The Olympics, a time for coming together as a nation to support our favorite athletes, to support our flags, to support our… video game characters?! That’s right, Mario, Sonic, and a lot of their friends have made a most triumphant return on Nintendo Switch. With some new and some old, come with us as we take a look at this new game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics: Tokyo 2020.
From Publisher and Developer Sega comes the next installment into the Mario and Sonic Olympics franchise. In this new release, we are going on a trip around the world, and our destination, Tokyo. The game includes several different modes including, multiplayer, a local play between systems, and a story mode to play through. All of these things make for a fun game to play, with the wireless joycons, or using the buttons on them as a controller.
As you set forth to play the game in story mode, you are greeted by a short interaction between Mario and some other primary characters. You receive a gift that will soon turn your world upside down, and it will pixelate you back to the glory days of Sonic and Mario. Play and pass events from the 1964 Olympics and the 2020 Olympics. The different modes will play out differently, but also very similar. You can run around the 2D arena in the past as well as in the 3D map in the present. The one thing about story mode that I love, is that you can walk around the map to different arenas. This gives you the ability to participate in different events, and with different characters.
There are some differences between the modes. Graphics are one of those differences. The 1964 game mode brings back the old pixelated fun from NES and Sega consoles using the old Mario Bros models and the original Sonic models for this mode. The other key difference is game selection. There are some games like the 10-meter dive that only show up in the ’64 game mode, while there are new events available in 3D such as karate, surfing, and skateboarding. Whether you are playing in the past, or the present, all of the events have their own different feeling and are very fun in their own rights.
Controls are important in these types of games, and with them being on the switch you have a couple of different ways to play the events. The first way is by using your joycons with the wireless feature. You can control how your characters move and how you play the games this way. The other way to play is by using the regular buttons on the controllers. This is a little bit easier and all you have to do is push the buttons at the correct times to make your characters work their magic. Each character gives you a different boost to certain aspects of the events while some of them are good all-around in the matches.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch with a code provided by PR.
