This transition affected development for the entire team of Sega developers who were used to creating for a single platform that could be adapted to their development needs and desires. The Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001 just before the launch of Sonic Adventure 2, forcing Sega to become a third-party publisher. Unfortunately, the resurgence was short-lived as even a well-received second entry in the Sonic Adventure series couldn't salvage Sega's doomed system. The competition began to fade, until Sonic reemerged alongside the Sega Dreamcast in 1999 with the critically-acclaimed Sonic Adventure – the highest-selling game on its system. Mario quickly began to pull away with the revolutionary Super Mario 64. Sonic kept pace with Mario's biggest and best entries through the mid-'90s, but when the Saturn launched and the series' first attempt at a true 3D game, Sonic X-treme, it failed to make it to market.
"There were so many fans of the Mario series and then we came out with Sonic, who was this character that was cooler, had this visual style where he was bright blue, he played faster, the controls were better – it was a tighter game." and the whole Mario franchise was the best game out there in a lot of people's eyes – especially when you get into action and platforming," says producer of the Sonic series and current head of Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka. Mario, the godfather of the modern platforming genre, and Sonic, the challenger who expanded on that winning formula in a number of ways, were constantly compared.Īs with any rivalry, the developers behind the Sonic franchise always seemed to measure themselves against the Mario franchise. This competition carried over to the two companies' mascots, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Those practices, which according to Kalinske included Nintendo tying up the ROM memory chip market and pressuring third-party developers and retailers to not publish on or carry Sega hardware, only escalated the feud between the two gargantuan forces in the game industry. I respected how strongly they tried to control the business, but in my opinion, a lot of the stuff they were doing was illegal. "They were absolutely ruthless," former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske says. Between cutthroat business tactics and aggressive marketing campaigns, the hostility between these two companies reached a fever pitch in the early-to-mid '90s as Sega fought to take on the previously undisputed king of consoles. In the early '90s, no bigger rivalry existed in the video game industry than the one involving Nintendo and Sega.
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