Super Roster Maker - Nintendo vs. Sega

The rivalry between Nintendo and Sega is a classic part of the video game industry’s history. While today, Nintendo could be seen as the victor of the old-school console wars, with Sega having bowed out to become a third-party developer, back in the 8 and 16-bit era, Nintendo and Sega ruled the gaming landscape. Since then, games like Super Smash Bros., Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and Project X Zone have mixed together characters from both companies, but fans still speculate about seeing an equal crossover between these once bitter rivals.

That is the basis of this Super Roster Maker, Nintendo vs. Sega.

We will be creating a hypothetical fighting game roster with an equal number of characters from both Nintendo and Sega. I will be following the template I used for some of my other Super Roster Maker articles to create the roster here. Aside from that, there will be a maximum of only four characters per franchise, so no one series makes up the bulk of one side’s roster. (Looking at you two, Mario and Sonic.)

PART 1: THE ICONS

In this part, I will choose a small number of characters for each side that represent both companies, as an example of their current image in the gaming landscape.

Nintendo’s picks are:

Mario (Super Mario), Link (The Legend of Zelda), & Charizard (Pokemon)

For Nintendo’s Icons, these three franchises are some of Nintendo’s highest earning series and for many people, there are the first series that come to mind when people think of Nintendo. Mario and Link may not need much explanation, but Charizard was chosen for Pokemon over the series mascot Pikachu as Charizard is at a comparable size to a normal person, which a good deal of the roster is going to be. Pikachu being canonically small may need some a work-around to be viable in a setting like this.

Sega’s picks are:

Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog), Bayonetta (Bayonetta), & Joker (Persona)

While Sonic is fairly obvious, being Sega’s mascot, Bayonetta and Joker have their main basis of inclusion here as their inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The fact that they were chosen to represent Sega alongside Sonic in a roster with multiple video game all-stars proves that they have massive appeal in the gaming space.

PART 2: THE FIGHTERS

For this section, we will be looking at the fighting game site Eventhubs for two popular competitive games from each company and pulling the most popular or highest tiered characters from those games to add to the list (two from each game). We will also add a third, more obscure fighting game and add two characters each from those games selected by what posters on different fan forums said were the best or most popular characters in those games. Nintendo’s games were Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pokken Tournament DX, and ARMS, while Sega’s games were Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, and Eternal Champions.

Nintendo’s picks are:

From Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Ganondorf (The Legend of Zelda) & Peach (Super Mario)

From Pokken Tournament DX: Lucario & Aegislash

From ARMS: Min Min & Twintelle

Sega’s picks are:

From Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: Akihiko Sanada & Yu Narukami

From Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown: Sarah Bryant & Akira Yuki

From Eternal Champions: Larcen Tyler & Trident

PART 3: THE STARS

In this portion, we’ll pick one character each to represent eight current or upcoming games from each company. These characters and the games they are from represent the current range offered by each publisher and a roster like this could serve as an advertising vehicle for those franchises.

Nintendo’s picks are:

Tom Nook (Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

Toxtricity (Pokemon Sword & Shield)

Ring Fit Athlete (Ring Fit Adventure)

Bowser (Super Mario Odyssey/Super Mario Maker 2)

Zelda (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

Cadet Howard (Astral Chain)

Byleth (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Samus Aran (Metroid Prime 4)

Sega’s picks are:

Dr. Eggman (Sonic Forces)

Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza 6: The Song of Life)

Sakura Amamiya (Sakura Wars)

Ryuji Sakamoto (Persona 5)

Jin (Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom)

ARKS Cadet (Phantasy Star Online)

Selvaria Bles (Valkyria Chronicles 4)

Jack Frost (Shin Megami Tensei V)

PART 4: THE WILD CARDS

Now, the final section, the Wild Cards. This is where we’ll see some more variety in character picks. For both sides, we’ll pick characters for three different sub-categories: two each for game developers’ favorite characters, two each for fan favorite characters, and three each for either obscure characters or characters that can be tied to experimental ideas or presentations.

Nintendo’s Dev Favs: Kirby (Kirby) & Fox McCloud (Star Fox)

Our developer favorites for Nintendo are Kirby for Mahahiro Sakurai and Fox McCloud from Star Fox for Shigeru Miyamoto. Special note about Kirby, while I said earlier that Pikachu was excluded for being a canonically small character and Kirby is about the same, a potential work-around for this is to have Kirby pilot a mech (like in the game Kirby: Planet Robobot) for most of his attacks.

Sega’s Dev Favs: Goro Majima (Yakuza) & Aiai (Super Monkey Ball)

Our developer favorites for Sega come from Sega president Hajime Satomi for Goro Majima and game developer Toshihiro Nagoshi for Aiai.

