Title: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Developer: Sega

The year was 1991. Sega needed a mascot for their consoles that would be able to rival that of Nintendo's Mario. Ultimately, they came up with a speedy blue hedgehog named Sonic, who as Sega predicted, gave the pudgy plumber and the SNES a run for it's money. But when the jump to 3D was made in the mid 1990's, Sonic fell on hard times and Sega was forced to drop out of the console race and start developing games as a 3rd party developer. Sega begun working on the Gamecube and Gameboy Advance, something that back in the 90's seemed completely impossible. With Sega showing a lot of support for Nintendo and Sonic and Mario being two of the most popular characters in gaming history, people begun to speculate that maybe, Mario and Sonic could one day be in a game "together". Well after 16 years of rivalry, Sega and Nintendo have finally made it a reality. The official video game of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games.

Gameplay

I'm just going to cut to the chase. For a Sega game, better yet a Sonic game, this play surprisingly well. People questioned on whether or not putting Sega in charge of this was a good idea, but luckily you can tell that Nintendo was watching them like a hawk with this. First of all, this is the official game for the Beijing Olympics 2008 that will be held in Beijing next year. What better reason is this than to make the official video game featuring two of Japan's most well known video game characters. The game features all the events of the Olympic games, from Aquatics to Track and Field along with some special custom games known as Dream Events. You can choose from 16 characters, 8 of which are from the Mario universe and 8 that are from the Sonic universe. They are each separated into groups of Skill, Speed, Balanced and and Power. Each event uses the Wii remote and Nunchuck in a unique way. All events that require your character to run are played by shaking the Wii remote and Nunchuck up and down repeatedly. Now at first I would shake the controls madly, but later I found out you don't need to shake them at record pases to get your character moving to max speed. However after a few games of this, I found myself getting pretty sore in my arms and neck. This is most likely because I was over doing it, but luckily after every couple of games a message comes up saying "It's time for a break". Simpler events such as the Hammer Throw require you to spin the Wii remote above your head and then press the B button at the right time to launch the hammer. Controls do take time to get used to, but once you learn them this game is a heap of fun.

Game Modes

There are quite a range of game modes available on this title. The standard game mode, Single Match which is a mode for up to 4 players to play any of the events. Circuit Mode is the single Player mode of this game. You select a character and must complete four events. Winning events give you points, which are added up and give you your final score at the end of the circuit. This mode also allows you to unlock more events. There is a Mission mode, which will pit your character in an event where you have to complete a set task, examples such as "Beat Shadow in the Freestyle" or "get over 7 meters in Long Jump". Gallery is a very... well... "Special" mode where you can do Trivia on the history of the Olympic Games. To get the answers to the questions however, you have to play a couple mini games, some of which are much more annoying than fun. Records is also a special mode, but the good kind of special. Sure you can read up on your records, but via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, you can compare your personal records against other players from around the world.

Sound

The games sound package is presented very nicely for the most part. Very well composed music and realistic sound effects give this game a very unique feel. The only draw back in the sound department would have to be the lack of original voice clips. Many of the Mario character voice clips have been pretty much ripped from Mario Kart Double Dash, anyone who has played both games may have also noticed this. Sonic on the other hand isn't good either, but for a different reason. The reason of course, being the 4Kids Entertainment voice actors. I don't know why, but I can't stand Shadow's over aggressive voice when compared to his voice in SA2:B, please don't get me started on Tails either. We love voice acting, but please do record some more, I'm sick of hearing the same 3 Yoshi sound clips in all the Mario games.

Graphics

I'm willing to bet that some of you have just skipped to this section just to see if this game presents well on the Wii. Well I shan't disappoint, for this game is defiantly one of the better looking Wii games currently out there. The character models look superb, very smooth and well textured as well as character animations. The stadium and and events look very nice as well. You haven't seen Wii graphics until you've seen this game, unless of course you jumped straight to Super Mario Galaxy which I'm assuming most of you guys did anyway.

Final Verdict

It's a Sonic and Mario game and Sega developed it, but to my surprise it's actually a fun and seemingly glitchless game. This sure is a great title for the Wii, it shows off the processing power of the console brilliantly and the controls work very well. If you are still unsure do rent it first, and don't give up on it at the beginning because you can't use the controllers because some areas of the game do take time to learn. The only negative thing I can really say about the title is the somewhat recycled and in some areas annoying voice acting. But since this is not a huge issue, it shall not effect my score a whole lot. Maybe Nintendo and Sega should co-develop more games in the future.

Gameplay: 4/5 - Excellent use of Wii controls, takes a while to get used to and may leave you a little sore.

Game Modes: 4/5 - Very good except for a couple which scream "pointless".

Sound: 4/5 - The only thing that held this back from a 5 is the stale voice clips from more characters than needed.

Graphics: 5/5 - This game looks lovely. I could not find one thing to complain about in this department.

Overall: 17/20 | 85% | Mark: A