Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is the first instalment of the Mario & Sonic series. The game is based on the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics and was released on November 6, 2007 on the Wii, and released on January 22, 2008 on the Nintendo DS.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The idea of two gaming rivals having a crossover in the Olympics is a good idea, especially since the Mario and Sonic rivalry went on for years before the release of this game.
 * 2) The game has a decent selection of sports to choose from, with the majority being divided into different amounts of categories that fit the theme of what the category is going for such as Athletics for the 100m, Gymnastics for Trampoline and the famous of them all, Dream Events with 4 in total.
 * 3) Some of the events can be fun, such as Trampoline with the player being told to press all different types of buttons to perform tricks with the right timing and it feels fun to get a perfect score while playing the event in general.
 * 4) Each character has different stats that tell you what is good, so you know who is suitable for a certain event, such as Sonic being very fast which comes in extremely handy with both Fencing and Dream Fencing where he can dish out hits to opponents and get a perfect score without getting hit, and Wario with the 400m dash where he has a lot of breath and has good enough speed to be able to win 1st place instantly.
 * 5) The graphics are decent for an early Wii title, as the Olympics theming of each area look visually appealing and the menu UI has a decent colour palette to it that fits with the Olympics esque feel that the game has.
 * 6) It spawned a series, which each game having more characters and events.
 * 7) The dream events are a lot more different than the regular events with lots of fanservice to both series, such as items, power moves that help the player struggle with the game less and are fun to pull off, different locations themed after both series, and two of them are genuinely amazing which are both Dream Race and Dream Platform as they aren't rehashed of the other events and offer a lot of variety to the game itself.
 * 8) Despite the small roster, every character choice is good with many iconic representations such as Bowser, Dr Eggman, Yoshi, Blaze the Cat and many more, and all of them are fun to play and have good stats that suit the certain events in the game, so you'll have fun using them and mastering their skills in each certain event.
 * 9) Collecting trophies is pretty cool with all of them being fully unlocked in certain modes of the game, and finally unlocking them not only feels satisfying but also very rewarding too for that matter as a fact.
 * 10) The events and characters you play as can make for some fun and diverse gameplay at times, which as in Fencing where half of the characters have normal speed while others don't, and in the 400m and 400m Hurdles where some characters have their health drain quickly while others have so much of it that it only drains for a little bit.
 * 11) Nice soundtrack that suits the olympic games and both the Mario & Sonic series very well without it blending awkwardly with each other and overall having a charm to it like most Sonic games with great music.
 * 12) Epic opening scene that shows the characters competing with each other at the Olympics.
 * 13) Very good to play in a party, especially the Wii version.
 * 14) The game allows you to play up to 4 players with just one Wii Remote, which is not only unique but it allows for the player to play with multiple characters at once and allows for more replay value with a single player as a whole.
 * 15) The gallery mode features a lot of nice Trivia behind the Olympics and their past, with a honorary mention towards an event during the early 1920's where an elderly man from Sweden won a silver medal at a shooting event in Antwerp, and alongside that features fun minigames that while filler can serve as decent single player content for the game.
 * 16) The game can be used as a test experience for those who want to get good at sports and do a lot of exercise in order to become a very good sportsman, which is amazing for an early Wii title released in 2007.
 * 17) Some characters from both franchises make small cameos in some of the events, such as Big who appears in either the Hammer Throw or Javelin Throw events in the background entry, which is a nice detail overall.
 * 18) Mii's make an appearance in this game as main playable characters, and will appear as so in later instalments.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) On the Wii version, you were forced to play with motion controls, which often leads to some of the events not being that fun to play such as Archery and Hammer Throw.
 * 2) You have to be precise in the events for you not to lose, which can cause Artificial Difficulty during a playthrough of the game itself.
 * 3) Lack of depth, in which you would get easily bored after playing.
 * 4) Dream Fencing and Dream Table Tennis are redskins of both the regular versions of Fencing and Table Tennis with only a few tiny things added to the mix to spice things up and that's really it.
 * 5) The character roster is fairly underwhelming in this entry since there are only 8 characters from both franchises and they could've added in more obscure characters from both franchises to spice things up a bit for a while like the older Mario Sports games for the N64 and GCN. Though most of the choices here were pretty good here.
 * 6) * In fact, some playable characters were scrapped and entirely cut from the game, such as Donkey Kong, Sliver, Jet, Birdo, Rouge, and many others who's models were finished or actually planned in the game, as you can fully mod the game and some of them along with the NPC's can be fully playable in the game, but can crash the game and some of them don't seem to work in certain events, and both Donkey Kong and Sliver would later become mainstays in the later titles in the series overall.
 * 7) The gameplay is somewhat shallow, as you have to do one event which can’t be fun at times.
 * 8) Wario and Amy's last mission in Mission Mode is very obnoxious, it requires you to win 110m Hurdles by jumping over all the hurdles perfectly, which is almost impossible.

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