Sonic the Hedgehog picked as UK's favourite game character

Posted by Al Warmington on Wed 22 Oct 2008

Surprisingly, Niko Belic fails to make a serious impact

The London Games Festival has conducted a poll to discover Britain's best loved video game character. Sega's blue mascot beat arch rival Mario, the face of Nintendo, to top the chart and left a number of other instantly recognisable characters in his wake.

The full top ten is below, but it mostly includes iconic characters that have been showing up in games for a decade or more.

There are only two exceptions to this - Grand Theft Auto IV's eastern European gangster Niko Bellic managed a rather underwhelming 2% of the votes, while another Rockstar front-man, Max Payne, scored 4%. Much though we love the revenge fuelled copper, we have a sneaky feeling a certain Mr Wahlberg's big screen rendition may have something to do with his sudden rise in popularity.

If that greases the wheels for another Max Payne game though, we're not about to complain.

The votes from 500 surveyed gamers went as follows:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog (24%)

2. Super Mario (21%)

3. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) (16%)

4. Donkey Kong (11%)

5. Pac Man (10%)

6. Link (The Legend of Zelda) (5%)

7. Max Payne (4%)

8. Pikachu (Pokemon) (3%)

9. Niko Belic (Grand Theft Auto IV) (2%)

10. Blanka (Street Fighter) (1%)