RETRO REBOOT VS - Mario Vs Sonic The Hedgehog

Yeah, it's been absolutely done to death and done more extensively over the decades with Death Battle YouTube vids and such. And yes, the fact that Sega has transitioned to a third party publisher and developer while Nintendo enjoys various peeks and valleys of their success is pretty telling on which brand and franchise has the upper hand. What will I bring different to the table regarding who's better between these iconic video game mascots? Uh, that's going to be the tricky part.

I'll briefly talk about their respective game series, but to do that would really cause this to drag. Sonic and Mario have had some interesting roads when dabbling in other media like television shows and comics, and that's where I think a lot of the charm shines in completely different ways.

MARIO AND SONIC'S BEST GAME

Narrowing down how to view Sonic and Mario through their respective franchises took to applying a science. Instead of just going by my personal opinion on which game I think is the best for either Mario or Sonic, I decided to scour the interwebs and search about 10 to 20 different Top 10 or Top 20 lists from various sources for both series, keeping my eyes on the top five and which games appeared as number one. When I crunched the numbers for Sonic games, Sonic 2 came in at number one at a greater frequency, followed by Sonic CD and Sonic Adventure. The original Sonic made many parents buy their kid a Sega Genesis, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 blew EVERYONE away in my grade school.

Mario, on the other hand, ended up being rather surprising. For the longest time, the general consensus was number one Mario game of all time was a tug-of-war between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. Looking through editorials, I was a little stunned with how often Super Mario Odyssey took the number one spot. Varied in a lot of those results were Mario Galaxy (a game apparently almost as divisive as Sunshine), and Super Mario 64. Mario Odyssey was rated very high upon its release, I feel like modern review scores lack an honesty to avoid the backlash of the Twitter mobs. Or Neil Druckmann. 

So my take on these games, the BEST, based on my halfway Family Feud survey info gathering. Super Mario Odyssey was a fun play, but it got really fleeting and pivoted into a sequence of events where it just became mostly the same. It's very creative, I applaud the attempt to break away from traditional level structure in favor of a true open-ended experience that leaves exploration up to your pace. Worked better here than Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, where it felt like a polished tech demo Nintendo released. Odyssey is fun enough, it just peaked really early with me, and was still lacking on a lot of the surprises that Super Mario World had. Little felt different, and I didn't think Cappy had enough personality as a power-up.

I've historically been very harsh on some of the older Sonic games, but there's no denying that Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was a blast to play for the first time and fine tuned elements from the first game for an overall much better experience. My biggest gripe with Sonic games is the emphasis on blinding speed could often lead to damage, meaning it's probably wiser to take your time. But you WANT to go fast. Works in Green Hill Zone, but the second you got to Marble Zone, the game grinded to a complete halt and Sonic's flaws as a calculating platform jumper are rather exposed. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 addressed this a little by having stages flow more horizontally with less crampy jumps, and better placed bounce pads and springs so that Sonic and Tails didn't just hit walls, coming to a complete stop. Topped off with even better music, a more entertaining bonus stage structure, and the inclusion of Tails into the Sonic lore for some [sort of] co-op play, and sharper visuals, Sonic 2 is one of those games that made the Genesis worth its weight in gold. I think it's the better of the "best games". ADVANTAGE: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

MOVIES

It'd be very polite to say that the Super Mario Bros. movie was getting stuck between the eleventh dimension of Hell and in line at the BMV with a broken ticket stub counter. If watching the movie alone felt like a chore beyond comprehension, the production behind it is an even more harrowing story than the film itself. Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins fighting with the wife and husband director team, the lack of central cooling, leaving all the actors a messy pile of gleaming sweat during filming, John Leguizamo spending most of the production drunk.

This movie alone is something I can make a separate editorial about, honestly, I found Super Mario Bros. perversely entertaining. While not resembling anything from the game, the dystopian take on the Mushroom Kingdom remains fascinating to me. Not to mention that low-hanging fruit sequel bait they tacked on at the end with one of the worst lines to wrap up a film.

The Sonic The Hedgehog film careened away from disaster after fan outrage was so overwhelming in response to the rather tone deaf reveal trailer that featured a visually unappealing depiction of Sonic to the tunes of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" (shrug), director Jeff Fowler pulled the emergency brakes on the project to euthanize the original design.

I have slightly mixed views on the original Sonic model, mostly because Sonic's actual design gets stranger the longer I stare at it. As far as an interpretation for a live action film, I see what they were going for. It gets gross when you focused on his proportions relative to the world setting, but as far as a realistic interpretation of an already very cartoony character design, you're walking on eggshells as an artist right from the start. 

