When you think of iconic characters from a video game I cannot think any modern-day ones that have the popularity and appeal as Sonic and Mario. When they both landed all those years ago the gameplay was basic in function, but that seemed part of the appeal. But how have they been able to hold on to that iconic status when there are much better games on the market today?
That answer I believe is simple, back then there was not much choice — so our little blue hedgehog and our favorite plumber did not have much in the way of competition. However, nowadays is very different, there are so many different games to choose from — all with huge budgets. Finding a character that stands out has now become much more difficult.
When we look at the numbers it looks as though Mario has got Sonic licked — 222 million compared to 70 million respectively. However, Mario has been around much longer and still has the Nintendo platform to offer more new games.
This is a different story for Sonic, he is much younger and with Sega not able to offer any sort of games console — those numbers do not seem that bad after all. Phil Aronson from Examiner has been taking a much closer look into the popularity of Sonic and Mario, and explains that we should not write the hedgehog or Sega off just yet
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