Were you team Sonic or team Mario?

[Ashley]

The 90s. When we all envied Zach's 'mobile' phone, watched Wolf chew scenery and were engaged in a fierce debate between speed and jumping.

 

When you were younger were you more into Mario or Sonic? Or perhaps you were really out there and loved Cool Spot like no other...

[Happenstance]

I started with Mario on my NES but as soon as I got my Mega Drive I was Sonic all the way.

[Mr-Paul]

I played Sonic before Mario because my cousins had a megadrive.

 

My first console was a Game Boy Color, in July 1998, and my first game was actually Wario Land 2.

 

I'm not sure I owned an actual Mario game until I got my N64 at Christmas 1999, then picked up Mario 64 shortly after in early 2000. If you count Smash though, I got that with my N64.

 

I had definitely played Mario before that though, but my gaming experience in the 90s was quite limited!

[Ike]

I got a Mega Drive II for Christmas with Sonic 2 and Sonic CD. Sonic 2 is the game I attribute with getting me into gaming so I'll always be team Sonic deep down even if I'm starting to fall out due to some of his recent outings. Looking forward to Sonic Mania.

[Dcubed]

I was a Nintendo kid back in the day, so naturally I was on Team Mario. But I did have a soft spot for the classic Sonics that my friend had.

 

Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game I actually owned myself, but I caught up with the classic MD titles before long

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

Sonic brah - I remember the day my mum finally succumbed (to the peer pressure of my cousins having one) and bought me a Master System in that classic blue and white box with Sonic 1 built in - remember that zone one underground theme...<3

 

Sonic was always cooler to me than Mario, at school i used to try and run like Sonic by bending my torso forward and stretching my arms backward.

 

Though I did sort of envy Mario when I played on my cousins/friends NES/SNES. But was always content with Sonic.

[Jonnas]

Sonic (SEGA in general) was king among friends and family, and my first console was a Mega Drive. Even if Mario was somewhat popular for the Game Boy (also a very important playground device), he was no match for the Spin Dash master.

[Sheikah]

I had a mega drive back in the day. That said, as soon as I got dat N64 I was really into Nintendo's games.

[Fierce_LiNk]

I had both, but I don't remember why. I remember getting a SNES and playing Super Mario All-Stars for the first time, but I don't remember my first experience with a Master System or Mega Drive. I never had a NES until yeeeears later, so I guess I must have been a SEGA fan to begin with.

 

I did prefer the Sonic games up until I played Super Mario Bros 3. My brother was amazing at the first Mario game and I loved that. 2 was forgettable and we didn't like that. 3 was amazing and that made me a full-on Mario fan. It's still one of my favourite games to date.

 

Once the transition to 3D kicked in, I definitely became Team Nintendo. Never bought a Saturn and didn't get a DreamCast until sometime later. So, I'd say that I loved both companies during the 2D years, with perhaps more of me leaning towards SEGA than Nintendo. I had waaaaay more games on the Mega Drive and that became my console of choice. As characters, I loved both Sonic and Mario at the time, which I think was unheard of amongst my friends.

[Cube]

Sonic when I was a kid, and I still prefer Sonic now. The only era I prefer Mario was N64 era.

[nekunando]

I appreciated both characters growing up

 

I would certainly put myself in the #TeamMario camp as I grew up with the SNES and N64 but I played plenty of Sonic, in addition to many other titles, on my friend's Sega Mega Drive too at that time!

 

I played the Mega Drive almost exclusively in multiplayer so I never had that opportunity to sit down in my own home and really get absorbed in playing through one of the Sonic titles from start to finish until more recent years thanks to the Wii Virtual Console. Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are all great games worth playing and the music is often fantastic Having said that, the main Mario titles have always been exceptional with a very high quality consistently over the years while Sonic has fallen off a cliff!

 

One moment that always stands out to me in all this is one evening where my older brother's friend from school was up at our house and I sat watching them play through several levels of Super Mario World in the living room while our parents chatted.

 

We had saved up for the game for ages and it was still relatively new to us at this point with our previous experience of platformers all being quite linear, including Tom & Jerry and Sonic at my friend's house. Having a world map to select levels from seemed outrageously different to anything we had seen before at the time but I watched on as my brother and friend played through one level to the next alternately as Mario and Luigi.

 

We'd already seen Yellow Switch Palace in the first world (You can't really miss it ) and saw what it did to the empty spaces in each level but didn't really think much about that functionality. Helping my brother stumble across the path for the Red Switch Palace, however, opened up my eyes!

 

I had remembered seeing some red markings in a previous level in Vanilla Dome so I urged them to return to it instead of continuing on to the Ghost House ahead. When we all went back and seen a whole new path open up an entirely different direction to the way we were originally heading, the game suddenly became something even more wonderful and one that I took great pleasure in exploring fully for all 96 exits during my childhood.

 

It was one of the moments in my life that really drew me into gaming and Mario has continued to surprise and amaze in the years since that day

[Rummy]

Quite surprised by the amount of Sonic fans here! I was always a Mario boy - in fact one of the earlier games I can think of that I was cutting my teeth on was Super Mario Land on my cousin's(and later our own) Gameboy. Then we had a SNES, which we eventually got SMW for - I'd also played SMB3 on holiday or somewhere iirc. Few years later All Stars hit and I got to experience all these old Mario experiences I never actually had had(SMB1, 2, 3 and LL). Cue Yoshi's Island when it came too. SM64, MK64 etc. I was Nintendo through and through until I bought a crystal Xbox back in 2004/05. Never owned anything Sega, but I did get the Sonic Mega Collection on the Xbox....still preferred Mario to it at the end of the day.