Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

By Sam Leitch

Sonic and Mario in the same game: is this the final sign of the apocalypse? There have been rumours of such for a good many years. Bringing together two of the biggest names in gaming would surely mean big sales, right? The fans have certainly been wanting it for long enough.

The first rumours I remember hearing were that the unlikely duo would appear next to each other in an RPG. Educated guesses would point to Sonic appearing in Smash Bros or even Super Mario Kart, but what we actually ended up with was an Olympics game. Fear not though, I’m sure these are still possibilities.

Ok, so the fans were a little negative when their favourite genre was neglected for an Olympics game, and fair enough. Have we not played all these sports a good many times before? Surely button-mashing (a.k.a. controller death) is a throwback to archaic game design from the stone-age?

My first reactions were ho-hum as well I must admit. After thinking about the concept though, the game could at least be worth a look. Back in the day, some of the better sports mini games such as Californian Games were damn good value, being great fun to play with a mate. Every previous game in the genre though had some fun events being universally loathed. NZGamer (especially Shaun) will just be happy as long as we can team up such games with alcohol.

Now the Mario crew might be an easy way to sell a game, but it must be said in most cases, they have made genres I don’t normally enjoy worthwhile. Mario Tennis and Mario Golf would be the two best examples, and even Mario Party to an extent. If you couple high production values together with loveable characters and some good old fashioned (yet revised) game play, we could have yet another title to help the Wii become this generation’s ‘party machine’.

Events announced:

* Fencing - Individual epée
* Archery
* Shooting - Skeet
* Gymnastics - Trampoline
* Gymnastics - Vault
* Field - High Jump
* Field - Pole Vault
* Field - Long Jump
* Field - Triple Jump
* Field - Javelin Throw
* Field - Hammer Throw
* Rowing - Single Sculls
* Table Tennis - Singles
* Aquatics - 100m Freestyle
* Aquatics - 4x100m Freestyle
* Track - 110m and 400m Hurdles
* Track - 4x100m Relay
* Track -100m and 400m

Me? I just want to know how Mario could possibly keep up with Sonic in the running events.

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