 3 was just too good

      What went wrong with SEGA?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        SEGA could have competed but fricked it up

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Constant infighting, backstabbing and general moronic behavior between the American and Japanese branches.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >I really like Classic Sonic, but I never understood this. Mario was ultimately the more successful franchise.
    That depends on how old you are...

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I legit can't think of a time where Sonic ever risked surpassing Mario. Mario 3 was just too good

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I legit can't think of a time where Sonic ever risked surpassing Mario.
        Dreamcast and the catastrophe that was bing bing wahoo Sunshine

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I legit can't think of a time where Sonic ever risked surpassing Mario. Mario 3 was just too good
        Sonic literally had two popular cartoons airing in the U.S. at once, one of them in the most dominant after-school block, the other in the most dominant Saturday morning block at the height of Saturday morning cartoon popularity. For a brief window of time, it really did feel like Sonic/Sega was overshadowing Mario/Nintendo.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You're thinking purely about games when Sonic was (and technically still is) a huge multi-media success.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Mario revenue: $47 billion
          Sonic revenue: $7.72 billion
          Mario is still the bigger franchise

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The point isn't about Sonic being bigger, the point is about Sonic being big and relevant enough at one point to gain "rival" status against Mario.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I legit can't think of a time where Sonic ever risked surpassing Mario
        Because you're a bunch of zoomers rewriting histroy and bewildered as to why things that happened in the past don't align with your current world view.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The 90s? In America, Europe and Australia
        He had a fricking theme park in Australia for god's sake

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It was one sided by Sega. You can tell Nintendo never cared since they allowed the two to crossover later on

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Based, Nintendo never considered Sega to be a rival.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sega originally wanted their mascot to be Wonder Boy or Alex Kidd, but nobody gave a shit about those two games

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It was a selling point for people craving something new, cooler and edgier than Mario. SEGA were smart to advertise it that way.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    He was absolutely considered a rival to Mario in the USA during his heyday. Just because you’re a zoomer moron who didn’t live back then doesn’t mean said thing didn’t happen you moronic stinky homosexual.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    if you were a kid you either liked sonic or mario
    usa marketing was insane

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >even in Japan
    Japan is literally like the one major market that Sonic genuinely didn't ever have a chance. It kinda didn't help that the MD was in a consistent third place there, rather than neck and neck with the SNES from 1991-1994.

    Elsewhere, Sonic was basically the entire reason that Sega is fondly remembered as a successful console manufacturer and revitalized Genesis/MD sales and was pretty much the big reason people bought MDs.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sonic 1 sales:15 million
    Mario world:20 million sales
    Their was never really a competition

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Sonic 2 sales:450 million
      lol

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        That is the movie moron,not the game

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Sonic 1 sales:15 million
      >Mario world:20 million sales
      >only a 25% difference
      >from just the first Sonic entity verse's Mario's fourth.
      How is this not competition?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Because sonic 1 had a massive pack in boost.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          And so did Mario World.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because he was created to be Sega's flagship platformer and he was more succesful than all the other companies flagships except for Mario. Also all the Mario clones kept the same pace and feel of Mario but Sonic was more vibrant and extreme with robots and funky music

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Didn't Sonic 1 and the Sega Genesis frick over Nintendo's market share for some amount of time?

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Educate yourself before you speak about a TRUE Mascot. Please.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    He literally took 3/4th of Nintendo's stock in the 90s, zoom zoom.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It was because of the Super Nintendo vs Genesis console war. The 16 bit generation was the first big console war because Sega USA heavily pushed the console war as part of their marketing strategy and it worked as the Genesis became wildly successful in the USA despite selling mediocre everywhere else. Mario was Nintendo's mascot and Sonic was Sega's mascot so their rivalry was representative more of the console war than the rivalry between Mario games and Sonic games.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sonic was pretty huge back in the early-mid 90s. He appeared in ad campaigns, cartoons, TV shows/movies, he was a cultural phenomenon Almost every kid on the block back then had Sonic 1-3, Mortal Kombat, and a Genesis for gaming. There's a reason why the SNES/Genesis debate was so hot-blooded, Mario never had a fierce competitor like Sonic before in terms of popularity.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    because he is the only other platforming mascot that can stay alive

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Jesus Christ, all these fricking zoomers that don't know Sonic helped Sega become the first company to actually take a huge chunk of Nintendo's market shares. You really Nintendo just "didn't care" about that?

