Nintendo has been releasing Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games together with Sega since 2007. But that is now over. The International Olympic Committee has decided to end the collaboration in order to consider other cooperation partners.
No more Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
The fact that a new Mario & Sonic game appears at the Olympic Games every few years has become a real gaming tradition. In 2007, the two gaming heroes went to Beijing, then to London, Rio and finally Tokyo. There were also two editions based on the Winter Olympics.
But for the current Olympic Games, Mario and Sonic no longer qualify as OlympiansWhy the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to award the license elsewhere is unclear. Eurogamer revealed in an interview with Lee Cocker, who worked on many parts of the game series. His simple answer:
They wanted to look at other partners and NFTs and esports. (…) Basically, the IOC wanted to bring (the license) back internally and look at other partners so that they more money receive.
Olympia 2024: This is the official game
But which game won the Olympic license instead of Mario & Sonic this time? Developer nWay was commissioned to produce the game this time and has created a kind of Minigame collection for Android and iOS users and released on the Epic Games Store:
The studio also released a game about the Winter Olympics two years ago. This time, players can 12 sports compete with each other in mini-games:
- Archery
- Artistic gymnastics
- Athletics – 100 m
- basketball
- Breaking
- Ride a bike
- fencing
- golf
- rowing
- Shooting – Skeet
- Skateboard Park
- Swimming – 100 m freestyle
There is a leaderboard, you can gradually expand the Olympic Games area or individualize your athletes. There is also a NFT Pinwhich anyone with a suitable wallet can secure for free until August 12th. So far, almost 135,000 interested parties made use of this offer (Source: Magic Eden).
It remains to be seen whether the license change was worth it for the International Olympic Committee. However, fans of the Mario & Sonic series will miss the games.
