Which video game character is more iconic - Mario, Sonic or Pacman?

[yoda313]

So of the three which is more iconic - Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Pacman?

I'd say the no brainer is Super Mario. Though PacMan might be a close second with Sonic placing a distant third.

I would tend to suspect Pacman might be more "recognizable" by the older general population. Though I imagine it's hard to find somebody who has never heard of Mario.

What about you?

[budz]

I grew up in the 80's therefore it's Pacman for me.

[yoda313]

????

Mario was '85 for the NES and was in DONKEY KONG before that.

But yeah I figured pacman would rate high for many out there.

Let the debate continue!

[louv68]

I would agree with you that Mario is the most recognizable of the three, although Pacman was from my generation. I spent many hard-earned quarters earned from mowing lawns and shoveling snow back when I was a kid. Time Pilot and Vanguard were probably the two I spent the most money on. Those were the days! Oh, and Donkey Kong which had Mario in it, ate many of my quarters too.

[budz]

I would agree with you that Mario is the most recognizable of the three, although Pacman was from my generation. I spent many hard-earned quarters earned from mowing lawns and shoveling snow back when I was a kid. Time Pilot and Vanguard were probably the two I spent the most money on. Those were the days! Oh, and Donkey Kong which had Mario in it, ate many of my quarters too.

I spent many quarters as well....most from not buying lunch!
Brings back memories of playing asteroids and galaxian.

[Midzuki]

Sonic has my vote. At least Sonic is "kawaii".
Me too was a victim of the Pac-Man Fever , but even in those days
I preferred the few pinball tables that still were worth playing.
As for Mario the moron... additionals comments are unnecessary, right :P

[gadgetguy]

I had to vote PacMan 'cause he's the only one of the three that I remember being prominently featured in the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest 2". Mario just had a bit part, and Sonic was nowhere to be seen.

The only game I remember ever playing, that I went back and played over and over and over and over and over and over and over again was Intellivision's D&D. Nothing before or after that held my interest.

[Nitemare]

Mario... he even had a movie! Okay, so it wasn't great, but there is no PacMan or Sonic movie.

Mario is the most kid-friendly game out there, which is why we keep buying Nintendo consoles instead of the more powerful and more popular ones.

I want to cast a personal vote for Link also... the OTHER reason we keep buying Nintendo products.

[mats.hogberg]

PacMan of course! He's the symbol for computer games, and is literally iconic.

/Mats

[yoda313]

I want to cast a personal vote for Link also... the OTHER reason we keep buying Nintendo produ

I understand but I wanted to limit the poll to a few choices and one per video game company, having two from nintendo wouldn't be fair. And I wanted to keep the options small.

[lordsmurf]

I was playing Pacman before Mario was even around.
Pacman had his own cartoon series.

[FulciLives]

I voted for PACMAN

As for MARIO ... sure I was a big DONKEY KONG fan and I did play the arcade version of SUPER MARIO BROS. but by the time the NES came out I was "done" with console gaming. I had had the Atari 2600 and enjoyed the heck out of that then I bought the Atari 5200 which was a mistake as the ColecoVision won that "round" but as a kid it seemed to make sense to go with the Atari 5200 as it was the successor to the wildly popular Atari 2600 ... but then I found out that most of the really kewl games I wanted to play were only for ColecoVision. Yeah I screwed up on that one. Despite all my bitching my mother wouldn't buy me one ("I bought you that expensive Atari 5200 so enjoy THAT" she would say).

From that point I went to a Commodore VIC-20 which sucked so bad that I did convince my mom to get me the Commodore C-64 and never looked at console video gaming until years later when I "broke down" and bought a Sega Genesis in college because everyone seemed to have one and then I had to get a S-NES so I could play STREET FIGHTER 2 but oddly I never bought very many games for either console.

In short MARIO didn't really become a "phenomena" until the NES and I was out on that one since I was playing games on my C-64 and discovered the world of adventure gaming with text games like ZORK and other similar games that were text games but had a static graphic for each location ... then came the RPG games with titles like Ultima and Wizardry and Questron and Bard's Tale etc.

So I'm no fan of Mario and his friends. For me it is PACMAN !!!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[träskmannen]

PacMan - definitely PacMan!

[edDV]

Demographer hat on.

You need to define the target audience. For the general public, PACMAN is better known. Among actual gamers, this would vary by age.

At least that would be my starting hypothesis to sample test.

[dwill123]

I dropped more quarters playing PacMan than I'd care to remember.

[freebird73717]

I voted for PacMan. Played that game a ton at the local pizza place. It was also one of the first games I ever bought... for my atari 2600.


