Shouldn’t that be Link or Samus > Mario. This thread is about mascots, not games.
I think you meant to say the Sonic and Shadow levels of the Dreamcast Sonic Adventures were pretty good. Or at least some of them were. Pretty much every other character you could play as sucked balls. The best of the bunch was Tails in the first one, and that was mostly because it was reusing the Sonic levels and asking you to find shortcuts to beat Sonic to the end. It was a cool way to reuse and recontextualize existing levels, even if the gameplay was still a bit meh compared to Sonic himself.
Big the Cat was great.
Earthworm Jim
Clank
Princess Peach!
Sonic was better than Mario in every way possible until the move to 3D.
When I was 8 my parents were surprised that I wanted a Genesis over a Super Nintendo - at the time it had more games and better graphics. But I was having none of that, it was sonic or nothing.
My mental association with Sonic is running at a thousand miles per hour into a wall of spikes I can’t possibly dodge, but furries’ association with Sonic is a universe full of anthropomorphical weasels that they can yiff. So Mario’s the clear winner here.
EWJ gets my vote
Everyone loves Jim, certainly, but I’m not sure we can count him as a mascot fairly, especially with what, 4 games under his belt, and not being pushed as a platform’s character.
But that’s what the option is for, I suppose.
In the vein of Burger King or Ronald MacDonald–how about Lord British or Chuckles?
Mario has frankly moved way beyond mascot at this point–he’s more like the team owner’s permanent representative (ie the nintendo execs just send Mario to any meeting where devs are planning some sort of Mario game, or how much said license will cost).
Sonic is more like your friend’s juvenile delinquent older brother–he’s hopped up on something and fairly untrustworthy. Not mascot material because he’ll screw it all up or bail on you.
If we’re going to move into unrelated mascots, I’m going to have to make a “best commercial mascot game” later, featuring Cool Spot, Chester Cheetah, The Noid, and of course, Socks The Cat. How the hell did he get a game, anyway?
Sonic could kick Mario’s fat Italian plumber ass all to hell. Plus, how can they compete at the same Olympic sports when Sonic can run at the speed of sound and Mario is so obviously out of shape, apparently from pasta and canoles?
Oh, and for the record, platform games suck the mud out of camel ass.