Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: COVID 19 Edition – Family Fun

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Title: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
Developer: SEGA
Publisher: SEGA
Website: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games
Genre: Sports 
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Age Rating: PEGI 7
Release Date: 08/11/19
Price: £49.99 – Rapid Reviews was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

We hit another day in the lockdown for COVID 19 or Coronavirus and for many of us spending as much time indoors with family members with nothing to do and nowhere to go might finally be getting too much for you. I would say personally I am hitting this wall as much as I love my three daughters (18mths, 3 1/2yrs and 5yrs in few weeks) having no free time at all is really starting to grind on me.

Lucky for me and you to try and get over the last few weeks Nintendo has some great multiplayer family-friendly games available to you, I often end up reviewing these games myself like Save My Nuts and Gigantosaurus. You also have games like Animal Crossing which let you relax (a little), today though I will be putting Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games to the test with the family and seeing how easy it is for people to pick up and play.

This game was released for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games which is now not even happening so this game could possibly be the first every Olympic Game to be set on a tournament that never actually took place! 

This game gives you a ton of events to try your hand at, There are real Olympic events and a few made-up ones but they all stick to the correct competitive theme. When you boot up the game you have the normal options of Quick Game, Story, Local and Online multiplayer of course if you want to read about all of this head over to the review we did when the game was first out.

The Barber Olympics

Our mini Olympics consists of four family members, My two elder children, my wife and of course me. I would say that I’m the most experienced gamer out of us all but my wife has played and completed her fair amount of puzzle games and plays Animal Crossing regularly. 

My Eldest picked up games in the lockdown and can now compete in Mario Kart, ARMS and has completed both Animal Crossing and the before mentioned Gigantosaurus game since we have all been stuck inside.

My middle one tries her best at both Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Ryans Racing but normally gets bored or frustrated at everything she has to remember plus she has really small hands so even the Switch controller is hard for her to hold.

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We want to do the horse one!

Anyway, we jumped in and played a mix of 2 and 4 player modes tackling some games like 100m, Skateboarding, Canoe, Football, Rugby, Karate, Surfing, Equestrian and Swimming playing with all the control modes too which are single joy-con, double joy-con and motion controller.

Now some of these games are absolutely jump in and after a couple of attempts, you will understand everything and have a good time, unfortunately, some of the games are impossible to learn quickly (Sport Climbing and Dream Shooting I look at you) overall though we had a good laugh and my eldest has since played her favourites again against the CPU.

Let’s start with 100m sprint now this is the quickest and I thought the easiest game, basically either tap A to run or shake the motion controller as fast as you can, everyone picked this up and we had a good few races together. 

Skateboarding was surprisingly easy for the kids to pick up with just direction and jump needed, if it wasn’t for me reading that I could do a special move right at the end of our session bagging me mega points I would of lost to my daughter the first time we played and to me that shows this event is something anyone could play.

Surfing was also a hit with the kids, Gymnastics was too although even if you miss the moves the on-screen character does it but you fail on the scores which Is a tad confusing for the little brains when they have 0 points.

Time to Fight a.k.a Button Mash

Karate and Boxing were great fun and the two-button combat system and lack of ability to move made this easy for anyone as you basically just mash the buttons and block, obviously you can plan attacks and dodge but we found it more fun just seeing who can hit who most quickly.

Swimming was much like the 100m except you need to turn in the middle, Motion controller was the way to go here as the joypad version was very hard for all of us to understand the movements needed to keep your speed. Although seeing the various characters in swimming costumes did get a lot of laughs from the kids!

Canoe was quite good although somehow I came last even though I was the only one doing the actual rowing motion, So maybe just shaking the joy-con works better for this event. Lastly Football and Rugby I enjoyed these being a massive Fifa fan.

After spending about 3 minutes explaining the rules of the game that daddy loves so much I was really looking forward to trying Football, I have fond memories of Mario Soccer on the Gamecube, Anyway, thirty seconds in my daughter scored an own goal and says “Daddy you had 0 points so I wanted to help” needless to say I knew then she didn’t understand what she had just done, Her poor squad of Daisy, Peach, Sonic and Tails must have been in bits after preparing all this for the silly octopus keeper to boot the ball into her own net!

Rugby was fun and although no-one really understood the rules we had a good laugh running around the big turtles who play as the defensive line, you can play this as a team of 4 vs the CPU or 2 on 2 etc (the same goes for football) 

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How do we do this Dad???

Sport Climbing was possibly the worst experience we had with none of us getting the concept so much so I think we all managed a massive 6m into the air each! I really felt this mode was too tough for a casual gamer and although I slowly picked up what I was meant to do you couldn’t play this with anyone who has never played before.

My eldest loved the horse riding event, although she didn’t really get the concept but the fact she could have. Princess on a horse was enough for her. Overall she really liked it and will continue to play the events single player I have no doubt and eventually the story mode (shes actually playing it as I write in handheld mode) 

The middle one found it fun watching but really struggled with picking up the game if I’m honest, she does quite well on Animal Crossing and Mario Kart so I’m surprised but I think it’s just that you have to change playstyle, control and timing in every mode.

I think as a party game Mario and Sonic has been a hit overall and we will deffo get on this again during the coming weeks, My Eldest has a current 4-2 winning streak over me on Boxing so I’m going to have to play the game correctly and teach her a lesson!! 

Until next time

I have embedded some screenshots of our games in the article so have a look over them, I also linked some other multiplayer games I played with the family on here so take a look if like me you struggle to find games to play with kids.

I must make a huge mention to the site and to Nintendo for supplying us with the code for this game I think they must have hacked my browsing history as I have been looking at this for a while.

Right back to some olympic sports…