My six year old son even loves playing it on one of those $15 standalone games you plug directly into the tv!

[JohnnyMalaria]

Depends on your age.

Pacman.

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

Pacman for me.

I used to like Mario in Super Mario Bros from NES to SNES, but PAC-MAN is THE-MAN.



Now, tell me that this isn't the coolest hat you've ever seen!

[thecoalman]

Pac-Man, I remember the news reporting the huge lines waiting outside the one store right before they were going to release it on Atari 2600. Mario is big but he's no Pac-Man.

From that point I went to a Commodore VIC-20 which sucked so bad that I did convince my mom to get me the Commodore C-64 and never looked at console video gaming

They had quite good arcade emualtions of all the popular games on C-64 , Pac-Man, Jungle Hunt, Donkey Kong, Asteroids etc.

[FulciLives]

I remember getting PACMAN for the Atari 2600 (pictured above in a post by MeDiCo_BrUjO) and thinking WHAT THE **** IS THIS?

Was I the only one disappointed with the way that crap looked? I mean compared to the arcade version ...

I still played the hell out of it LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[thecoalman]

C-64 was very close,

<goes into old man mode>

Goddamn kids got it easy now, back in those days if you wanted to steal games we didn't have the internet, you actually had to make a hard copy, get up and walk the disk to your friends house, usually through 4 feet of snow.

</>

Ahh those were the days, Hack'Em was the name of the program. :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Hack'em

Yep thecoalman was pirating games in his youth long before there was thing called the Internet.

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

I remember getting PACMAN for the Atari 2600 (pictured above in a post by MeDiCo_BrUjO) and thinking WHAT THE **** IS THIS?

Was I the only one disappointed with the way that crap looked? I mean compared to the arcade version ...

I still played the hell out of it LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Pacman for the Atari 2600 did surprise me (in a bad way) the first time I saw it....

....but I didn't have to spend quarters playing it, so I was H-A-P-P-Y!!!!

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

<goes into old man mode>

Goddamn kids got it easy now, back in those days if you wanted to steal games we didn't have the internet, you actually had to make a hard copy, get up and walk the disk to your friends house, usually through 4 feet of snow.

</>

Uphill?

Ahh those were the days, Hack'Em was the name of the program. :P

God, how I hated the diskswapping.....

[thecoalman]

Uphill?

Yea and it was always at least a half block away. :P

God, how I hated the diskswapping.....

Been a looooooooong time but i had two drives, if I remeber correctly it was direct copy with two drives or at the very least much faster.

[SingSing]

Don't Vote! This is the hidden age group polling for this web site. Once the op figures out we are all over 18 years old. He will start agreed to run those "you know what" ads.

For those Pacman fans, that still have agility to eat Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. Check out "MAME" and get hours of quarter-free fun.

[dadrab]

Damn...

I must be older than I thought. Pinball and pool for me.

I can honestly say that I never spent more than $2 on video games in a bar or arcade (for myself at least).

Now pinball's another matter all together...

"He's a pinball wizard
There has to be a twist.
Pinball wizard had such a supple wrist."

I whizzed away many a hard-earned quarter on Bally machines until I got good enough to beat them.

[FulciLives]

I just wanted to say that I did buy a Sega Genesis when I was in my 2nd year of college (which would have been 1991-1992) and I did enjoy the heck out of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG which as I recall came with the system. In fact I was even able to actually finish the game ... I remember buying the 2nd SONIC THE HEDGEHOG game but I was never able to finish it although I think a friend of mine did finish it.

The only other game I remember playing on the Sega Genesis was MORTAL COMBAT but I'm sure there were others ... but my memory is "foggy" now. Unfortunately I got rid of it at some point ... think I sold it to another college student after having it for a couple of years or so.

In any event my point is I did enjoy the hell out of both of those original SONIC THE HEDGEHOG games.

I guess I just wanted to say this since I feel bad that poor SONIC is third on the list LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Xylob the Destroyer]

10 years ago I would have said Pac Man, but hardly anybody knows who he is these days.
I voted Mario -- he's still contemporary. His newest game kicks ass.
The Pac Man Land games were sorry...

[dphirschler]

Pacman for arcade games, Mario for console games. Technically Mario wasn't really in Donkey Kong in 1985; he was named Jumpman. He wasn't named "Mario" until the arcade game Mario Bros.. Plus Pacman is easier to draw in as an icon. And Not only is Pacman already iconic for video games, so is the Pacman font.


Darryl

[Bodyslide]

Mario...Then Sonic for Me.....Ms Pac-Man was great Also....