What's your take on Sonic rosters?

[Dorayaki]

Since Sonic is mentioned, I think it would be intersting to start a discussion and hear opinions from fans who like both series.

It's quite obvious Sonic want to catch up with Mario in party spinoff category, but both seem to have very different direction in returnees and newcomer picks outside their core main cast.

It feel like Mario gives more emphasis on enemies and minons from platformer titles, while characters from most of Sonic's feature titles have a chance to return in spinoffs.

Also noticeably Dr. Eggman doesn't seem to have a firm army as recurring characters like Bowser, who has minion koopas as well as Koopalings. Not sure if Sage would take Scratch Bowser Jr's role as main assistant, tho.

What's your opinion? Do you think one of them has more merits for the other to learn? Or you think they're mostly on the same bar?

 

[Xiahou Ba]

If I were to be completely honest, Mario Kart World's newcomers are shit novelty low effort meme picks and I would honestly prefer if the roster was more balanced around actual characters than shoveling in a bunch of random generic enemies, and this especially holds true over the multiple veterans that did get cut. I would rather have all 7 Koopalings back than a roster of Rocky Wrench, Spike, Coin Coffer, Snowman, Pokey, Stingby, Peepa, and Cow. I really don't mind shit meme picks, I like the Item Crate after all in Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled but the thing is, that game also gave us Baby T., the announcer birds, King Chicken, etc., and not just the random fuckers you like, kill in the Crash games or something.

If I were to cast my favoritism for particular characters in Mario Kart World aside (I do like Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Toad, and Toadette more than all of the Sonic Racing Crossworlds roster combined after all), I think Sonic Racing Crossworlds has a more appealing roster to its core fanbase who might know who Wave the Swallow is and what does, while Mario Kart World has a more appealing roster to people who pick up the game once for their kids, play as a Cow for like a few hours, and then don't play it again for a very long time.

 

[winstein]

Although not a fan favourite among Sonic fans, one day it would be nice to see all the Deadly Six characters playable in one game. Thus far only two of them appear at most (Zavok and Zazz). I kind of feel that they added variety to the Sonic cast of characters by not being animals for a change (their backlash makes me assume that the fans hate any character who are not animals, even if that might not be the case). I do not know if they are more independent than the Koopalings, which didn't feel right when even one is left behind, but it would be nice if no one's left behind in the Deadly Six.

For the Mario roster, one of the things I wanted most is that the friendly species get more representation. A lot of demand for generic species are the enemy side, so like there are a lot of interest in seeing Goomba playable in more games for example. But seeing all the friendly characters being left behind is also not right, because they look like they could join in the party too! The Mario baseball games provided a sample of what could have been when you have Piantas and Nokis playable, or Dr. Mario World with that Dolphin, but more would be nice. This is why I think Mario Kart World provided a net positive because certain friendly species like Penguin finally get their chance, and I hope we get more games with them. Now if Mario Party would allow this (Penguin is my top pick), that would be swell.

Relating to Sonic, it's probably a stretch but it would be funny if the animal friends would show up, doubly funny if they use the older English names, so Pocky the rabbit would be Johnny Lightfoot, Picky the pig would be Porker Lewis, and Ricky the squirrel would be... Sally Acorn.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Salmancer]

I think Team Sonic Racing should have made Orbot and Cubot the technique racer to have Eggman be the power racer, cutting out Zavok. Zavok just feels like a third wheel considering Zavok and Eggman aren't really allies. Eggman can fit power, seeing as he was sorted there for Sonic Riders. Similarly, Vector is a great character but its weird to use him to round out the duo of Silver and Blaze. Doubly so since Silver and Espio is an established pairing from Sonic Rivals 2. As for the type imbalance, Blaze could have been moved to Power to leave space for Espio as Speed. And why did we get playable Chao over Cream?

Oh wait we're doing compare and contrast with Mario? Well, uh, Sonic being character focused kind of tracks. Sonic the Hedgehog is structurally similar to shonen anime. One of its biggest influences is Dragon Ball. This comes with an eye toward named attacks, characters having well defined group dynamics, and an ability to reference past events as part of banter. These factors really encourage putting the characters into more games, to let those interactions happen.

Additionally, Sonic the Hedgehog didn't really start reusing enemies in games until Sonic Adventure 2, and the early games did not reuse enemies from one level in another level that much. This means all the enemies are a good deal less iconic than Mario enemies. Like, everyone knows Motobug, and perhaps Buzz Bomber. Name recall is going to fall off a cliff with Crabmeat and that's still an enemy from the first level of the first game. I bet some of the people reading this post can't read Rexon, Madmole, or Egg Flame and remember what enemies those even are. I had to look up Rexon for the spelling and I thought Egg Flame was called Egg Scorcher, just for reference. You might have more luck with Sonic boss fights, because those do reoccur a few times and there are iconic designs, but those are mostly machines piloted by Eggman and therefore make poor choices for playable characters in a kart racer. Of course, there have been throwbacks to enemies through later games in the franchise but not establishing recurring enemies early on makes them less appealing as playable characters in the present.

Egg Pawn only got to where it is today through years of reuse. Years of reuse if never would have gotten had Sonic Heroes not been chosen to be a bit of a creative recentering that the brand turns to time and time again. Notice that Spinner gets to be the recurring flying enemy and not Egg Flapper, despite Egg Flapper being the flying version of the "iconic" Egg Pawn. Also notice that most people don't know the names of both Egg Flapper and Spinner. Yeah, that's what years of not reusing enemies gets you.