Sega Wants Sonic To "Surpass Mario"

thegamer.com:

Sonic was always intended to be Mario's rival, the Pepsi to his Coca-Cola. Yet, despite being famously fast, the Blue Blur never caught up to the Italian plumber, forever remaining in his now-literally-Elephant-sized shadow. That doesn't mean Sega has given up on its aspirations, though.

However, unlike Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Sonic is not better than Mario.

"Simply put, I want to surpass Mario," Sega executive Osamu Ohasi said in an internal interview (translated by NoisyPixel and reported by Eurogamer). "Sonic was originally developed to compete with Mario, and we have yet to achieve that. Because we respect Mario, my goal is to catch up to and surpass him."

That age-old rivalry was put back into motion only last month when Sonic Superstars, the newest 2D platformer in the series, launched only three days before Super Mario Bros. Wonder, also the newest 2D platformer in the series. As you probably guessed (sorry, Sonic fans), Wonder garnered far better scores than Superstars. It got a 92 on Metacritic, while the Blue Blur got a halfway-decent 73. Even WarioWare: Move It! got a higher score with 75. Maybe that's a more realistic competitor, eh Sonic?

Sonic has faired better in the movies than Mario, at least. Its first two films earned a 63 and 69 percent aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes respectively, beating The Super Mario Bros. Movie's 59 percent, but both were outgrossed by Mario, which had the biggest opening weekend for a video game movie of all time while making a total of over $1 billion. This is why you need Shadow with a handgun - he makes everything better.

But it's not just Sonic that Sega is hinging its bets on. It's also digging into its extensive library of games to try and find another IP capable of