Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games

[Skull13]

Has anyone heard about this?

http://www.sega.com/gamesite/marioandsonic/index.php

More information is found here.

http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?t=208176

I'm having mixed feelings about this. I've always wanted to see a Mario & Sonic crossover, but why did it have to involve the Olympic Games?

[Lightweight]

I heard it too. At first I thought it was an April Fools joke, but apparently it's official. I see no sense in it either. "Who would be faster? Mario or Sonic?" Idiots, Sonic would beat the race before Mario runs it's first yard!

[Sailor V]

But then again, Mario has some power to him meaning if he were able to use his fireballs, the race might be evened out a bit.

[Skull13]

Still, even though my feelings are still the same, I've also learned never to underestimate a Mario or Sonic game. Just about everyone that I've played, I've also enjoyed.

[Sailor V]

I may be able to enjoy the game, but I'll probably play as Mario characters and my sister as a Sonic character.

[MarioKnight]

I thought it was an early April Fool's Day joke too. Then the site popped up and I was a little less skeptical. Once it showed up on my list wth an actual SKU at EB Games and we started collecting actual money on the game, I believed it. ^^;;; I am looking forward to this game. ^_^

[Skull13]

I thought it was an early April Fool's Day joke too. Then the site popped up and I was a little less skeptical. Once it showed up on my list wth an actual SKU at EB Games and we started collecting actual money on the game, I believed it. ^^;;; I am looking forward to this game. ^_^

So am I. I've been a huge fan of Sonic for over a decade, and a greater one of Mario since I was born.

[Sailor V]

I was talking to my friend about it and he was a little bot skeptical, but that was understandable since the two of them our made by 2 different companies, but when I finally convinced him to look it up, he nearly had a heart attack. He is a BIG Sonic fan.

[Skull13]

I was talking to my friend about it and he was a little bot skeptical, but that was understandable since the two of them our made by 2 different companies, but when I finally convinced him to look it up, he nearly had a heart attack. He is a BIG Sonic fan.

So am I. Now, I'm curious to what exactly we can expect in the game.

[MarioKnight]

Well the game has ended up being real, so as per tradition for all the games I had reserved for the past few months, I checked it out of the store for a test drive. Yay employee loans for letting me take home a game for a few nights to check out before I actually get around to buying it, which will be most games this month except Super Mario Galaxy, which is the only one I can really actually buy on release. On that note, everyone should avoid Bleach for the Wii and Aqua Teen Huger Force for the PS2. =P

So back on Mario and Sonic, and I'm mixed. It's the first sign of the apocalypse, the first game with both gaming icons in, which gives high expectations for the game by default. And boosting those expectations is Sega boasting that this game will sell over 4 million copies because of the video game history milestone it sets. However a game set in the Olympics doesn't sound too promising to meet such expectations, even though the Olympics are the culmination of athletic competition. Add onto this Sega working on this game alongside the Olympic Committee and there's now a whole stack of obstacles Sega must face head on in order for this game to be a huge success. Sure having the Mario and Sonic characters in the game game will sell games quickly, if it doesn't impress that surge will die down fast. Sadly with all the power behind the game, I see this one dying down just a month or two after the Christmas season ends, with the holiday release being half of the reason it will sell as many units as it will.

With an in intro like that, you might think that there's really not much good to the game, and that's not true. The game looks astounding. The characters are well rendered, the animations are done very well, and the stadiums are modeled after the actual stadiums that will be used in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games. A feature I absolutely love is the ability to share your top scores on a worldwide leaderboard. And I can't forget to mention that you can use your Mii instead of th 16 playable characters, which is a nice touch, especially when you can see people's Mii's on the worldwide rankings.

However, there's not much else going for it. No online play makes me sad. Character stats seemingly mean nothing. I don't expect to be the master of a game my first run through by any means, but I also don't expect Luigi to be able to beat Sonic in a footrace. Gameplay is hit miss, both figuratively and literally. Some events have a good control set, others don't. Running can be fun, especially for me because I get my entire body in the motion to help my speed, and it's like I'm back on my Power Pad from nearly two decades ago. Table tennis is horrible. Sometimes things don't register right which is a pain. Even more annoying is that events that only use the Wii-mote make you disconnect the nunchuck before play, even though if it were to remain connected it wouldn't affect play. I can only imaging how annoying that will become to me when I get jackets on those Wii-motes.

I can forgive and get used to those things over time I believe. However, what will make that a hard process for me is unlocking events and other features. There's a single event mode where you can choose from a handful of events, circuit mode where you play through a series of events to get a trophy, and mission mode set up with dumb things. Things like jumping a certain distance, finishing a race in a 4 second wndow, etc., is annoying and hard. So I hope to avoid this mode altogether and see what I can go in circuit mode and manage to barely get a gold in the first one, only to not have the next one unlock. So the only way to actually unlock things is through this mission mode, giving a player only a handful of events and circuits to play through until a miracle happens and they can clear out a bunch and play the new unlocks if they aren't frustrated enough to put the game away. Simply put, this puts a big road block for me because I'm punished because I can't throw/race with such accuracy in performance, and will keep me from playing a lot of the game. The lack of a practice mode is also a big turnoff because practice is required a couple times to get used to an event.