Nintendo’s Fan Favs: Luigi (Super Mario) & Isabelle (Animal Crossing)

Sega’s Fan Favs: Segata Sanshiro (Sega Saturn) & Ryo Hazuki (Shenmue)

Not much to explain here. These characters were chosen through different fan polls and forum polls where these characters ranked high in popularity.

Nintendo’s Experimental Picks: Andy (Advance Wars), Dillon (Dillon’s Rolling Western), & Isaac (Golden Sun)

Coming from the Advance Wars series of strategy games, Andy could use various kinds of military weaponry or call in attacks from vehicles like tanks or fighter jets. Dillon, from his self-titled series of tower defense games, could work like a Nintendo version of Sonic, using a lot of rolling and dash attacks while mixing things up with some Wild West style gunplay. Finally, Isaac, protagonist of the cult-hit RPG Golden Sun, can use sword attacks, magic, Psynergy powers, or call in his party members to help with bigger attacks.

Sega’s Experimental Picks: Beat (Jet Set Radio), Zobio & Zobiko (The House of the Dead), NiGHTS (NiGHTS)

Beat, from the hip-hop styled 3D platformer Jet Set Radio, could have a moveset based around skating tricks, speed, spray paint/graffiti tags, and possibly calling in other members of the GGs for help. Zibo & Zobiko, the undead protagonist couple from the Japan-only game The House of the Dead EX, could use attacks themed around some of the series other zombies of monsters and possibly some gunplay elements calling back to the series’ main gameplay. Finally, NiGHTS, from his self-titled aerial adventure series, can have a moveset based around flying, shapeshifting, and possibly some kind of reality warping effects. (His games are based around dreams after all.)

FINAL RESULTS

Nintendo’s Characters: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Charizard, Lucario, Aegislash, Toxtricity, Link, Ganondorf, Zelda, Min Min, Twintelle, Isabelle, Tom Nook, Ring Fit Athlete, Cadet Howard, Byleth, Samus, Kirby, Fox, Andy, Dillon, Isaac

Sega’s Characters: Sonic, Dr. Eggman, Bayonetta, Joker, Ryuji, Yu, Akihiko, Akira, Sarah, Larcen, Trident, Kiryu, Majima, Sakura, Jin, ARKS Cadet, Selvaria, Jack Frost, Aiai, Segata, Ryo, Beat, Zobio & Zobiko, NiGHTS

Our final roster gives us a total of 48 characters, with 24 for each side and representing a total of 31 different series. Super Mario, Pokemon, and Persona each have four characters, The Legend of Zelda comes in with three, and the rest all have one or two characters each. (I kind of expected Sonic to get the full four characters here, but I guess Sega likes to spread the love a little more.)

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What did you think of this roster? Who do you think should make it into a Nintendo/Sega crossover? Make yourself heard in the comments below.

Thanks for coming!

Super Roster Maker - Sega Superstars Fighters

Similar to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series, Sega Superstars is a chance for gamers to experience a little of everything Sega has to offer. Having seen life in the form of a motion-sensor minigame collection, a tennis game, and two racing games, this series allows players to view the characters and worlds of their most well-known titles. With the catalogue they have however, one could argue that they could pull a move similar to Nintendo and make a fighting game with their vast library of franchises.

That's what we'll look at today in the topic of this Super Roster Maker: Sega Superstars Fighters.

For this article, we'll use the same selection methods used in the Nintendo vs. Capcom roster article and pick the characters based on four different categories. Those four categories are the Icons (the main faces everyone associates with the company), the Fighters (popular or top-tier characters from previous fighting games), the Stars (important or popular characters from currently relevant or soon-to-be-relevant series), and the Wild Cards (either developer favorites, fan favorites, or experimental characters with weird moveset ideas or presentations).

Now, let's choose our characters.

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Part 1 - The Icons

For this section, we'll pull one character each from the franchises most frequently involved with the Sega Superstars series as a whole, including the racing games, Sega Superstars Tennis, and the original game for the PS2 used with the PlayStation EyeToy.

Motion controls before Nintendo made it cool.

The picks are:

Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog)
AiAi (Super Monkey Ball)

Ulala (Space Channel 5)
Amigo (Samba de Amigo)

Alex Kidd (Alex Kidd in Miracle World)
Beat (Jet Set Radio)

The six series listed above were all involved in most or all of the Sega Superstars games and these guys are the main characters for each of them. Crazy Taxi also made the list, but a game where the main premise is being a taxi driver and that's it doesn't exactly lend itself to producing a fighting character.

