Why Sonic meeting Mario at the Olympics will be a disaster

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 29 March 2007 05:14

Your IT - Entertainment

(4) Getting the look right will be difficult. Nintendo and Sega have boasted that the game will "take place in environments based on the official venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games". However, they've also promised to release the game before the end of the year.

Microsoft Office 365

Past experience of the Olympics suggests that it's a fair bet that most of the facilities for the Olympics won't be finished by that point, so the game environments will be based on guesswork and projections rather than physical reality. That doesn't mean they'll be wholly inaccurate, but it's entirely possible that something will get included in the game but ultimately excluded from the final building plans.

(5) Mario and Sonic have wildly different gaming styles. While the classic Mario and Sonic titles are both platformers, within that genre they have always taken very different approaches. Sonic is largely about zipping around at high-speed, while Mario takes a more measured approach. As such, it's hard to imagine a reasonable scenario in which, for example, Sonic couldn't slaughter Mario in a 100 metre sprint.

Nonetheless, this is apparently the fundamental premise of the game. Quoth Nintendo senior managing director Shigeru Miyamoto: "Now that they have been given the perfect opportunity to meet at the Olympic Games, we may finally learn who is actually faster, Mario or Sonic?" To be honest, we already know the answer.

None of this means that Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games won't be a big seller. Nor does it mean I won't be trying it out. But having high hopes seems like the wrong approach to me.