I used to absolutely love Mario & Sonic at The Olympic Games. For the longest time, my siblings and I would compete with one another playing “Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games”. It was a large part of my childhood as it had enough diverse events for my family to compete with as well as enough characters that all of us enjoyed using.
But, there was always a conflict in my family on which group of characters we liked more; Team Mario or Team Sonic?
I personally enjoyed using more of the Sonic characters, my personal favorite being Shadow. My family, at the time, didn’t own as many games that revolved around the SEGA characters, and so I found myself more gravitated towards them. The only Mario character I focused on was Yoshi since he was my go-to character in any Mario game that has player character selection.
My brother was a firm Sonic fan beside me. He loved using characters like Eggman or Metal Sonic. He much enjoyed the villain characters more than the hero ones. He was a huge fan of Donkey Kong though, and that was the only character from the Mario team he regurlarly chose.
My sister was a staunch supporter of the Mario characters. She enjoyed having the princesses as role models and picked them often in our competitions. She was also a huge fan of Blaze as her favorite color at the time was purple.
To be fair, there were legitimate reasons for why we picked certain characters. In the London 2012 version of the game, each character had a set stat distribution set up in power, speed, skill, and stamina. Sonic, of course, had the highest speed out of all the characters whereas Donkey Kong had the highest power.
The Mario Team characters were more oriented on having a high amount of power and stamina. The Sonic team characters were more focused around speed and skill. Although both teams had outliers that focused more heavily on other stats, the majority of the team tended to follow the mentioned pattern.
The variety of events in the game were numerous which made these stat distributions important. Although the gameplay was largely focused on the player’s ability to control the characters, these set stats certainly helped to determine the winner between us when we first began playing and learning about the game’s mechanics.
Who was your favorite character to use in Mario & Sonic at The Olympic Games? Were you firmly a Team Mario or Team Sonic fan? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or in our Boss Rush Discord!
Featured Image Source: SEGA Europe
The Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast About Video Games
The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of The Boss Rush Network and Boss Rush Media. Each week, hosts Corey Dirrig, Stephanie Klimov, LeRon Dawkins, and Pat Klein come together with their friends, colleagues, and fellow creators to talk about their week in video games, discuss industry topics, conduct interviews, answer listener questions, and more. New episodes every Monday. Get each episode one week early and more perks over on the Boss Rush Network Patreon page.
This feed also includes Boss Rush Spotlight podcasts and Boss Rush Video Game Book Club. Get both shows early on Patreon.
Email the Show: podcast.bossrush@gmail.com
Listen to The Boss Rush Podcast:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor | YouTube
Follow and Connect:
X (Formerly Twitter) | Instagram | Threads | Facebook | LinkedIn