Former SEGA Producer Says Nintendo Wanted Mario Ahead Of Sonic In Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games Boxart

In 2007, SEGA released Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the first official crossover game between the two longtime videogame rivals.

Although the rivalry has simmered down greatly by the time of the game’s release, it seems Nintendo still held a bit of a grudge against the blue blur. In an interview with Arcade Attack Retro Gaming Network, former SEGA producer Ryoichi Hasegawa shared several stories from his time at the company, one of which was about Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games.

According to Hasegawa, when SEGA first submitted the main artwork of the game to Nintendo, Sonic’s foot was in front of Mario’s foot in the race. Upon seeing this, Nintendo “demanded” that it be changed to Mario’s foot was in front instead, which Hasegawa joking replied they had to comply or “there would be no deal”.

There was one funny story. There was artwork of Mario and Sonic, and other characters standing on the field. And those artworks were used for the package, the manual instruction, manual cover and the cartridge label and things like that. There was one small error: Sonic’s foot was in front of Mario’s foot, and Nintendo demanded us to change the priority so Mario had to be slightly ahead.

We were like, oh my God, we have to change it or there will be no deal.

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