- Original Platform: Wii
- Original release: 6th November 2007
- Available to buy: No
These Olympic Games will be some of the ones that I play a reasonable amount of to get a feel rather than “complete”, as completing requires a lot of repeat stuff. I played all starting events, some missions and a few circuits to get a good idea of how this plays.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics feels like Sega made this without playing Wii Sports at all. Wii Sports felt amazing because of how intuitive and simple the controls were, yet they still felt deep. In this, they just feel like they’re in the way. Table Tennis is a great example: we all know how simple Wii Sports Tennis is. Mario & Sonic table tennis requires different button presses for different strokes, but also feels really delayed and unresponsive.
Other events are just too strict, now allowing for the unresponsive controls. Instead of just making you perform poorly or allowing more leeway, you’ll encounter lots of “faults” from starting a race (which resets the pre-match charging so you have to go through it each time) to trying to time a long jump or a triple jump (which I managed to get to work once).
This also feels like Sonic and Mario are just in a generic Olympic game. You can unlock a couple of “dream” events but the whole style just isn’t a celebration of either franchise.
Where to get
- ROM Status: Available
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I didn’t play much of the original Olympic Games because they felt like absolute piss, as you said they are like a backwards Wii Sports and it lacks any soul whatsoever. I was dead against it… until 2012. I can’t wait until you get there, honestly London 2012 is one of the best party games ever and put the Mario & Sonic Olympics on a whole other level for me. They have consistently been one of my all time favourite party games ever since then, in a time where Mario Party had lost all credit. They also went above and beyond to celebrate both franchises 2012 onwards.
I’ll forever be bitter that SEGA started on such a sour note, as the games that followed were all fantastic in their own way but required a “believe me, it’s better than you think” speech.