Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Updated Impressions

After the enormous success of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games--(Mario & Sonic win 5M Olympic medals) 5 million copies and counting--creating a sequel based on the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Winter Games seems like a no-brainer. So far, we've seen a number of fun events for Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, including bobsleighing, speed skating, and downhill skiing, as well as numerous characters with which fans of Mario or Sonic games will be familiar. We recently got a chance to meet some more characters and events at GamesCom 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

What's New: Sega unveiled several new events at GamesCom, including snowboard halfpipe and two dream events (non-sanctioned events that are definitely not going to be included in the Olympics anytime soon): dream snowboard cross and dream snow fight.

The snowboard halfpipe event was demonstrated by a Sega employee using a Wii Balance Board. After choosing Amy as a character, he leaned to one side on the balance board to drop into the halfpipe, and by pivoting and leaning in various directions at the right time, he was able to pull off an impressive number of tricks. These included a backside 360, frontside twist, backflip, double backflip, and more. Next up was dream snowboard cross, which featured a complex, twisting track called radical highway, and we watched two players use Mario and Sonic in the race. The track features incredible speed thanks to steep runs, a loop-de-loop, and a huge suspension bridge (you can ride on its cables). Finally, there are a few different paths you can take throughout the course thanks to ramps and Sonic's springboards.

Dream snow fight was a four-on-four event that took place in a small arena with a few brick walls to hide behind. You use the Wii Remote's D pad to move and flick so you can throw snowballs, and when you run out of snowballs, you can make more with the A button. There's also a trade-off when choosing your character because smaller ones will be faster; however, the slower, bigger characters will be able to carry more snowballs. Lastly, we saw the skeleton event, which can be played by sitting or leaning face forward on the balance board. To do this, you place your chest on the balance board and use your hands to grip the side of the board. It looks like this method could be a bit uncomfortable, but judging from the demo, it might actually give you greater control over the board. We'll have to investigate this control option the next time we get hands-on with the game.

What's Different: Winter Games includes all of the characters from the original, and we've already seen some of the characters in action, including Peach, Knuckles, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Metal Sonic. This time around, we were introduced to two new characters for Winter Games: Bowser Jr. and Silver. Silver was shown during the snowboarding event and looked just as impressive in action as the rest of the lineup, and Bowser Jr. competed in the skeleton event.

What's the Same: We've seen balance board support previously, but it's great to see Sega trying to incorporate this into as many modes as possible, as well as in creative ways, such as using your chest on the balance board. Thankfully, there's always alternative control schemes should that method sound a bit too involved.

What Impression the Game Made This Time: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games has plenty of fun games to participate in, and the idea of using your balance board in the skeleton event sounds like it could be fun. We'd like to try it out for ourselves and will hopefully get that chance before the game is released this October.