Of all of the rivalries to ever grace gaming, the battle between Mario and Sonic is arguably the most iconic. Emblematic of the console wars between Nintendo’s SNES and the Sega Genesis, that rivalry has transcended that era of gaming and has embodied each franchise to a certain extent. When a new Sonic game comes out, comparisons to Mario are inevitable, like when people saw Sonic Lost World and immediately called it a clone of Super Mario Galaxy. The inverse is rarely true, as Mario is usually the standard bearer and innovator of the genre, but comparisons will still be made regardless of whether it makes sense. That is abundantly true right now, as that iconic gaming rivalry has been revived. Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Sonic Superstars, two 2D side-scrolling games, are releasing mere days apart from each other, from two franchises that used to be bitter rivals. With that dual release happening, it’s time to admit that while Mario games are better, Sonic games are generally more fun.
To be fair, both games look to be solid multiplayer experiences that I will be forcing my friends and loved ones to play with me. But it made me start to think about both franchises as a whole and the overall quality between each installment. No matter how I looked at it, I can’t deny that Mario games are much more well-polished experiences that stand the test of time. That can’t be denied. That being said, I have more fun playing Sonic games and will almost always choose to play a Sonic game over a Mario game every day of the week.
Make no mistake, I’m an avid fan of both franchises. The very first game I got for the Gamecube was Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Super Mario Galaxy introduced me to the Wii. Both games are some of my favorites and I’ve been a fan of both franchises since I was a kid. But looking at my playing habits over the past decade or so, I’ve noticed how frequently I’ve gone back to playing Sonic games while Mario games tend to become permanent fixtures in my gaming collection instead of games that I play on a frequent basis. I think that, for me personally, that comes down to exactly how both franchises engage with me and how I feel in a way Mario games feel like they lack any inherent personality.
Related: Super Mario Bros. Wonder Is a Wonderful Mess [Preview]
Oh sure, Mario games are always fun to play and are usually some of the best games of their respective console generations. But when I think about Mario, what comes to mind isn’t the smooth-as-butter game feel or the precisely designed levels. It’s how sterile it all feels. They lack any unique personality of their own, effectively going with the same genre tropes and level designs that were codified by virtually every Mario game. You have your grass level, a desert level, ice level, lava level, etc. The New Super Mario Bros subseries is infamous for that copy-and-paste mentality, but it is present in a lot of the 3D offerings too. I’ve also found that each new Mario game has at least one new gimmick that leads to some interesting gameplay sections and level design, but they don’t really evolve from one entry to another.
Granted, you can accuse Sonic games of that exact same criticism. For most of Sonic’s career, each new game had some wildly different mechanics implemented into its core game design that stood out from other entries. There are the team mechanics from Sonic Heroes, the Wisps in Sonic Colors, the Werehog in Sonic Unleashed, all of them are one-and-done gimmicks that Sonic Team threw away when they didn’t immediately please the Sonic community. And at the very least, while Sonic games had gameplay styles that frequently shifted from installment to installment, at the very least Mario games could always fall back on their simple controls that had plenty of depth.
But for as weird as it may sound, I like the imperfections of those Sonic games. Sometimes it weakened their games, but at the very least it made each game distinct and memorable. It allowed me to really think about the bits that do stand out in each game since Sonic Team knows how to develop set-piece moments that maximize the elements of the franchise that fans like. They take risks and I can appreciate when a game takes a risk rather than being complacent. Mario simply doesn’t take risks. Mario has to be a paragon of Nintendo game design philosophy, so there’s an expectation of how a Mario game should play and control with very little variation from entry to entry. When Mario games do take a risk, like with Super Mario Sunshine and its approach to level design, it’s often met with some level of resistance.
Related: All 2D Mario Games, Ranked From Worst to Best
You never know what you’re going to get with a Sonic game and in a way, that unpredictability makes each new game a little bit exciting. I know that a new Mario game is going to be good. It’s expected at this point that when a new Mario game gets announced, it’ll usually be a very polished experience that no one will bat an eye at. But when a Sonic game is good, that generates discussion. Why is this game good? What did it do right that so many other entries in the franchise did wrong? Will Sonic Team refine what works here? In that regard, Mario games are a bit boring to play through. Like I said before, I usually play through them once and then move on, getting exactly what I expected from them and nothing more. I can’t be pleasantly surprised by a Mario game because I know what to expect from the series.
And it’s that single playthrough that really cements why I prefer Sonic to Mario. Like it or not, Sonic games are inherently more replayable than Mario games. In concept, both franchises have similar overarching stage and level design. You have a goal in each stage that you need to achieve, oftentimes being the need to get to a certain point to either complete a level or collect an object. With Mario games, these levels are designed as obstacle courses that test your familiarity with the gameplay mechanics either by throwing enemies at you or introducing hazards that make maneuvering through the level difficult. But once you’ve completed the level, there’s no reason to return to them. Their purpose has been fulfilled and you can progress to newer challenges that test different skills.
Sonic’s momentum-based physics is just more fun to master since while they are indeed simple like Mario’s mechanics, it requires more than basic controller inputs. You need to understand how Sonic will move when he hits a slope, when to perform a spin dash to overcome an obstacle, or when to jump to achieve the most height. And your reward for finishing this challenge isn’t only just a pat on the back and sending you to the next obstacle course. It’s your time. The faster you completed the stage, the better you were at understanding the mechanics of the game and the more satisfying those finishes were, especially once Sonic games began giving out rankings upon finishing a stage.
Sonic encourages speed running, something I was never compelled to do with Mario games. Those games don’t really measure your mastery of its mechanics in any meaningful way. It’s just ushering you from one challenge to the next, never needing any reason to return to previous stages. But you can and will revisit Sonic stages. Think of how many times players keep returning to Green Hill Zone, City Escape, or Chemical Plant Zone because of how fun they are to repeatedly play. I don’t hold get those same thrills from World 1-1, Bomb-omb Battlefield, or Good Egg Galaxy.
Related: All 3D Mario Games, Ranked From Worst to Best
As strange as it may sound, the imperfections of a Sonic game make them more approachable and fun for me. I can respect everything that Mario games attempt and accomplish. Each game is considered a classic for a reason, but that sense of perfection that each game exudes makes them almost unapproachable. Sonic games have their flaws – many, many, many flaws – but at least they feel distinct from each other. For as cool and polished as Super Mario Bros. Wonder may be, and believe me it looks very well polished, it’s not doing much from a gameplay perspective to differentiate it from other past four-player 2D Mario games. Sonic Superstars, for all of the flaws it may have, feels unique when compared to every single Sonic game simply because of what it’s going to attempt to do.
I know I’m most certainly alone on this, but we’re not in an era of gaming where we have to choose between one or the other. Both games are releasing on the Nintendo Switch, so players can simply grab both of them. Both games may be fantastic, and if so then gamers in general win with this. It all comes down to personal preference of which you prefer. I like both franchises and I’ll be picking up both games the week of release and I’ll have a blast playing both games. Both Sonic and Mario have a special place in my gaming library and while I may not play Mario games as often, I don’t think they’re bad by any means. But when I think of games I come back to year after year and still enjoy just as much as the first time I played them, Sonic games almost always live up to my memories.
