Mario & Sonic is dead

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Shmaluigi

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Olympics ditched Mario & Sonic series to explore NFTs and esports

The International Olympics Committee walked away from its partnership with Nintendo and Sega for the long-running Mario…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

(Once again relevant news has come out in close proximity to the Poll Committee doing something about the same topic. How does this keep happening...)
 
I was wondering why there wasn't a Paris 2024 game announced, even though I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
 
Oh man...this is kind of sad. I liked the Mario and Sonic series a lot. And I'm a fan of both franchises. ☹️

Also why are they investing in NFTs? NFTs are so bad and have lost so much value recently.
 
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Lemmy Hip Koopa said:
Also why are they investing in NFTs? NFTs are so bad and have lost so much value recently.
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If you seen their flagship games, it's complete mobile gacha dogshit mtx machine, so it makes perfect sense that they're into nfts

just look at olympics go paris 2024, a game they are officially endorsing and labeling it as "innovative"

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i don't use the word "soulless" lightly but I think here is just an exemplary example of it, a bare minimum "game" designed as cheaply as possible, abusing the olympics license to extract cash from its playerbase.

say what you want about Mario & Sonic but those games actively had effort put into them. the dream events were fun, charming animations, the awesome character costumes (wario's and eggman's nipples) the games were beautiful to look at, and it had a great soundtrack.
 
On one hand, those Olympic games were never very good. On the other hand they at least looked nice and weren't NFT garbage.
 
The provocative title aside, I think it speaks of how many people enjoyed the series when this announcement causes a lot of people to sing its praises. When this series was still getting new games, there was a level of discontent of its existence, like how Mario and Sonic are in a crossover about Olympics of all things, or that there was a feeling that there were too many Olympic video games about Mario & Sonic. It could very well be partly from how the current Olympics video games have less effort put into it that makes the older approach felt better by comparison, but as someone who personally likes the existence of this series, it feels satisfying to see (even though it had to come to the equivalent of an eulogy to get to this point).

When the first game on the Wii was announced on IGN (and I imagine several other sites), I can't help but feel very elated that there is going to be a real video game that allows Mario and Sonic to interact. It totally felt unreal that I had to hope that it's not a joke, since this news broke out on the 28th of March (which could be construed as an early April's Fool joke), but when it's clear that this game is real, it felt like a dream, coming from someone who loves Mario and likes Sonic. I need to point out that I'm sure not everyone was happy, and might have wanted something better than being an Olympics crossover event, so it's not perfect.

One achievement with this series is how, collectively, this sold a lot more compared to every other Mario Sports series. Yes, Mario & Sonic series outsold the, let's see... Mario Tennis series, Mario Golf series, and certainly the Mario Strikers series. The Mario sports label is listed as about 50+ million on Wikipedia, and a huge percentage of this amount comes from this series. Not only does it speak of how popular this series is, it also speaks of how relatively unpopular the other Mario sports titles were, even though they generally have a better review average compared to this one. On Sonic's side, it's probably his most successful series given how Sonic's games aren't as strong of a seller as Mario's. One can infer that Sonic really benefitted from having Mario to boost the game's popularity, even though Mario's nature meant that it has to be a Nintendo exclusive. One does not underestimate the power of a crossover between two iconic video game characters, in other words.

We certainly can't rule out the end of Mario and Sonic's crossovers, since while the Olympics have decided not to have them involving Mario and Sonic, there might be a new avenue for them to crossover each other. The type of game might not necessarily be a platformer like some would expect from two series known for their platformers, but the strong love for the characters would surely carry whatever crossover they will tackle next.

Thank you for reading.

(I know I sounded unnecessarily positive here, which might probably make me a target of being made fun of)
 
At least this raises the chances of a non olympics Mario & Sonic game in the future right?
Right?
right?
 
I'd say I'm still sad about it, one being that there are still some sport subjects that cannot be seen in other Mario sport games, the other is thanks to the awful roster we still cannot have playable Toad and Cream in any Olympics so I don't want it to be cancelled.

winstein said:
there were too many Olympic video games about Mario & Sonic.
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Yeah that can be a thing. Altho French people could argue why only Tokyo Olympics have the game but theirs are cancelled (well, ignore that SEGA and Nintendo both locate in Japan), its frequency does result in saturation.

While I think they should still work on 2026's Winter Olympics which subjects are very different, I hope that they will still do 2028 Olympics if they don't entirely give up.

