Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympics (Hands-On) (Wii) Preview

Personal bad experiences can leave a permanent sour taste in the mouths of anyone, and unfortunately the original Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games simply showed that the coming together of two popular characters does not necessarily mean the end product will be a roaring success. Following strong sales of the lacklustre Winter Olympics sequel it became obvious that Nintendo and SEGA saw an opportunity and were planning on milking this franchise as much as possible, so the advent of a London 2012 Olympics tie-in seemed inevitable. With only a few Wii games on show at Nintendo's recent Press event, though, it was hard to avoid trying it out, despite strong reservations. Thankfully Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympics turned out to be nowhere near as bad as expected. Whilst it was nothing overly special, the two mini-games that were tested were pleasantly surprising.

The first event was a variation on the Long Jump, with players bouncing on clouds and shaking the Wii Remote (held on its side) rapidly up and down to help your character of choice hover as far as possible before landing once more on the fluffy white formations and then launching back up into the sky, surviving as long as possible without losing control and dropping into nothingness, or getting hit by various incoming objects, such as Bullet Bills from the Mario Universe. It proved to be quite fun with two players for a brief time, but quickly grew boring as there was no strong competitive feel to proceedings, yet perhaps in four-player, with friends of equal gaming skill levels, the ante may well be upped.

The more absorbing of the two was certainly the horse riding event, where you select any of the plethora of Nintendo and SEGA characters on offer to take the reins and get the championship-winning horse to successfully navigate a specially laid out course. This played rather like the early G1 Jockey release that Koei brought to Wii before the merger with Tecmo, in that both Wii Remote and Nunchuk were used and gentle tilting movements resulted in the horse leaning in the appropriate direction, whilst wafting the two controllers up and down made it trot faster. Timing was imperative as prompts appeared when approaching areas that need to be jumped over, and exactly when the ‘A’ button was hit resulted in a different score being awarded. Simple, but pleasantly fun.

Out of the two played, the horse riding event was definitely the more enjoyable, with players taking it in turns to try and reach the goal in the fastest time possible without incurring any penalties from falling off the horse or hitting the obstacles. However, two mini-games, one of which was rather average from the first try, and another that was far better does not a superbly addictive game make, so at the moment Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympics still has a lot to prove.