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with this game. I do plan to buy it at some point if for no other reason than owing such a milestone. Until then, I'll be playing the next real Mario game until the next meeting of the icons in a few months. Such a disappointment that is such a huge milestone was so unimpressive to me.

[_Alexander_]

Damn it, Dan. Now I won't buy it after reading your words. I was kind of sceptical to start with since I'm not a big fan of sport games but I'm a huge fan of Mario.
Seriously, after Sega split up they can R.I.P. They haven't done anything great after that and all the talent is gone. Why couldn't Nintendo themselves developed this, or Camelot for that matter.
I guess Sega's only hope is that Nights for Wii turns out great. There seems to be a little talent left in Sonic Team Japan, they just need to bring it.

[Alexclow345]

I thought the game sucked at first, but after playing the events a couple of times, I really like the game.

Dan, I thought the controls for Ping-Pong are very good. What are you having trouble with? I have all of the events, including dream, and I think the games events are bvalanced between the characters.

[MarioKnight]

The table tennis controls seemed fairly unresponsive to me. Granted some screw-ups were my own bad timing and I obviously won't blame the game on that, but other times nothing happened. My big quirk with table tennis is that your character moves slowly and you can't control them, which has resulted in a lot of lost points for me.

I won't deny that maybe more time is needed for me, but that just goes hand in hand in why I don't like how there is no practice, or even tutorial modes.

[Aya Reiko]

Well the game has ended up being real, so as per tradition for all the games I had reserved for the past few months, I checked it out of the store for a test drive. Yay employee loans for letting me take home a game for a few nights to check out before I actually get around to buying it, which will be most games this month except Super Mario Galaxy, which is the only one I can really actually buy on release. On that note, everyone should avoid Bleach for the Wii and Aqua Teen Huger Force for the PS2. =P

So back on Mario and Sonic, and I'm mixed. It's the first sign of the apocalypse, the first game with both gaming icons in, which gives high expectations for the game by default. And boosting those expectations is Sega boasting that this game will sell over 4 million copies because of the video game history milestone it sets. However a game set in the Olympics doesn't sound too promising to meet such expectations, even though the Olympics are the culmination of athletic competition. Add onto this Sega working on this game alongside the Olympic Committee and there's now a whole stack of obstacles Sega must face head on in order for this game to be a huge success. Sure having the Mario and Sonic characters in the game game will sell games quickly, if it doesn't impress that surge will die down fast. Sadly with all the power behind the game, I see this one dying down just a month or two after the Christmas season ends, with the holiday release being half of the reason it will sell as many units as it will.

With an in intro like that, you might think that there's really not much good to the game, and that's not true. The game looks astounding. The characters are well rendered, the animations are done very well, and the stadiums are modeled after the actual stadiums that will be used in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games. A feature I absolutely love is the ability to share your top scores on a worldwide leaderboard. And I can't forget to mention that you can use your Mii instead of th 16 playable characters, which is a nice touch, especially when you can see people's Mii's on the worldwide rankings.

However, there's not much else going for it. No online play makes me sad. Character stats seemingly mean nothing. I don't expect to be the master of a game my first run through by any means, but I also don't expect Luigi to be able to beat Sonic in a footrace. Gameplay is hit miss, both figuratively and literally. Some events have a good control set, others don't. Running can be fun, especially for me because I get my entire body in the motion to help my speed, and it's like I'm back on my Power Pad from nearly two decades ago. Table tennis is horrible. Sometimes things don't register right which is a pain. Even more annoying is that events that only use the Wii-mote make you disconnect the nunchuck before play, even though if it were to remain connected it wouldn't affect play. I can only imaging how annoying that will become to me when I get jackets on those Wii-motes.

I can forgive and get used to those things over time I believe. However, what will make that a hard process for me is unlocking events and other features. There's a single event mode where you can choose from a handful of events, circuit mode where you play through a series of events to get a trophy, and mission mode set up with dumb things. Things like jumping a certain distance, finishing a race in a 4 second wndow, etc., is annoying and hard. So I hope to avoid this mode altogether and see what I can go in circuit mode and manage to barely get a gold in the first one, only to not have the next one unlock. So the only way to actually unlock things is through this mission mode, giving a player only a handful of events and circuits to play through until a miracle happens and they can clear out a bunch and play the new unlocks if they aren't frustrated enough to put the game away. Simply put, this puts a big road block for me because I'm punished because I can't throw/race with such accuracy in performance, and will keep me from playing a lot of the game. The lack of a practice mode is also a big turnoff because practice is required a couple times to get used to an event.

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with this game. I do plan to buy it at some point if for no other reason than owing such a milestone. Until then, I'll be playing the next real Mario game until the next meeting of the icons in a few months. Such a disappointment that is such a huge milestone was so unimpressive to me.

The first warning that this won't be a good game should have been "at the Olympic Games". I can't remember the last time a Olympic-themed game was any good.