Mario was first introduced in 1981 in the Donkey Kong game that was available in the arcade. At the time he was known as “Jumpman”, however he looked exactly like the Mario we all know from the Mario Bros. franchise.

The Mario game that brought the character to popularity was the first “Super Mario Bros” game to be introduced for the Super Nintendo and is now known as the best-selling game of all time. It was known for being the best-developed side-scroller of its time, which opened its doors for developers to improve their development for future Mario games.

Mario’s development in the 3D world helped make his mark on the Nintendo 64, which is still known today as the best 3D platformer ever made. There have been many other clones of this game, but none have reached the level of success of Super Mario 64.

In competition with Nintendo, Sega wanted to gain fame from Mario Brothers. They created Sonic the Hedgehog, which would help market the Sega Genesis to compete against Mario and the Super Nintendo system. Sonic was built as a character that was much more “hipper” than Mario and had a bit of an attitude.

Sonic’s first game introduction didn’t really catch on until he made it to the 16-bit console system with his Tails side kick. Tails was a character created to be played as the second player in the Sonic the Hedgehog game franchise.

The 3D development of the Sonic games did not gain as much success as the Mario games, until it was released on the Sega Dreamcast. This is where we saw a 3D Sonic game titled “Sonic Adventure” that was really worth playing.

If you don’t care which game is more popular and just want to play then there is good news, whatever game you prefer, you can play all of them online for free. With the power of the Internet and Flash, you can find many fun variations of Sonic Games Online and Mario Games Online.