Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (2008) – Bloggers’ Preview Event

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, this is Sega’s latest game for the Nintendo Wii – what can I say about Mario and Sonic appearing together for the first time in a game? I liked it!

I played it at a recent bloggers’ preview event which was similar in style to the Sega Rally Preview Event that I attended a few months ago, however this time around I got to visit Nintendo’s “Wii Flat”, which is as the name suggests, a flat in Central London fully kitted out with Nintendo Wii’s!

This was actually the first time I’ve played on a Nintendo Wii, so obviously I’ve got no other frame of reference for Wii games. However, playing Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games from the perspective of a complete novice to this style of gaming was a rather interesting experience and I did get an idea from talking with the other gamers there of how this compares to other Wii games, this is apparently along the lines of Wii Sports, but with more events and better controls.

The game itself is a tie-in with next year’s Beijing Olympics and as such, it had to accurately represent all the details of the stadiums, the actual Olympic events and also include the world records etc. Therefore in that sense, there’s been quite a lot of work gone into the accuracy and realistic feel to certain aspects of this game, much more than any other Mario or Sonic has done in the past, no doubt about that – but then realism was never really an issue for their past games!

Mario and Sonic are obviously both playable characters in this game, as are a lot of their friends from each of their respective game worlds (7 from each in fact), choosing these different characters will have an effect on how well you do at the different events, for instance, Sonic obviously has lots of speed, whereas other characters have other high attributes such as skill. If playing as one of those characters isn’t for you, there is also the option of playing as your Mii character.

The events on offer vary from your basic track ones such as 100m, hurdles and relay to other events such as swimming, hammer throw, javelin, archery, skeet shooting and trampoline. There’s plenty of different events to take part in and try to master, I particularly liked the Skeet Shooting event, it’s really quite difficult, but it really does get you using the Wii controller like a gun, but what can I say, I’ve always been a sucker for those light gun shooting games in the past.

The controls for these events vary from the very simple movements for the running and swimming events that rightly require speed and stamina to some very complex movements and button presses being needed to be successful in the more skill-based events. Some of these such as the trampoline and archery events, I obviously found much more difficult due to being a complete Wii novice! However, I still enjoyed playing this game with the other people there who all had far more “Wii experience”.

In addition to the standard Olympic events, there are also some “Dream Events” which is what allows Sega to break away from the restrictions of the Olympic Committee and create a gaming experience which is certainly more dream-like – how about a running race based upon Mario Kart which includes speed bonuses, traps etc?

Take a look at videos of all the events available to play at Blurpboy’s YouTube Channel.

I imagine (and this was confirmed from others there) that this kind of game will always be more of a party game than one you spend lots of time playing by yourself in single player, however, there are online leaderboards to try your skill against which should certainly extend the life of this game.

I would say on the Wii in a general sense, getting used to the whole new (more physical) control system for a video game system was remarkably easy to get into and you quickly start having fun playing against other people – I can see this being a great game to play over Christmas, quite literally fun for all the family! The UK release date of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games was 23rd November, so it is in the shops now, I would say overall, if I had a Nintendo Wii (which I would do if I could find any shops that had them in stock buy), then this would definitely be worth getting, there really is something for everyone!

You can see all the pictures of the event over at Sega Europe’s page on Flickr. Also be sure to check out these other blogs that were also at the event:
The Average Gamer
Nekofever
British Gaming Blog
Nintendic
Binary Joy