Mario and Sonic at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games Announced

[Your Vest Friend]

Okay, now I see what happened. They were prevented from remixing in the Switch version of Mario and Sonic Tokyo (aside from like two songs) so SEGA were like "Fine, we'll throw as many remixes as possible in our Sonic-only mobile version".

[LukA8]

The event restrictions in the mobile game seem really arbitrary. Each event has five character slots with the last one always being one of the bosses, and only Sonic is playable in each, sorta like what Rio 3DS did. Tails, Amy and Vector are in 7 events and Knuckles, Blaze, Shadow and Silver are in 6 of them (not counting variations).

As for the bosses, Eggman's in four with Nega in another three (so technically the combined Eggmen have as many as the others); Metal Sonic and Rouge are in two events each with Espio, Jet, Zavok and Zazz only being in one. So Eggman and Metal have been downgraded while Rouge got a bit of an upgrade (at this point, they must have her animations for nearly every event).

[Redemption]

This game has fun gameplay and i love the large cast of characters to choose from. I like that they added the shooting event. I love the skateboarding event. Of course Karate and Dream Karate are pretty good fun. Swimming is an event i never liked to play and i think i never will. Story Mode was decent Silver got some more action and i loved that they put the two sidekick's (Luigi and Tails) together. Metropolis made the perfect circuit for Dream Racing. All and All a great game just wish they would have waited until the Olympics were back on in 2021 or 2022 at this point.

[The Famous Sonic]

8 minutes ago, Redemption said:

This game has fun gameplay and i love the large cast of characters to choose from. I like that they added the shooting event. I love the skateboarding event. Of course Karate and Dream Karate are pretty good fun. Swimming is an event i never liked to play and i think i never will. Story Mode was decent Silver got some more action and i loved that they put the two sidekick's (Luigi and Tails) together. Metropolis made the perfect circuit for Dream Racing. All and All a great game just wish they would have waited until the Olympics were back on in 2021 or 2022 at this point.

This game was made before the pandemic even happened. Nobody could've predicted it. 

[DabigRG]

Didn't think I'd see this again yet.

 

I still haven't given the story a proper look at.

[Milo]

Oh hey, another amateur Sonic sales/finances sleuthing job from yours truly.

Spurned by a recent comment about Sonic's historical sales in Japan, I ended up finding out from this website (which list historical videogame sales in Japan) that M&S Tokyo 2020 has, to date, sold about 370K in the region. This is a pretty big deal for a few reasons.

For the Sonic franchise....this is the fifth best-selling Sonic(-branded) game in the region, based on the historical references we have on hand (the above site and this list of MSC numbers for some of the Mega Drive Sonic games); after the original Mario & Sonic [Beijing 2008] and Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast (whether you only count the first release, or all releases of the game). It's also the first Sonic(-associated) game to surpass 300K sold in the region since the DS version of the original M&S, released back in 2008.

For the Mario & Sonic series, it's the best-selling M&S game overall after the aforementioned M&S 2008, and third best-selling individual M&S entry after the Wii (2007) and DS (2008) versions of M&S 2008. The DS version itself of M&S 2008 also topped out at 383K units, so Tokyo 2020 has a decent chance of surpassing it to be the 2nd-best selling individual M&S game if it still has legs.

This is all especially impressive given the following additional factors.

- The M&S series being on a worldwide sales decline after Wii/DS games, with the 3DS and Wii U games (London 2012, Sochi 2014, and Rio 2016) selling less than the previous titles. The diminishing returns were enough that Sega skipped out on picking up the license for the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics altogether, with Ubisoft acquiring it to help promote their Steep snowboarding game.

- The game was initially released to a very slow start--the game only moved a little above 19K units in its first week. Granted, this is better than many Sonic(-branded) game published after 2003, but it was also the lowest debut for any M&S game outside of Sochi 2014 on the Wii U (which did a quarter of that amount, above 5K). The fact the game has since gone on to sell that much in the country indicates a rather substantial shelf life for the game.

- The elephant of the room of the actual Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics Games --you know, the very thing the game is supposed to promote-- being delayed out of 2020 year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the game itself released prior in the holiday 2019 period. As things stand, there is still some doubt on whether the Games will still be held this year, if at all.

- This game being the very first Mario & Sonic entry published in Japan by Sega themselves; all of the previous entries were published in Japan by Nintendo (with Sega usually handling publishing duties for some M&S games in Western regions). This would make it the best-selling Sonic(-branded) game published by Sega in Japan, after the aforementioned Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, all the way back in 1998.

These results, among others (I'm not sure for how the game performed since its debut in NA and Europe) I imagine is why when Sega released their fourth quarter/full year results their 2020 fiscal year not too long ago, Tokyo 2020 was listed among the Sonic games they specifically credited (alongside Team Sonic Racing, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Generations) for good sales.

(This is a crosspost from Retro, for those wondering.)

[DabigRG]

6 hours ago, Milo said:

Oh hey, another amateur Sonic sales/finances sleuthing job from yours truly.

Spurned by a recent comment about Sonic's historical sales in Japan, I ended up finding out from this website (which list historical videogame sales in Japan) that M&S Tokyo 2020 has, to date, sold about 370K in the region. This is a pretty big deal for a few reasons.