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Yamauchi's first priority is fixing the disaster in the U.S. market, where Nintendo's share of the 16-bit machine business plummeted from 60% at the end of 1992 to 37% a year later, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. With surprising candor, Yamauchi lays part of the blame on his son-in-law, Nintendo of America Inc. President Minoru Arakawa. When Sega started running comparative ads in 1990, Nintendo failed to respond. In effect, says Yamauchi, "Arakawa allowed Sega to brand our games as children's toys. It was a serious mistake".
    Sonic IS Sega

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Sonic really only had 3 good mainline games before falling into total shit

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    There was a brief time when the Sega Genesis outsold the Super Nintendo, but the reality was the whole Sega/Sonic vs. Nintendo/Mario rivalry only lasted a few years and was functionally dead by 1994.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    sega does what nintendont

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Go bankrupt and exit the console market?

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You don't understand because you weren't alive during the 90's.
    >Even in Japan, Mario is more popular.
    Yeah, Sonic was specifically designed to appeal to westerners.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mario was only "ultimately" more successful. Mario was still bigger in Japan during the early 90s, but Sega was absolutely shitstomping Nintendo for a short period in the West before their collapse happened.

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    In America in the 90s, SNES and Genesis were literally neck and neck. Sega had 50% of the American market at their peak.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's a holdover from the early console wars.
    Nintendo VS Sega
    Mario VS Sonic
    That said, it was basically pushed entirely by Sega and children, while Nintendo didn't give a flying frick aside from some jabs here and there in some video games like Donkey Kong Country 2.
    Even after Sega was displaced by the 5th Generation and ultimately stepped out of the race by the 6th, with Sonic even appearing on Nintendo systems, the "rivalry" endured.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >while Nintendo didn't give a flying frick
      Bullshit.

      >Yamauchi's first priority is fixing the disaster in the U.S. market, where Nintendo's share of the 16-bit machine business plummeted from 60% at the end of 1992 to 37% a year later, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. With surprising candor, Yamauchi lays part of the blame on his son-in-law, Nintendo of America Inc. President Minoru Arakawa. When Sega started running comparative ads in 1990, Nintendo failed to respond. In effect, says Yamauchi, "Arakawa allowed Sega to brand our games as children's toys. It was a serious mistake".
      Sonic IS Sega

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They didn't perpetuate it.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          They didn't actively run ads against SEGA specifically, but that was because they wanted to keep up the illusion that there was no competition. If you go from being an unstoppable juggernaut to having your lunch eaten by a literal who, it looks bad, and acknowledging the competition would have been an admission of that.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Bullshit
        >posts a quote confirming that they didn't give a flying frick

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >President of the company nearly fires his son in law because he let Sega hand them their ass for four years

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sega leveraged its way into the market, mostly in the US, by pushing themselves as the "edgier" alternative to Nintendo's family-friendly outward image. Sonic, who's as kid-friendly as Mario, is more openly childish (in Japan) and more teenager-like and rebellious (in America), a contrast to Mario's "role model/mascot" properties. Sonic was one of the main catalysts of Sega selling themselves as the "cooler" console.

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Nintendo didn't care!
    The entire reason Sony joined the video game market was because Nintendo wanted a CD based addon like Sega did, and when Nintendo backed out, they made the PlayStation.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      We already know Nintendies are delusional as frick. All they do is rewrite history with a Nintendo slant. The fewer people that were alive for periods they are talking about the better so they can spout the craziest shit.

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