Nintendo mandated that Mario always beat Sonic in the Olympic Games, according to ex-developer

Though it's been quite some time since we last had a new entry in the series, the Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games franchise brought two of the most iconic mascots together to directly compete with one another in a bunch of fun mini-games based on the bi-annual sports event. Like Mario, it appears as though Nintendo has a bit of a competitive spirit, with developers revealing that in all of the games’ marketing Mario had to be beating Sonic.

In an interview with SEGA of Japan’s localisation producer ‘Ryoichi Hasegawa’, the developer revealed some of Nintendo’s mandates when making the ‘Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games’ series.

According to Hasegawa, when creating the promotional artwork for the games (which of course includes Sonic and Mario right at the front), “there was one small error and Sonic’s food was in front of Mario’s foot, and Nintendo demanded us to change the priority,” meaning that Mario needed to instead be ahead of Sonic – if ever so slightly.

Of course, while there was once a time many decades ago when Sonic was arguably a bigger mascot than Mario, history has proven the Italian plumber to be the more successful of the two financially.

This, alongside Nintendo’s known penchant for being highly protective of their IPs and it makes sense that they would want their own mascot to be perceived as better, subconsciously or not.

While we have not seen a new entry in the Sonic and Mario series for over half a decade now, SEGA did recently gain the rights back to work on games based on the Olympics, and so it will be interesting to see whether we do end up getting more Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games…and whether Mario will once again be ahead of the Blue Blur.

KitGuru says: What did you think of the Sonic and Mario series back in the day? Was this Nintendo being business-savvy or petty? Let us know your thoughts down below.

Become a Patron!