Two years after fans of the first combination of the mustachioed Mario and the speedy Sonic, Sega has decided to work on the next of the Olympic Games, the Winter Olympics. Sega has sold millions upon millions of copies of the previous Beijing-Flavored Summer Olympic games, but Sega has upset the real fans of the two headliners of the 16-bit wars with some poorly used motion controls, lack of online gameplay and shallow options. The Winter Games seems that it can be a great conversion to a video game with some extreme sports like snowboarding and alpine skiing, but did Sega achieve this killer conversion?
After watching an intense CG cutscene that shows what the game should deliver, we are thrown into a menu that has all the Olympic events laid out with no unlocking. The Dream events, altered sport events that take place in Mario and Sonic’s own levels, mostly need unlocking with the exception of two. To play these events, you are given twenty Mario & Sonic characters with the addition to Miis to complete with. This roster is still pretty shallow given the series they’re working with and some staple characters, like Cream the Rabbit and Diddy Kong, are completely omitted from the roster while morons like Waluigi and Silver are playable.
The events themselves are not realistic as if you’re playing like the athletes that have yet to pound the powder in Vancouver. Instead, it has that carton flavor fans of these series are expected to see, like performing multiple tricks twenty feet in the air off a halfpipe. The Dream events will literally give the Mario Kart treatment with Mario Kart’s own question blocks and Mario Kart’s own weapons to attack or defend with. Sadly not all of these are given such treatment and while some events perform well, but some events are total duds.
The controls are sadly what you expect from a mini-game fest and that is a lot of motion that isn’t implemented in the correct ways. My personal biggest disappointment is hockey because this had so much potential; this should have been the main event in the game with some very in-depth controls. What we got was something extremely shallow with four-on-four teams on a small rink. On top of that, all the controls are either simple flicks for shooting and checking and passing with A and shooting with B. What I would have loved was if Next Level Games stepped in and reskinned Super Mario Strikers from the GameCube with hockey in mind. Mario hockey (as well as football) is something I would have loved to see when Nintendo was running amuck with sports games and it was something that could have suited the red plumber well. When I saw that hockey was in Mario & Sonic, I was cautiously excited. Luckily I did not give my hopes up since Sega sort of blew it with this bare bones version.
All the skiing and snowboarding events are easy to grasp for kids and are fully functional, but it’s not enough. It just feels too simple and the events could have been more fleshed out without making it too complex for more casual players. Parts such as tricks could have been intuitive rather than the “waggle in the air until you hit the ground (and hope you don’t crash)” that the game has given us. The uses of the balance board are pretty forgettable in this too and I rather recommend the plain ol’ Wii remote/nunchuk combo. This should have been easy for Sega since there were great winter sport games on Wii like Shaun White, SSX Blur or even use Nintendo’s own Wii Fit for ski/snowboard ideas and balance board controls.
Mario & Sonic takes skating and divides them into two events, figure skating and speed skating. The latter is a complete waggle mess where the game simply wants the player to wave the Wii remote back and forth in a rhythm and the game can’t even receive well. This is hands down the worst event in the game. Figure skating fairs better than its speedy cousin, but it isn’t as much of an achievement since the event is very simple. It has you flicking for flips, performing some balance tilting during long straight steps and spinning the controller in a lasso type fashion to do a finishing spin. While it can be fun to redo a few times for a better rank, it loses replay value more and more unless you’re watching characters like Eggman, Wario or the emo Shadow become the Swan Prince on the ice.
Curling is to Winter Olympics as bowling is to Wii Sports as it is the most well made game in the bunch. It does everything from adjusting the spin, the power and the distance via sweeping. The great part is that it’s all done fairly well with easy motions and accurate results. Sure, curling isn’t complicated as a sport, but if Sega took the time to fully develop the events in this game step-by-step like they did with curling, this game would have been an excellent package.
Finally, the bobsledding events are done well while you’re sledding. If you follow the instructions and place the Wii remote against your chest, it can feel very responsive and fun. My issues are with the beginning when you have to waggle as fast as you can for ten seconds in order to build up speed. It is tiring for gamers as much as it’s lazy for developers and should have totally been avoided.
In addition to performing at Vancouver, you can play in Mario and Sonic’s unique worlds as well. As a long time Mario and Sonic fan, I wish Nintendo and Sega would decide to ditch making official Olympic games and go all out on a (well developed) sports game in these worlds. These dream stages, like Seaside Hill from Sonic Heroes and Good Egg Galaxy from Mario Galaxy, have a lot more flavor, character and an overall fun factor since it adds purpose to Mario and Sonic’s collaboration versus being in Beijing and Vancouver for the Olympics that have no representatives from the countries whose flags are draped from the ceiling.
Outside the slopes and rinks, players can shop for various artwork for their sporting gear, listen to the in-game music, unlock new outfits for your Mii (who can be used in these events as well) and unlock useless info in the library. These items can be bought with coins that you gain from competing and winning events. Of course all of this is optional, but it’s always nice to play for something here and there. The biggest bust is the library where players unlock some info on the history of the sports that are in the game. Pretty boring in comparison to using such a resource for some real extensive Olympic, Mario and Sonic trivia those fans would love to have. On another note, instead of another menu to navigate from, Sega decided to allow the player to point to the building they want to go in. The pointing was so clumsy that I actually thought something was wrong with the remote itself. How Sega messed up something as simple as the Wii remote’s own IR pointer is beyond me, but it complements the half-assed theme that Sega was so talented to put throughout the entire game.
Online multiplayer must have been easy for Sega since they decided not to implement into the game. I still can’t believe after two years that we haven’t made this as standard on all multiplayer Wii games. Instead Sega decided to opt out and rehash the leaderboard ideas from the first Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. They did decide to recycle the Forecast Channel sync from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams so whatever the weather it is in Vancouver will be the weather in-game. This was something I thoroughly enjoyed to see and hoped more games such as EA’s sports games used this nifty utility.
On top of this, Mario & Sonic is not a pretty game either. The character models are good, but are a far cry from the Mario and Sonic we’ve all seen in Smash Bros. Brawl. The Vancouver event stages are passable while the dream events are pretty good and capture the original stages they were meant to imitate. Some dream stages are imitated too much, and by that I mean parts of Radical Highway still look like a Dreamcast game from 2001. The most pitiful thing has to be the crowds of Toads, Chao, Shy Guys, Koopas and small animals all in their 2D, circa 1995 glory.
The audio is passable for the most part. During the Olympic events, the music is ignorable when you’re shaking your butt off during events with the exception of figure skating’s dependency to the free-to-use music like Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu (a personal favorite). The main menu is very familiar to some tracks from Sega’s own Phantasy Star Universe and the Dream events use the music from the levels they were inspired from. Listening to songs from older games had me interrupt my play session of this game to pop in Sonic Adventure 2 for some killer nostalgia.
Nintendo should have been more cautious with allowing Sega to screw around with their main man because we’ve all seen what Sega has done to their’s. On the other hand, Sega should have dumped more money into this project since the original sold millions of copies and a more developed sequel could have been more successful. Shame on both of them for not allowing this killer collaboration to be one of the coolest winter sports games. Instead, we got another lackluster mini-game fest. While kids won’t know much of a difference (and that’s what Sega’s banking on), the real fans of seeing such an epic mashup of two gaming idols face-to-face will be left in the cold again.
Mario & Sonic @ the Olympic Winter Games for Wii: 5.9/10