SavK said:
At least this raises the chances of a non olympics Mario & Sonic game in the future right?
Right?
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Put Olympics aside, I think we also haven't seen Sonic's own spinoffs for party and sports for long while. I don't think there is excuse for SEGA to not do a different sport game if they stop working on Olympics, especially when Mario never gave up other game plans beside Olympics.
 
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Ray Trace said:
If you seen their flagship games, it's complete mobile gacha dogshit mtx machine, so it makes perfect sense that they're into nfts
i don't use the word "soulless" lightly but I think here is just an exemplary example of it, a bare minimum "game" designed as cheaply as possible, abusing the olympics license to extract cash from its playerbase.

say what you want about Mario & Sonic but those games actively had effort put into them. the dream events were fun, charming animations, the awesome character costumes (wario's and eggman's nipples) the games were beautiful to look at, and it had a great soundtrack.
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Mobile games just suck in general LOL. Bad graphics, tons of annoying ads, plus a lot of them have microtransactions. Some of them are fun but the majority of them are just plain stupid and cheap. As far as the Mario and Sonic series, if anyone beats up on them, I can't see why, because I think they're really great and fun games, unlike this crap the Olympic Committee is endorsing with these cheap-as-heck crappy low-budget mobile games. I'm kind of thinking these mobile games are going to cause the Olympics to LOSE money rather than to get more of it.
 
The only good thing about Mario vs Sonic was it lead to some funny articles being made like
www.mariowiki.com

Sticks

Sticks the Badger is a female anthropomorphic jungle badger and one of the main characters of the Sonic Boom spin-off franchise of Sonic the Hedgehog. She primarily uses boomerangs, and her character is portrayed to be energetic, wild, and very...
www.mariowiki.com www.mariowiki.com
 
@Daniel Dyce I completely respect your opinion, but personally I think the Mario and Sonic games are pretty fun. I had fun playing them. I actually think they were really good games actually. Like, you have both Sonic The Hedghog and Mario characters interacting with one another. I like both franchises, so I was really happy with that, and the sport games were fun. By the way yeah it is really hilarious how there were articles about Sonic characters on the Mario Wiki because of this. It's confusing. 🤣

Also one other thing I can understand people's hate for Sonic Boom. Like, I like almost everything Sonic, and even I don't like it.
 
Lemmy Hip Koopa said:
@E-103 Delta I saw someone play through Sonic 06 completely the whole way through on YouTube. I watched it for the comedy. And boy oh boy were all the glitches and everything else hilarious. 🤣
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I watched the Angry Video Game Nerd review it back in 2017, and I closed the first part of the review halfway through because I was so disturbed by the Sonelise scenes. 😅
 
The Mario & Sonic Olympic games were never particularly great (and I speak as an avid Mario Party fan) despite some installments having moments like Winter DS and the Dream Events in general, but the shovelware outputs we're getting do make Mario & Sonic look like gaming masterpieces.
 
November said:
Option 5 for me too. I've had my fun with the series, but there's a point where you can't really squeeze any more content out of a reoccurring real world sporting event, and I think Nintendo and Sega have acknowledged that. Now, I wouldn't throw a fit if they did decide to continue the series, but I'm certainly not expecting or looking forward to any more installments.
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Like I said above, I will miss the series not being an active thing, but it's not like I didn't see this coming, so I'm kind of neutral on it overall.
 
LeftyGreenMario said:
The Mario & Sonic Olympic games were never particularly great (and I speak as an avid Mario Party fan) despite some installments having moments like Winter DS and the Dream Events in general, but the shovelware outputs we're getting do make Mario & Sonic look like gaming masterpieces.
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Objectively I can say they weren't masterpieces, and yet they weren't terrible, somewhat in the middle, and they were at least fun to play personally for me even if they weren't the best. Like the fencing sport in the first game-I had a lot of fun with that. Also the soundtrack for each game was really great.
 
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khaoticnoize187 said:
meh
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@khaoticnoize187 That's fine. Every player's experience with a game is different. Like, I don't think everyone on this thread will agree with my opinion. All I'm saying is I personally liked it, but that's just my opinion. Sorry if you didn't enjoy it. Some Mario games are better than others. It's fine if you don't like it. What exactly was it about the games you didn't like though? I'm interested in hearing about it.
 
I am also disappointed to see that the series has ended. But look on the bright side. Six games is still plenty enough to enjoy over and over again.
 
Looks like SEGA managed to secure the Olympic license again, probably inferring that whatever initiative the Olympic games previously done didn't do well.

Whether or not that means a new Mario & Sonic game would be released, that's uncertain, but Sonic is sure to be there. For me? I hope we got another, especially because it missed Winter for over 10 years already.

Thank you for reading.
 
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