The project was placed on hold so Sonic could be given a makeover, and it practically saved the movie's reputation. People saw the new design more favorably, and that alone likely saved it from being a box office bomb and another black eye on the [somehow surprising] demand for video game adaptations on the big screen. The movie is an enjoyable film with good performances all around from James Marsden, and mostly lead by Jim Carrey's portrayal of Dr. Robotnik. 

Sonic's action sequences were also a highlight of the movie, with the blue blur's speed and acrobatics captured perfectly. The script was nothing really special, but the humor and Sonic's antics came off very similar to a PG Deadpool, and I'd ask for nothing more than that. The question I ask is, if the Sonic design was never changed, would the praise for how enjoyable it was remain the same? Or did people convince themselves to like it after the studio went out of its way to address their displeasure with the aesthetic? A talking point for another day, but Sonic The Hedgehog movie outshines Super Mario Bros.. ADVANTAGE: Sonic The Hedgehog 

TELEVISION

This one is actually tougher for me than I thought. The Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning TV show (known among the fans as Sonic SATam) is one of the more enjoyable takes on Sonic lore that blends the humor with a darker story, and a subtle environmental message.

This show also established a lot of beloved characters that make up the Freedom Fighters who would become prominent in the Archie Comics series for years. Even the more light-hearted and bizarre, slapstick focused Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog has a charm to it. There's a couple of ventures into anime with the 1993 Sonic the Hedgehog The Animated Movie, it's...below mediocre. The Sonic X television series aired for three seasons in the early 2000's. I have mixed feelings about it, overall. The latter half of the show focuses a lot on Shadow, a character that hasn't really warmed up to me that much since his inclusion, but it at least fleshes out the purpose behind his ambivalent actions. Sonic has had plenty of ventures into animation over the years. There's the experimental Sonic Underground (the less said about that, the better), and the French-Canadian Sonic Boom series, which was better than the reputation Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on the Wii U that precedes it, preferably season two.

 Mario does not have much media past the early 90's (not localized in the US, anyway), but the Super Mario Bros. Super Show holds a very dear place in my heart. And if you're not familiar with it, it's very weird to describe. The show starts out with a cold opening of Mario and Luigi, played by the late Captain Lou Albano and the late Danny Wells, respectively, just puttering around their home. Then a third person would often impose (like an Elvis impersonator or a magician, never a character from the games), acting as a vague segway to the cartoon portion of the show. Sometimes these segments are related, but often they're just strange bits that come and go.

When the show starts, it's generally King Koopa's scheme of the week to get Princess Toadstool. The animation can be shoddy and cheap, but what really shines are performances of the voice actors. Albano and Wells voice Luigi (and I'll always say it until I'm deprived of oxygen, Brooklyn Mario is always better than Martinet's Italian stereotype Mario. Come at me). Jeannie Elias, who can be heard in everything from My Little Pony and Finding Nemo, to Mass Effect and GoldenEye 007 Rogue Agent (voicing Pussy Galore), voices Princess Toadstool. And the late Elliot Harvey Atkin (who's been in Goosebumps, the 90's X-Men series, and Sailor Moon) as King Koopa. It's very hard to argue if this show bad or good, but it's never boring, and watching it from episode to episode, you never are truly prepared for what comes next. In some ways, this series sums up how odd late 80's cartoons were. Some of the charm didn't translate to the Super Mario 3 cartoon, which dropped Albano and Wells and Mario and Luigi, did away with the live action bits. It really reaches the bottom of the basement with the Super Mario World cartoon. The artwork takes a nosedive, the voices are annoying, Mario and pals are hanging around these annoying cavemen and women, and this show includes Yoshi, a whiny, one-note, obnoxious child of a character that makes me actually miss TOAD from the Super Show! I can't believe that's something I admit. This cartoon made me hate Yoshi for a very long time.

Gosh, it's pretty tough for me to choose between the cartoons. Sonic technically has better, more varied programming, while Mario disappeared from a lot of outside media beyond the games. Sonic lore does lend itself for more potential, though the Super Show exercises a lot of...let's call it creativity...to make it work. Both take some liberties with the source material and ends up being very fascinating. I'm going to say it's a tie here. Yeah, I'm fence sitting. ADVANTAGE: TIE

As stated, it's much easier to make compelling Sonic media. Mario certainly wins out when it comes to video games and continues to be a juggernaut in the industry. Sonic's games have had some iffy results since the turn of the century, but he remains a very popular character and has some pretty deep mythos, for better or worse, while Mario seems like a stage play and the in-game characters are acting out the performances. Mario does have an upcoming animated film (almost like that's what it should've been in the first place), so it will be interesting if it achieves the success of the Sonic box office. The Blue Hedgehog has the better lore.

 

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