Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Nintendo DS Nintendo Review

Many of you will surely remember a time when the very idea of a single console playing host to both Sonic and Mario titles seemed ludicrous, let alone a single game featuring both characters. And yet, here we are! Of course, the novelty of such a momentous event has somewhat worn off following several months of screenshots, trailers, and eventually the release of the Wii version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games last November. But maybe that's a good thing. After all, M&SatOG is ultimately a mini-game fuelled sports title, and one that we should begin by noting borrows next to nothing from either of the franchises after which it is named, other than the characters themselves. So, shall we go ahead get down to the nitty-gritty?

The game itself consists of sixteen standard Olympic Events and eight Dream Events (more on those later). Some are available from the get-go, whilst others can be unlocked gradually by winning medals and the like. Each event can be played on its own using any of the sixteen playable characters (eight from the Mushroom Kingdom, and eight from... Mobius, yes, we went there). Multiple events are also combined to create Circuits, which force players to play through each event consecutively, earning points as they go. Each character also has access to six unique missions, which generally task the player with completing a particular task within one of the aforementioned events. For example: jumping at least 15m with a jump angle of 50 degrees in the Triple Jump event.

With these various modes