Mario Vs. Sonic.

[Kriven]

I know this is a bumped thread, but Alucard brought up an interesting point.

The Mario franchise has been spun-off into a number of sub-franchises each with their own enormous casts of characters. While Sega has created a number of very good and one very bad spin-off (Tails Skypatrol, Tails Adventure, Knuckles Chaotix, and Shadow the Hedgehog) they treat their spin-offs as nothing more than Sonic games which happen to lack Sonic. Which is a shame for a number of reasons, most notably that those characters are later shoehorned into every other Sonic game, where they don't properly belong, or because they created gameplay mechanics they later decided not to develop.

I think the Sonic franchise would thrive a lot better, and the universe would become a little more lively, if they took the time to develop some of these other characters in their own games, specifically the ones which have to be forced into modern games anyways. Namely I'm talking about Knuckles and the Chaotix, who could each hold their own games, and Shadow could probably do so as well if the developers actually took the time to do it right. But mostly the Chaotix, who could easily present themselves as a very different kind of game from the typical Sonic fare while focusing on the unique strengths and weaknesses of these characters as a detective team. Taking the focus off of the larger Sonic Friends roster would also allow them to reintroduce characters who have more connections to the Chaotix and haven't been seen for quite a while, like Fang, Mighty, and Ray.

Just a thought.