Part 2 - The Fighters

Selecting our fighting game veterans, a variety of different games, particularly old ones, were used. The games are Sonic the Fighters, Virtua Fighter 5, Fighting Vipers, Eternal Champions, and Super Smash Bros. (a Nintendo game that includes Sega characters as third-party guests). Since most of Sega's fighting games are rather old, we can't rely on Eventhubs for the most part to provide tier lists for everything. So, for many of the games, forums on different websites provided opinions from fans on the games' rosters, including people's favorites and which ones were the best to use.

The picks are:

For Sonic the Fighters: Espio and Dr. Eggman

For Virtua Fighter 5: Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant

For Fighting Vipers: Honey and Genghis Bahn




For Eternal Champions: Larcen Tyler and Trident

For Super Smash Bros. 4: Shadow and Bayonetta

These characters are ones that fans on forums largely say are their favorites or powerful (sometimes, too powerful) picks in games. Addressing one of these characters, while Shadow isn't playable in Smash, he is an assist character within the game and was a popular request a new playable character in the series next entry, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

If only it actually came true...

Part 3 - The Stars

These characters are meant to promote series that are currently prominent or have a high-profile project coming up in the future. However, despite having a large catalog of franchises they can use for games, Sega has only been paying big attention to a few series recently, those being Sonic the Hedgehog, Valkyria Chronicles, and Yakuza. A fourth can be added here since a revival for the Sakura Wars series has been announced for 2019, but that's about it.

The picks are:

Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog)
Selvaria Bles (Valkyria Chronicles)

Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza)
Sakura Shinguji (Sakura Wars)


Only four characters in this section. Don't worry. The next one will bring a bunch more in.

Part 4 - The Wild Cards

This section is split into three different parts: developer favorites, fan favorites, and characters that have potential for an out-of-the-box moveset idea or presentation. For the first section, we looked for developer interviews where they stated what their favorite SEGA games or characters were.

Dev Favs:

Scooter (Alien Storm)
Toma (Shining Force EXA)

Sketch Turner (Comix Zone)
Axel Stone (Streets of Rage)

In an article about the Sega Genesis Classics Collection (link here), several Sega developers stated what their favorite classic games were from the collection. That served as the basis here since it could provide some lesser known, interesting characters. Among other answers, Hiroyuki Sakamoti (the director of Yakuza 6) picked Alien Storm, Makoto Suzuki (the producer of Shining Resonance Refrain) picked Shining in the Darkness, Mizuki Hosoyamada (producer of Puyo Puyo Tetris) picked Comix Zone, and Al Hope (director of Alien Isolation) picked Streets of Rage 2.

The three beat-em-up characters were easy, being either stand out or main characters from their games. For the Shining series, Toma from Shining Force EXA was selected for being a more distinct character than the ones from the Genesis era games and for his inclusion in the Project X Zone series giving him more exposure than some other characters.


Fan Favs:

Erica Fontaine (Sakura Wars)
Ryo Hazuki (Shenmue)

Combo (Jet Set Radio)
Knuckles (Sonic the Hedgehog)


A different article showed which Sega franchises and characters Sega fans wanted to see more of, which series they're most invested in, and what their favorite characters were. Taking all three given lists into account was how we got these four picks.

Experimental Characters:

Segata Sanshiro (Sega Saturn)
NiGHTS (NiGHTS into Dreams)

Coco Tapioca (Space Channel 5)
Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo)


This would probably be the section with the most varied, disputable picks. Looking again at the series listed in the article from the Fan Favs section, focus was on characters that filled an underrepresented fighting niche or those that could have unique fighting mechanics or presentations. Going over the chosen characters, Segata Sanshiro could use moves inspired by his commercial appearances for the Sega Saturn, NiGHTS can fly and shape-shift for different fighting styles and spatial control, Coco Tapioca from Space Channel 5 is a heavyweight character that could use potential rhythm based attacks, and Arle Nadja from Puyo Puyo can use moves involving the game's titular puzzle pieces and connecting them for different effects or damage outputs.

Final Results

The Roster: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Espio, Shadow, Dr. Eggman, Ulala, Coco Tapioca, Beat, Combo, Akira, Jacky, Honey, Bahn, Larcen, Trident, Sakura, Erica, AiAi, Amigo, Alex Kidd, Bayonetta, Selvaria, Kazuma, Scooter, Toma, Sketch, Axel, Ryo, Segata, NiGHTS, Arle

This roster gives us a grand total of 32 characters. Six of those characters come from the Sonic the Hedgehog series while all the other series involved only have one or two characters. If this list seems weighed a bit heavily in favor of the Sonic series, that probably just shows how Sega themselves have been favoring it lately.

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What did you think of this roster? What characters do you think would make it into a large Sega crossover fighter? Make your voice heard in the comments below. Thanks for coming!