Mario Vs. Sonic.

[Hacksponge]

Sonic is better..
but Mario has much more games lol

[DioShiba]

Also, Popo?

Brawl was designed by people, and it's pretty obvious that sonic was never intended to be strong because they designed him to be that way. I don't think I have to even emphasize what a true speedster would be capable of in a fight, not just a supposed one who has grass roots in previous entries like Falco and Fox.

That's not really my point there but okay.

[Hacksponge]

The characters in video games are never powerful like the reality..

[Alucard]

I do like Sonic, but have to go with Mario when choosing between the 2. Just too many great Mario games when compared to Sonic. Plus look at all of the characters and franchises within Mario like Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, etc.

[Kriven]

I know this is a bumped thread, but Alucard brought up an interesting point.

The Mario franchise has been spun-off into a number of sub-franchises each with their own enormous casts of characters. While Sega has created a number of very good and one very bad spin-off (Tails Skypatrol, Tails Adventure, Knuckles Chaotix, and Shadow the Hedgehog) they treat their spin-offs as nothing more than Sonic games which happen to lack Sonic. Which is a shame for a number of reasons, most notably that those characters are later shoehorned into every other Sonic game, where they don't properly belong, or because they created gameplay mechanics they later decided not to develop.

I think the Sonic franchise would thrive a lot better, and the universe would become a little more lively, if they took the time to develop some of these other characters in their own games, specifically the ones which have to be forced into modern games anyways. Namely I'm talking about Knuckles and the Chaotix, who could each hold their own games, and Shadow could probably do so as well if the developers actually took the time to do it right. But mostly the Chaotix, who could easily present themselves as a very different kind of game from the typical Sonic fare while focusing on the unique strengths and weaknesses of these characters as a detective team. Taking the focus off of the larger Sonic Friends roster would also allow them to reintroduce characters who have more connections to the Chaotix and haven't been seen for quite a while, like Fang, Mighty, and Ray.

Just a thought.

[Koopaul]

Lately the extended Sonic cast have been given really crappy roles. Look at Sonic Generations. Near the end when you see them all cheering Sonic to get up and fight, I was like: "Wait? Why not help? Can't you guys fight too?"

Through the entire game these very capable characters just stood there or made Sonic go on silly missions. If you aren't going to give them good roles then they shouldn't really be in there at all.

In Mario you rarely see all the extended cast in a Mario adventure, probably because there is not enough room to properly use them. That is why Wario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and more have their own games to shine.

[~Axis~]

I remember playing Sonic Battle. Each character had their own episode and contributed VERY well to the story and ALL of them played significant roles, even Cream. I could say that it was one of the few games that gave characters other than Sonic and Tails huge significance. It would be nice to give each character their own game, but if they just made the games like Sonic Battle, where every character did more than just stand or mess around Sonic, giving him silly missions, that would make a HUGE difference in the games.

[DioShiba]

Looking back at this topic I kind of want to throw out that even if Sonic had it's fair share of shit you can't deny that some of the games Sega churned out for him were actually good.

Take Sonic Colors, Unleashed and Generations for example. They may have their flaws, but those were the best games we got since SA2. That being said, those games have really managed to pull off what Sonic can do.

Far as Mario goes, Nintendo has also pulled their worst shit too. Especially considering that they used the stupid coin gimmick in one of Mario's recent titles and for what? A fucking statue? No. Just no to that. Mario has had shitty titles recently and whether or not Nintendo is to blame there, they are running low on ideas.

Then again I guess it's fair to say that ideas in the gaming world as of lately have been running dry. Truth be told there really isn't anything we haven't seen or played before and everyone's appeal to video games have been going down in the past few years. In truth you can't really blame anyone because we've already seen another Call of Duty or Bioshock, to another Mario and Sonic. This applies to all games.

If anything the golden years of video gaming are dying. And I'm not talking about how great old systems are or shit like that. I'm talking about the lack of anything new or mind blowing to make us be appealed by a simple video game we all can play. This is kind of why I've been searching for more creative titles instead of something I haven't seen.

[Koopaul]

Actually that's just the New Super Mario Bros. series, not the Mario series as a whole. Remember Mario at one point was just releasing one main platformer game per system. (Well the NES actually had three.)

If you ignore the NSMB series nothing has changed. We're just still waiting on the next new Mario game that's the true big title for the Wii U system. Just like we did for the N64 (Mario 64), Gamecube (Sunshine), and Wii (Galaxy). Trust me, once you see the one for the Wii U, you'll be impressed.

It's unfortunate that the NSMB series is ruining Mario's reputation lately.

[Kriven]

It would be easy to exclusively blame NSMB if the latest Paper Mario hadn't shown us that Nintendo is hellbent on ruining the franchise.

Also: Colors, Generations, and Unleashed are among my least favorite games in general, not just Sonic games. I actually really like Sonic 4, though, so my opinion is pretty much counter that of the rest of the world's.

[Koopaul]

There's a very sad reason for that.

You see Miyamoto is planning on stepping down in the near future. Remember when everyone thought Miyamoto was retiring? The whole world thought Nintendo was "dooooomed"! Because of this he's been "preparing" developers for his leave. In other words he's been telling people what to do a lot more than he used to. This has lead to a lot of unpleasing results.
People are finally able to see that Miyamoto isn't as great as everyone made him out to be. That all those great ideas weren't his alone and he shouldn't get all the credit for the things we love.

Miyamoto has been hellbent on streamlining and whitewashing the Mario series because he wants to make sure future developers handle the series the way he wants them to be handled in the future. The only problem is Miyamoto comes from a different generation of video games, simple basic things void of any depth or art.

Luckily we have people like Yoshiaki Koizumi trying to do his own things with the series. Even being sneaky around Miyamoto, inserting things without his permission. So I have faith.