The Paris 2024 Olympic Games began over the weekend and while the Olympics have had something of an on-and-off relationship with video games (at least as a simulation-style sport) sports fans have noticed there wasn’t even an arcade-style Mario-and-Sonic adaptation this year.
Eurogamer reported on Tuesday that the International Olympic Committee let its licensing agreement with the Nintendo and Sega mascots expire after 2020, in order to explore less-traditional opportunities, such as esports and even NFTs.
“Basically the IOC wanted to bring [the Olympics] back to themselves internally and look at other partners so they would get more money,” developer Lee Cocker told Eurogamer. He had worked on nearly every game in the Mario & Sonic series going back to 2007.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (summer or winter) has since included adaptations timed to the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver; the London 2012 Olympics; 2014 winter games in Sochi; the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo 2020’s games (although, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were played in 2021).
Why aren’t the Olympics a big draw in video games?
Nintendo’s line of sports games starring Mario have been generally well regarded; the problem is they’re exclusive to a single platform, largely owing to Nintendo’s reluctance to let their main character appear on non-Nintendo platforms. That could have had something to do with Nintendo and the IOC parting ways, too.
Olympic adaptations have generally worked better as a party-game ensemble than a traditional sports simulation, and Nintendo has a strong reputation in that regard. Sega published a game for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo that hit middling review scores but was still praised for the variety of events it offered (as well as the nations represented). Sonic appeared in it, even, but he was more as a zany costuming/avatar option (along with astronauts and other fun choices) rather than in his own persona.
In any case, despite being such a headline-dominating sports showcase, the Olympics have had difficulty as a video game series because it is an ensemble of events instead of one single competition, and also because many of its more popular sports (soccer, tennis, and basketball, for example) already have dedicated titles.
