Mario=Mickey Mouse

• Well, for starters, they are flagship characters for both of their respective franchises, although niether of them were the first on the scene (Oswald The Lucky Rabbit for Mickey, and the Game And Watch systems for Mario.) They have also starred in numerous cartoons and video games.
• Also, their appearance and character attributes- both are heroes who wear iconic red clothing with yellow buttons, have squeaky/high-piched voices and can apparently, jump quite well. Also, Epic Mickey was designed with the graphics from Super Mario Galaxy in mind.

edited 23rd May '11 9:47:12 AM by ProfessorMetallica

I thought Mario was based on Popeye.

But yes, you can't deny that they're similar. IIRC Miyamoto was called the "Walt Disney of Video games" and Nintendo is a lot like Disney. They're both often considered the more "kid-friendly" companies, both have had their share of criticism (Nintendo driving away many third-party developers on their consoles and their strict focus on games, Disney for..quite a lot). Back in their histories, they had fierce rivals who had characters who were considered more appealing (Warner Bros with Bugs Bunny, Sega with Sonic). Despite this, Disney and Nintendo get sort of a grudging respect from animators and video game developers respectively.

Bugs seems to have remained somewhat important, while Sonic's pretty much a laughingstock now, right?

Well Sonic is making a recovery with his recent titles.

But I think my comparison of Sonic and Bugs still stands. Yeah, they're popular characters, but it seems there's a specific incarnation which appeals to others. People have been pretty harsh on the Looney Tunes Show, and prefer the 1940's version of Bugs, similar to how many prefer the old 2d platforming sonic.

edited 26th May '12 8:12:44 PM by blueflame724

http://technabob.com/blog/2009/01/13/akashi-mario-and-mickey-mouse-melded/

This thread reminded of a sort of obscure vinyl toy that was released in 2009.

You know, it is kind of interesting how similar Nintendo and Disney are. Disney, despite being a conglomerate, is still primarily associated with animation. Nintendo is practically synonymous with games. Their rivals tend to be titans in other industries which makes them all the more formidable(Sony is a rival to both Nintendo and Disney)

Just a little extra item: IIRC, Disney has basically run things in Toontown since Who Framed Roger Rabbit; the Warner side and minor parties (other than Amblin for obvious reasons) didn't do much with the locale or its name. Simiarly, prior to the [[/Play Station All Stars Battle Royale Battle Royale]], the only gaming platform with designated centralized properties was Nintendo.

I've always held in my headcanon that Toontown was the defacto capital of Animation and Central Island was the defacto capital of Video Games, or at least the Nintendo Nation and that Brawl was basically a cover for the retaking of Central Island from Sony after Nintendo lost it in the Gamecube era... but that's a whole other story.