For the Sonic franchise....this is the fifth best-selling Sonic(-branded) game in the region, based on the historical references we have on hand (the above site and this list of MSC numbers for some of the Mega Drive Sonic games); after the original Mario & Sonic [Beijing 2008] and Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast (whether you only count the first release, or all releases of the game). It's also the first Sonic(-associated) game to surpass 300K sold in the region since the DS version of the original M&S, released back in 2008.

For the Mario & Sonic series, it's the best-selling M&S game overall after the aforementioned M&S 2008, and third best-selling individual M&S entry after the Wii (2007) and DS (2008) versions of M&S 2008. The DS version itself of M&S 2008 also topped out at 383K units, so Tokyo 2020 has a decent chance of surpassing it to be the 2nd-best selling individual M&S game if it still has legs.

This is all especially impressive given the following additional factors.

- The M&S series being on a worldwide sales decline after Wii/DS games, with the 3DS and Wii U games (London 2012, Sochi 2014, and Rio 2016) selling less than the previous titles. The diminishing returns were enough that Sega skipped out on picking up the license for the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics altogether, with Ubisoft acquiring it to help promote their Steep snowboarding game.

- The game was initially released to a very slow start--the game only moved a little above 19K units in its first week. Granted, this is better than many Sonic(-branded) game published after 2003, but it was also the lowest debut for any M&S game outside of Sochi 2014 on the Wii U (which did a quarter of that amount, above 5K). The fact the game has since gone on to sell that much in the country indicates a rather substantial shelf life for the game.

- The elephant of the room of the actual Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics Games --you know, the very thing the game is supposed to promote-- being delayed out of 2020 year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the game itself released prior in the holiday 2019 period. As things stand, there is still some doubt on whether the Games will still be held this year, if at all.

- This game being the very first Mario & Sonic entry published in Japan by Sega themselves; all of the previous entries were published in Japan by Nintendo (with Sega usually handling publishing duties for some M&S games in Western regions). This would make it the best-selling Sonic(-branded) game published by Sega in Japan, after the aforementioned Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, all the way back in 1998.

These results, among others (I'm not sure for how the game performed since its debut in NA and Europe) I imagine is why when Sega released their fourth quarter/full year results their 2020 fiscal year not too long ago, Tokyo 2020 was listed among the Sonic games they specifically credited (alongside Team Sonic Racing, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Generations) for good sales.

(This is a crosspost from Retro, for those wondering.)

Dang, that's interesting.

Guess it makes sense, as some of those sales could've been people looking to fill the void.

[Red Hot Jack]

Talking about the future of this sub franchise, it's cool, I've been a fan because I played it when I was a kid, I still play Tokyo sometimes now, but really, what else can you do with it? They tried adding more characters, online play, minigames, brought back (some) Dream Events, tried retro events, a freaking story mode, and Tokyo 2020 was somehow still boring and felt already done.

It lost all of its appeal, it may not be Mario, Sonic or the crossover at this point that sells the games, it's the freaking Olympics and places where they are held, man... it's just casual play at this point, I'm sure they will be making more because there will be obviously more real Olympics in the future and the series still sells a lot, I really don't doubt there will be more videogames starting with the next Winter games, and SEGA has the license so yeah. And I know I will buy them 'cause I have a Switch, haven't bought a Winter game since the DS one.

[Sonikko]

@Milo Do you have data for a comparison in sales for the most popular games here in the west and how that compares to Japan?
I think that may give us a very good indicator of the feedback SoJ gets.

I'd be interested in seeing how the Adventure games, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Forces and Mania  did since those are the big turning points of the 3D era I think (Forces is just the latest one)

[Red Hot Jack]

My 3 most ideal features that would have me hyped again would be, in order:

3. Rotation Roster

Instead of 1 event guests, since they don't want more than 20 characters or it's just too many animations to do for the devs or whatever, do "rotation roster" instead, a limited number of character like 8 or 10 are in every event, the rest? In 4 or 5 events in alternate groups for each event, this way each sport has a unique roster. A bit like Tokyo mobile. An example here would be Rosalina and Jet are in 4 or 5 sports, as much as Wario and Blaze.

2. Remixes/your music

Bring back the music from Mario/Sonic franchises, that was so good, unique remixes, we had Tokyo mobile with that recently, but in Tokyo Switch? Generic Olympic music, the same themes on loop. It got boring fast. Also the option to select music to hear in each single event, like in the older games.

1. More Dream Events

Self explanatory, it's a literally a reason to buy the game, they never get old as they can be reinvented, arcade games, they can pretty much do anything creative and interesting with those.

[DarkRula]

The series is stale purely because they toned down the crossover elements. We had three dream events in the latest release, and the only one that truly felt like a dream event was the racing one. Lean into the crossover potential of the series. We already have an official Olympics based on reality. We don't also need an almost carbon-copy that replaces humans with fictional characters.

If they pick up the Winter Olympics licence for the next Mario and Sonic, they need to go all-in with the crossover potential. Sochi was the peak of the series for me purely because of that.