‘We want to surpass Mario with Sonic,’ says Sega boss

The rivalry goes on (Picture: Sega)

One of the senior producers of the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise has talked about the future of the series and living in the shadow of Mario.

Back in 1988, Sega started an internal competition to create a rival mascot to Super Mario and while it took them three years they did get there. The end result was Sonic the Hedgehog and while his games have rarely impressed in the modern era the character itself remains hugely popular.

What’s often not realised though is that Sonic is much more popular in the West than in Japan. In fact, Sega itself is, generally speaking, a bigger deal in the West than in its home country, with the best-selling Sega console in Japan being the Saturn (which has no mainline Sonic game) even though it’s by far the least successful here.

That creates an awkward dynamic for the company but in an interesting new interview senior executive Osamu Ohashi has talked about how he wants to ‘surpass Mario’ and how he hasn’t given up on the original goals for the character.

‘Simply put, I want to surpass Mario. 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,’ he said in an interview on the Sega website.

‘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 USJ [Universal Studios Japan] to create a ‘Sonic Area’ as well. That’s our goal for those of us who love Sonic.’

The interview is a recruitment article for new staff in Japan and the translations are only via Google, but it’s an interesting look at the sort of questions new staff have about the company and working on a property that is most popular overseas.

One of the other questions Ohashi is asked is what’s the difference between creating a game that is a hit in Japan and a game that’s successful around the world, to which he gives the following answer:

‘I think the definition of an interesting game remains essentially the same. However, it is true that the same thing is perceived differently depending on the country. For example, there was a time when the word ‘cute’ in Japan was perceived as ‘childish’’ overseas. Although ‘kawaii’ is now being accepted overseas, it is not all about what we feel.’

‘On the other hand, even if people overseas think something is cute, it may not be very popular in Japan. It would be great if we could honestly accept these differences in sensibilities and utilise them in making games,’ he adds.

Although he’s an executive now, Ohashi has been a producer on a wide range of Sega games, with credits going all the way back to the early 90s, when he was an art assistant on Sonic The Hedgehog 3.

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Although the Sonic movies have proven popular the only major critical success for the video game series, in the modern era, has been the outsourced Sonic Mania. Last year’s Sonic Frontiers was more popular than usual for a 3D game, but the recent Sonic Superstars has proven both a critical and commercial disappointment.

Part of the problem is likely to have been the fact that it released in such close proximity to the acclaimed Super Mario Bros. Wonder, underlying the fact that Nintendo’s mascot is still well ahead of Sega’s in terms of both quality and popularity.

However, Sega clearly isn’t giving up, or lowering its ambitions, and while there’s currently no new console games announced for the series, that’s not going to last for long…

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One of the senior producers of the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise has talked about the future of the series and living in the shadow of Mario.