Mario and Sonic are back, and this time they’re competing at the London Olympics.  Who’s the superior one, the adventurous plumber or the racing hedgehog?

Once again, I am reviewing a demo, but this time it’s in two franchises that I’m actually familiar with.  In the demo, you play five Olympic events with characters that the computer assigns you at random.  The events are shooting, football, trampoline, swimming and racing bikes.  Each one relies on different controls to operate each game, only one relies completely on the stylus.

The first event I took part in was the shooting game.  The target moves to the left and you have to press the r button to shoot five targets.  How many points you get is dependent on how close you shoot to the center.  You get three rounds, and the target speeds up during each one.  By the third one, you’d have to be the Flash to get a perfect score.  I barely got any points and the fact that the computer had me play as Metal Sonic only made me think that he desperately needs to get his system rebooted.

The second event was a football game where you have to kick the ball past the goalie to score.  For this one, you have to press the circle pad down while turning it to aim.  Then you have to wait for the ball to come in contact with you and release the pad at the exact moment it does.  I kept releasing the pad too early and I couldn’t get the aiming right, so this was another one I totally sucked at.  Oh, and for those of you wondering why I’m describing soccer, even though I said it was football, please keep in mind that this is the Mario and Sonic London Olympics.

The third event was a trampoline game where you have to press the a button right at the time your character lands on the trampoline and you have to move him or her back to the middle while he or she is in the air.  This was my favorite game, because it’s the only one I could get the hang of.  The controls were easy to understand, yet it was still challenging in its own way.

The fourth event was swimming.  In order to beat the other swimmers, you have to draw a circle on the bottom screen that is an exact copy of the one on the top screen.  There is no tracing and you only have a limited amount of time to draw.  It put quite a bit of pressure on me and I only got most of the circle right by pure luck.

The final event was just racing bikes.  This might seem simple, but that is far from the truth.  Not only do you have to turn the bikes, you also have to time your jumps perfectly and tilt the Nintendo 3DS in order to land properly.  Trust me, that last part is nearly impossible.  I learned one thing during that event; Sonic is only the fastest when I’m not the one controlling him.

The game was pretty fun, but with most of the events, I couldn’t get a hang of the controls.  Therefore, I have no interest in getting the full game.  I haven’t played any of the Mario and Sonic games on the Wii yet, but I’ll still try it and see if it’s more suited for that gaming system.