Super Mario Bros. Wonder dominates Sonic Superstars in Japan

Nintendo is clearly winning this round
Super Mario Bros. Wonder dominates Sonic Superstars in Japan
Super Mario Bros. Wonder dominates Sonic Superstars in Japan /

Best hide this piece of news from any animal protection agencies, because what Mario did to Sonic the Hedgehog this last week is borderline criminal. The Famitsu sales numbers (via Nintendo Everything) for the week of October 16 to 22, 2023, are in and show that Super Mario Bros. Wonder had a grand launch in Japan, selling 638,634 physical copies. As usual, we don’t have any digital numbers completing the picture, but those physical numbers already tell a success story.

Sonic Superstars, on the other hand, managed a mere 4,128 physical sales in its first week – a devastating defeat for Sega’s blue hedgehog at the hands of Nintendo’s Italian plumber. That’s a dominating performance from Nintendo, which has clearly already won this round of the mascot duel, especially if you consider that Sonic launched earlier and thus had more time to sell copies.

Mario in Super Mario Bros Wonder in the form of an elephant flexing
Mario is flexing with those sales numbers / Nintendo

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 debuted with 77,348 physical sales, taking second place behind the new Mario game as the only PS5 title in the top ten of the charts – everything else is on Nintendo Switch. Pikmin 4 is still claiming a top four spot on the list, adding more than 10,000 physical sales over this time period to slowly but steadily close in on a million physical copies sold in Japan alone.

Nintendo has also announced that Wonder is the fastest selling Super Mario game in Europe in company history, so the new release is clearly resonating with Nintendo fans worldwide.

If you’re currently playing through Mario’s newest adventure, you should check out our Mario Wonder Search Party Puzzling Park level guide.

Mario Wonder: All Special World entrances


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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg