Sonic at the Olympic Games Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

The main official Olympic mobile title.

We reviewed the other IOC endorsed game the other week and were sorely disappointed. For a second there we thought Sega had lost interest in mobile. Thankfully, they haven't and Sonic's mobile participation is far better. Whereas Beijing 2008 on the console caters towards the more hardcore gamer, Mario and Sonic at the Olympics is more mass market and taking these elements to the mobile should make for a decent title. We’ll never really know the truth as Nintendo have sent their delegate home Sonic and his true friends made it to Beijing.

Sonic at the Olympics comprises 5 different athletics events and could easily have been called Sonic at the IAAF World Championships - though not quite as catchy. The events are Discus, Triple Jump, 400m hurdles, 1500m and Javelin with each having their own quirks and controls.

Most of the events are based around hitting the 5 button when your character is running over the icon. The more accurately you time the hit, the faster the sprint. For the triple jump, hurdles and javelin you have to press 2 to launch yourself or the javelin into the air. The timings aren't too taxing and you should be able to get a decent run up each time. Once in the air, the object (be it Sonic, javelin or discus) can be boosted to try and get a bit more distance and more importantly, the gold rings. Your final score is based on your distance/time and gold rings act as a bonus.

The events themselves are fun and quick to play but being The Olympics, you have to progress through the heats before racing for a medal in the final. This can drag on a bit - especially for the 1500m. Winning gold in all the events is tough for Sonic but luckily he can call on his friends (and enemies) to lend a hand. For example Tails excels at the triple jump with some high flying leaps and Knuckles has the strength to throw a discus pretty far. All the high scores include the character name so it shouldn't take long to figure out who is best at each event.

The graphics and overall package follow the other mobile Sonic games. As such there is only one competitor on screen at a time and you beat pre-defined scores to win a medal. It’s not really much of a sport sim but still provides a few minutes of casual fun and much better than Beijing 2008.