STACK #181 Nov 2019

GAMES

FEATURE

But SEGA still needed a mascot with grip, especially as Nintendo weren’t resting on their considerable laurels, with their sensibly-named (things like ‘Wii” would come much later, of course) Super Nintendo in development. It hit the west first via, you guessed it, the US in 1991, before finally arriving in Europe and Australia in 1992. By this time, SEGA’s Mega Drive had gained quite the market share, yet the Super Nintendo soon gained traction. After all, it had Mario on its side. Despite SEGA hitting back with increasingly adversarial ad campaigns, including the classic “SEGA does what Nintendon’t”, it was the arrival in 1991 of a little blue ball of attitude that brought equality to the mascot wars. Sonic the Hedgehog was specifically designed to be SEGA’s representative, bringing attitude and cool to the brand. It worked – and thankfully his first game on the Mega Drive was an instant classic, soon cementing Sonic in people’s hearts. But competition heated up in the “console wars”, with Sony’s PlayStation entering the fray. Mario’s mob had the Nintendo 64, while SEGA had the Saturn. Two out of three of them did well in the west… Sony and Nintendo win the ‘90s.

THE 21st CENTURY After the relative failure of SEGA’s Saturn console and, later, the Dreamcast – despite them both being superb games machines – the Japanese gaming behemoth made a huge decision: They would remove themselves from the home console market. Still armed with a cash cow, erm, 'hog in Sonic, SEGA went big into software, and eventually the blue blur began appearing on various PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Then, the unthinkable – but inevitable – happened. Sonic arrived on… the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, quickly followed by their latest home console, the GameCube. Despite consternation from some mega- fan corners, Sonic got on well with his former rival’s hardware. But if these people were upset that SEGA had capitulated to Nintendo by letting their mascot loose on their hardware – after all, Nintendo never let Mario play with their competitors – they’d seen nothing yet. In 2007, Nintendo’s Wii console was taking over corners of the market hitherto

attracted a whole new audience, and mega- sales. It also heralded what to many was an unholy alliance – Mario and Sonic came together in the one game! Developed by SEGA, it was Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games , released in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It let loose characters from both Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom and the universe of Sonic in 24 Olympic event battles, allowing fans to ultimately determine which mascot ruled the roost. The Olympic truce has subsequently continued between the two factions every four years, and this month we get the latest entry in the series in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 . The pair not only get to duke it out on their home turf, but they also get to partake in more events than ever. But it’s the memories of waggly sports classics like Track & Field , HyperSports and Summer Games that the new 8-bit, 1964 Tokyo Olympics mode brings that classic console fans are especially sure to love – along with the memories that they invoke of those simpler times when Mario was Nintendo, and Sonic was SEGA. IS IT A DREAM? As well as classic 3D Olympic events and 2D 8-bit ones, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 also includes a selection of dream events. These offer up ‘Dream Shooting’, ‘Dream Karate’ and ‘Dream Racing’ – with hoverboards!

uninterested in gaming. Its use of motion controls

15