Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Let’s go back to the 1990s. Sega and Nintendo were competing for the screen time of gamers around the world. The console wars were in full swing. On team red we had Mario. Team blue was headed by Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a vicious battle, and by the early 2000s, Sega had fallen. They were forgoing the console business and transitioned into a third-party developer.
Fast forward to 2007, and these former rival mascots made it into the same game. We got a handful of Sonic games that came to GameCube, GBA, DS, and Wii. Yet, that didn’t carry the same weight as seeing these two icons of gaming together on the same screen.
While this game only features two franchises, the history between them makes this game incredibly important. The box art for Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is still surreal. A crossover of this magnitude is something you would only see in a dream.
Seeing Mario next to Sonic doesn’t seem all that weird anymore. There isn’t even another gaming example to put the history of this in perspective. The closest options might be Master Chief and Samus or Sam Fisher and Solid Snake crossovers. Both still don’t even approach the historical significance of the Mario and Sonic rivalry.
