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”

Sega exec 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 with Sega (via Knoebel). “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.”

As a fan of both IPs, though admittedly a tiny bit biased toward Mario, I’m just delighted to see this friendly, respectful competition still going in 2023. I remember hearing heated debates in the early ’90s about which 16-bit console and associated games were superior, and here we are decades later witnessing a top-level executive at Sega bringing that same debate into the modern age.

Now that we’re waxing nostalgic, let’s take a trip down memory lane with the best SNES games ever made.

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