Sega exec admits Sonic has never been as popular as his biggest rival and wants to change that: "Quite simply, I want to surpass Mario"
Nov. 2, 2023“Because we respect Mario, our goal is to catch up and surpass him”
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Segaexec Osamu Ohashi is reviving Sonic the Hedgehog’s decades-old rivalry with Mario, saying he wants the former to “surpass” the latter.
Of course, Sonic was originally conceived as part of Sega’s strategy to compete with Nintendo in 1991, right at the height of the two company’s 16-bit console war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. Over 30 years later, Ohashi, who joined Sega in 1993, now admits Sonic was never as successful as his rival and says he plans on changing that.
“Simply put, I want to surpass Mario,” Ohashi said in an interview withSega(viaKnoebel). “Sonic is a game that was originally developed to compete with Mario, and it still hasn’t achieved that goal. Our goal is to catch up and surpass Mario because we respect Mario.”
Ohashi goes on to elaborate that he wants Sonic not only to be the more prominent, beloved video game character, but also just a bigger cultural icon more generally.
“I want people to play it all over the world, including Japan, like Mario, and I want the movie to be a bigger hit than Mario. I would like Universal Studios Japan to create a ‘Sonic Area’ as well. That’s our goal for those of us who love Sonic.”
Now that we’re waxing nostalgic, let’s take a trip down memory lane with thebest SNES gamesever made.
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After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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