A Sega executive wants Sonic “to be more popular than Mario”

Sega executive Osamu Ohasi has expressed his desire for Sonic to “overtake Mario.”

Ohasi is currently in charge of Sega’s Second Department, which is the one in charge of the Sonic saga and the reboot work that is being done on the character, recovering old titles and making them available again. The statements come from an internal Sega Japan interview that has been translated by NoisyPixel.

The interview asks Ohasi how he plans to grow the Sonic series in the future, and he responds: “In layman’s terms, I want to surpass Mario.”

“Sonic was a game originally developed to compete with Mario, and we haven’t achieved that yet. Because we respect Mario, my goal is to catch him and surpass him.”

“We want Sonic to be played all over the world, including Japan, just like Mario, and we want the movie to have a bigger impact than Mario. We want to build a Sonic theme park at Universal Studios Japan. That’s my dream, like Sonic lover.”

While it is true that the character was originally created as a way for Sega to compete with the success of Nintendo and its most popular mascot, Sonic has practically always been in a timid second place. Similarly, and recently, the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie started with good numbers, but the Mario movie quickly surpassed it. Something similar happened with the launch of Sonic: Superstars and Super Mario Wonder.

Just yesterday, Sega announced a new game in the hedgehog saga, a 3D platform called Sonic Dream Team that will be exclusive to Apple Arcade.