Imagine Mario and Sonic challenging each other to play the opposite fandom's original game, to see who can do better in enemy territory, so to speak. But then Sonic says that Mario should actually try playing Sonic 2 instead of Sonic 1 -- because he says that Sonic 1 would just be too difficult for Mario to handle. He then laughs to himself as he says that Sonic 1 is just too "Nintendo hard".
And although Mario tries not to let it show, he's actually deeply offended that Sonic would even say such a thing. (That's company appropriation!)
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE WONDERING HOW WELL THEY WOULD ACTUALLY DO (because this is something I've thought about a lot)
Sonic would breeze through a lot of the early levels fairly quickly, but he'd lose every mushroom almost immediately after obtaining it. The strategy makes a lot of sense for him, however -- instead of being super cautious around enemies in order to stay big, he wouldn't mind giving that up in order to keep his flow going and speed past a few enemies while he's still invincible. I mean, really, imagine him running straight through Bowser to get to that button thingy behind him -- because, so long as he had a mushroom to give up, that's just the easiest way to do it. The problem with this approach, however, is that there aren't nearly as many mushrooms in Mario games as there are rings in Sonic games, so he'll probably lose quite a few lives by speeding through the level too quickly and running straight into a piranha plant as little Mario. Still, I feel like he'd be able to get surprisingly far before running out of lives completely.
Highlights:
"Wait, you know about the warp zone here??"
"Dude everyone knows about the warp zone at the end of world 1-2."
Also, Mario cringing as he watches Sonic basically dive straight into enemies and put almost no thought into the platforming bits (seemingly no thought, anyway).
Meanwhile, on the flip side of things: Mario struggles to make it past the first act of the first zone, because he keeps getting stuck on loop-de-loops and sometimes even struggles just to make it uphill due to the fact that he's not building up enough speed.
"How do you make it through the loops?"
"You go fast."
"....How do I go fast?"
"You just... go fast."
"Which button is run?"
"There is no run button."
"...What?"
And, yes, I have heard actual Sonic fans say these kinds of things. XD
What's interesting about all of this is that, for once in his life, Sonic would actually be at a distinct advantage due to Mario's popularity. Everyone knows how to play Mario. Everyone understands the basics of the gameplay, what sorts of enemies to expect, how to defeat them, and, like I said, everyone knows about the warp zone in world 1-2. The same can't be said about Sonic games. So while Sonic's strategy may be a bit unconventional, he at least knows how to play the game and has a pretty good idea of what to expect, because Mario is so popular that even Sonic is vaguely familiar with it. Mario, meanwhile, would crawl uphill at a snail's pace as he struggles to get a hang of the gameplay basics. He'd probably even go into the game with the assumption that rings function exactly the same as coins -- although hopefully it wouldn't take him too long to figure out what the difference is.
...
WHAT DOES EVERYONE ELSE HERE DAYDREAM ABOUT WHILE THEY'RE IN THE SHOWER?? CUZ THIS IS WHERE MY BRAIN GOES, APPARENTLY.
