Do you still view Mario and Sonic as rivals?

[Spirit]

For those of us who grew up in the 90s, during the very intense console war between Nintendo and Sega, it can be hard to see Mario and Sonic as anything other than rivals.

Sonic himself was designed specifically to challenge Mario. He wasn't art for the sake of art, he was conceived to be a threat.

For a while Sega burned twice as bright and took a 60+% share of the console market with the Genesis/Megadrive before burning out twice as fast.

Nowadays Sonic is on Nintendo consoles and even shares games with Mario himself in the likes of Smash Bros and the Olympic Games series.

In fact, in the Tokyo Olympics Game, Sonic and Mario are described as being 'best friends'.

But do you see them as best friends?

Do you feel a camaraderie between Mario and Sonic and Sega and Nintendo when they work together?

Or do you still feel as if there's a friction when they cross paths?

 

[GoronGainz]

I feel the rivalry has died down for the most part.

Mario games have withstood the test of time whereas Sonic games are either gems or completely abysmal.

I like seeing them in same games. The more the merrier but rivals, not anymore.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

no, they're about as much rivals as Mario and Kirby are at this point, they're just two platformer series that occupy the same systems, only difference is Sonic is multiplat and of course their history, I think it's clear too that there's a lot more crossover b/w the two fanbases these days than there was back in the 90s, so their days if rivalry has long since been put aside

I will say though, there's this one bit in the Sonic movie where Sonic kept ragging on the mushroom world that he's supposed to go to in order to be safe, it's obviously a nod to mushroom hill zone but you can't help but think of it also being a jab at the whole Mario rivalry thing during the genesis days, it's a two for one

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Mario was always better anyway. They both had a different style of platforming and although I missed the Nintendo and Sega rivalry, I never really felt like Sonic was meant to challenge Mario games.

 

[ArmanaTheCustos]

It's really hard to see them as rivals because rivals to me Rivals can challenge each other and have it challenge go either way, however in this case Mario has clearly won. The challenge in this case was the console wars of the 90's and during this time it was rather even with one company winning in some categories and losing in others, with nintendo and mario still producing their own systems even to this day I'd have to say sonic and mario are more like buddies

 

[areasell]

The Olympic games series made me assume they were rivals for many years, but I don't think any characters are rivals at this point, let alone sonic and Mario.

 

[Ten Thousand Needles]

The companies are no longer rivals, so not really. The rivalry is still a well known bit of video game history though. if they made a cross-over portraying them as heated rivals it would be perfectly believable. They could also be buddies and that would be believable too.

 

[~Kilza~]

No. It honestly never felt like they were rivals when I was growing up, and I feel like you can easily make the argument that they haven't really been rivals at all this century. When it was just Nintendo and Sega as the main companies involved with video games, yeah, there was a competition there, but with Sony and Microsoft entering the picture and Sega fading away from the console race, there really hasn't been any way for them to be rivals.

 

[iDarkLink]

For someone that grew up during the sixth console generation, I never really knew about the Sonic VS Mario rivalry until YouTube took over. Even as a kid, I still saw their respective games as equals. Sonic's Genesis games were excellent in graphics and sounds, but Mario stuck out with its simple aesthetic and charm.
I still believe the console wars of the 90s ended in a loss for SEGA, with the SNES won through determination and not relying on gimmicky (albiet interesting) console add-ons to survive until 1996. They both lost the Battle of Frogger Creek, though, so the true winner is anyone's guess.

TLDR
I think Sonic and Mario are considered "friends" now, but Sonic definitely holds just a little bit of a grudge with the occasional mushroom-related joke here and there.

 

[VikzeLink]

I know they used to be, but for me they've never really been. I'm just a tad bit too young. As SEGA's last console, the Dreamcast, failed, and Sonic started to appear on the Nintendo consoles instead. I was born in 1993, and I didn't start to know about/play video games until I was like 5-6, so by then, most of that had blown over.