Posting this topic just for fun, and out of shear boredom. be warned. For a moment I thought about the rivalry between Sega and Nintendo. Than Suddenly, I had a random epiphany and asked myself, Could Eggman possibly loosely be based on Mario? There are some similarities, 1. Mario is fat.......... Eggman is fat. 2. Mario Is saturated with the color red........ Eggman is saturated in the color red. 3. Mario Has a huge ass mustache... Eggman has a Huge ass mustache. 4 Back in the day, Nintendo was Sega's target for demolition , so why not plant a seed of evil in the backs of our minds without us even realizing it... so ya, it begs me to wonder was Sega secretly shooting for a character loosely based off of Mario, as the main villain, as a sort of hidden propaganda scheme to trash Mario in the backs of our subconscious minds ?! Edit: Fun little picture that I just dug up on goggle. Uploaded with ImageShack.us
I thought this thread was going to be about what would happen if Mario went up against Eggman instead of Sonic. As for the topic at hand, if what you speculate is true, perhaps that's also how Wario came to be. If Eggman is a caricature of Mario, then Nintendo probably turned around and said "Oh yeah, well here's a caricature of your caricature!"
I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, since they originally considered making Robotnik the hero at one point.
Considering the rivalry of the companies back then, I'd believe it. BTW your topic title is a bit misleading.
I don't think this is a case of caricature, just a few slight coincidences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Hibiki Now, this guy is the ultimate caricature.
I always thought the earlyest design for Eggman looked more like a late 80's early 90's Studio Ghibli character
Actually yeah there was that Studio Ghibli character, was he from Laputa: Castle in the Sky? or was it something else? Is the topic title really that missleading ? I think its perfect.
Although both sides have credence, it's probably safe to say that we would have heard about this already had this been the case. Plus, wasn't the original good-guy Eggman design based off Teddy Roosevelt because they wanted an 'All American' character to appeal to the west?
If I remember right, the image Trakker posted was originally an idea for the protagonist of the game, pre-sonic.
The Sonic and Mario games are actually in the same universe. Eggman and Mario are the same characters, and each franchise is simply one side's depiction of the epic struggle.
Sonic just eats loads of mushrooms on the way to fight Mario and starts hallucinating scary techno-industrial nightmares and robots. :v:
Lol now I'm really glad I created this topic. that idea would make quite the fan game. so does that mean Amy is actually peach?! , If thats the case than it also explains Princess Elise existence. By the time sonic 06 came around the shrooms were wearing off causing sonic to see peach as yet another character, Princess Elise?! (which so happens to be closer to peaches form) dear god! Sega notices this and injects sonic with all sorts of drugs causing him to hallucinate the whole warehog bit.. wow and what about poor tails ?! could it be ? Tails never existed in the first place, which explains his never ending ability to reincarnate and fly sonic real high.
I would argue that Mario is the one hallucinating, given how utterly bizarre his world is compared to Sonic's (which have a stronger basis in reality, especially from the Adventure series onwards.). Walking mushrooms, flying turtles, flowers that allow you to shoot fireballs when you touch them, bullets with faces, the list goes on. And his addiction to mushrooms probably causes him to see Sonic as a giant fire-breathing turtle named Bowser and Tails as his annoying sidekick Bowser Junior. Though, it wouldn't really explain why Bowser is so sluggish compared to Sonic (except in the non-canonical Mario Kart series).
A chubby character with a mustache is too much of a coincidence to put much credence into this theory However, there are some obvious things done with Sonic's design to sort of counter-act Mario (Most of which were probably brought up in interviews at some point; I don't have quite the encyclopedic knowledge of Sonic some of you guys do) - Sonic is blue. This is to counteract Mario's theme of red. Red is typically seen (in the west at least) as a bold, energetic color. Blue is a soothing familiar color, often seen to represent dominance or complacency thanks to IBM. This would be an odd choice considering Sonic's personality except Blue is also usually seen as a counter to Red. Pepsi used Blue for their branding to counteract Coke's Red in a similar manner. - To counteract the complacency bias, Sonic was advertised as "cool." This played perfectly into the 90s so he's a product of his times as well but he's set up to take advantage of both the counter to Nintendo's branding while being sparky yet familiar. He's an interesting mix of concepts that commands attention - Sonic is "cute" to appeal to younger audiences. We know this from interviews, he's got that Mickey Mouse aesthetic going. He honestly appeals better to kids than Mario does all other things equal - The rolling mechanics. More old news he rolls up in a ball to "bounce" off enemies and keep the flow going blah blah we know this We know his design was collaborative between different regions and there's probably a million other things that went into his design but these things stick out at me most for Sonic Dr. Robotnik on the other hand I can't tell you what's going on. His clothing is red to present a foil to Sonic which coincidentally lines up with Mario but its not like they really had Mario on the mind. The mustache as has been stated earlier can be attributed to that Teddy Roosevelt design aspect to make him familiar to American audiences. And uh, he's shaped like an egg because the Japanese find that funny I think. Japan is weird, this is a fact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbRZKrvAZ7U&feature=endscreen&NR=1 If video game characters did live in the same world as toons, the amount of mushrooms involved would be much different.
