Topic: Unwarranted Hate?

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Hated by whom? If you mean the general, ignorant, shouting-with-nothing-much-to-say masses of the internet, then they know nothing and can be easily ignored.

I like Sonic, I like the games, but the games simply do not have the consistency of the Mario titles, for Sonic to be considered in the same league of quality. I know on this forum, with a few obvious exceptions, we are not children who like to shout the same thing over and over again, because we think it makes us cool. On this forum we except that reason, logic, informed opinion, and a bit of knowledge are required to form a viewpoint that is worth sharing.

My take on the Sonic series of games is this - take what I consider to be the golden age of the Sonic games, the 2D Genesis MegaDrive era games, specifically Sonic the Hedgehog I and II. Now, both of these games are of the highest quality, I have played them, completed them, enjoyed them many, many times, over many years, on many different systems. Nailed on classics, no doubt about that.

During this time, they genuinely did match the quality of the big, first party Nintendo games of the time, specifically the likes of Super Mario World. Personally I don't think Sonic I or II are as good, or have quite the same level of magic that Super Mario World has, but they do deserve to be considered as good, as well made, and perhaps even as important as the main Mario game of the time.

Here's the thing though - Sonic I II were released in '91/'92, Super Mario World was released around the same time, and, as I said, if we take a snapshot of that period in gaming history, the two series were of equal quality, and were equally respected. Of course, those who owned a SNES would say Mario World was better, and those who owned a Genesis MegaDrive would say Sonic, but now, looking back, with an unbiased, critical eye, we can see that the games being produced by both sides during this time were fantastic.

The 16bit era was a golden era in general for gaming.

Now, let's spin the clock back to the previous generation of consoles, the NES Master System era.

We find that Sonic hasn't yet been dreamed up by the people at Sega, who are using Alex Kidd, and Opa Opa as mascots. Sonic cannot be blamed for not having been 'invented' yet, of course, but let's look at the state of the Mario series at the time.

We have Super Mario Bros, widely accepted as one of the single most important games of all time, this was followed up with Super Mario Bros 2, which while not setting the world on fire, is certainly no disgrace. This is followed by Super Mario Bros 3, which is a game of undisputed quality. It's the best 8bit game on any system, and quite a long way ahead of anything Sega were doing at the time.

Right, now let's return to the golden era of the 16 bit games, and now spin the clock forward a generation, and see what Mario and Sonic have done since the golden era on the SNES MegaDrive.

Mario went on to Super Mario 64, which at the time of it's released was almost universally announced to be the 'greatest game ever', and if you agree with this or not, it is without question that Super Mario 64 was every bit as important to the 3D gaming era on consoles as the original Super Mario Bros was in the 2D era.

Sonic went on to star in Sonic Adventure, at (very roughly ) the same time, and it was a fine game, I owned a Dreamcast, I owned this game. It wasn't in the same league as Super Mario 64 though, it didn't have reviewers shouting 'this is better than anything we've ever seen before' from the rooftops. The reason for this is because it wasn't as much of a step forward as Mario 64, it wasn't something that overshadowed everything we've seen before, and gave us something new, something completely amazing.

Now let's spin the clock forward to the current generation.

Mario was last with us on the current crop of consoles in the form of Super Mario Galaxy, which, again, was released to near universal praise, both commercially and critically. It scores 9.5-9.9 review scores pretty much across the board, and continues to ensure the Super Mario series of games are amongst the most highly respected and anticipated games of any games, released on any console.

Sonic was last with us, as far as I'm aware anyway, in the shape of Sonic Unleashed, which was released to pretty average review scores across the board. 5-10 seems to be about the average. It's not a complete disaster of a game, that's for sure, but I think even the most die-hard Sega fan would have trouble putting forward a convincing argument for it being as good as or better than the superb Super Mario galaxy.

So to finally get to my point - Sonic has been in many a fine game, I've played most of them, enjoyed some of them, but the series simply can not match the Mario series over the years, and over the systems, for the sheer quality, and the consistence of the quality.

A generation before Sonic took his bow on the Genesis, Mario was already staring in games which are considered some of the best and most important games ever.

A generation after Sonic arrived, Mario was staring in games which were completely revolutionary for the time, Sonic was staring in games which were very good, just not as good.

In the current generation, Mario is staring in games which are released to near universal critical and commercial acclaim - Sonic is staring in games which are released to a very mixed critical and commercial reaction.

The reasons for this, let's not pretend any different, are that, over the years, Mario have consistently hit the heights, Sonic has only occasionally been able to match this.

So, I think it's fair to consider the Mario series to be the superior of the two. As I said, I have enjoyed both, and I'm sure I will enjoy both in the future, but overall, Sonic games are hit and miss; some good, some bad, some average. Mario games are far more likely to deliver what people want, which is, I think, regardless of if you are a Sega person or a Nintendo person, quality games that are fun to play.

There are some people on the internet, and indeed some on this forum, who want to make these arguments, and arguments of the opposite viewpoint by simply saying 'maRio is teh sux!!' or 'sonic is the Sux!!11' over and over again, I assume because it's all they have. The reason I like to visit this site, is because I think, in general, the posters here are above the sort of pointless trolling that you would find on other forums. I think on these forums, what is respected is the ability to put forward an argument, or a point of view in an intelligent way, which if you agree with it or not, at least is being made from a solid viewpoint.