SEGA explains what makes Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games different from past entries

A portion of an ONM interview with producer Nobuya Ohashi, Wii director Eigo Kasahara and 3DS Director Kohji Shind…

ONM: How does this game differ from it’s predecessors? How have you improved it and does it introduce any new ideas?

Nobuya Ohashi: There are quite a lot of players who enjoyed the previous games and our mission was not to let down these people. So we have high expectations. We are adding a lot of new ideas and improvements on both platforms.

Eigo Kasahara: For the Wii version, the key concept for this game is the four player multiplayer.

We’re trying to make sure that all the events are playable for four players. We’re also adding new events and Dream events. We’ve had Dream events before but they were not all available for four players. This time they will be.

We’re trying to make the Dream events more interactive. You can race against each other, try to bash each other or you can try to put off other players to reach the goal.

We didn’t have that sort of interaction in the previous Dream events. We’re also preparing a new mode that wasn’t available in previous versions. I’m not allowed to tell you much about it but this mode will also be available for four players.

Kohji Shindo: For the Nintendo 3DS version, obviously the main change is the console. Not only is the console different but we’re taking a new approach in game designing.

This time we’re trying to focus on one or two key elements from each sport and we build up the whole game from there rather than trying to recreate a a whole sport.

One example of this is the breaststroke. We tried to find out what makes that sport unique and interesting.

We agreed that it’s the timing, the rhythmic and repetitive motion of breathing when your head is above water.

We picked that up as a core mechanic of the game and we tried to build up the whole game based on this (you have to breathe into the DS microphone when your character pops his head up).

That’s just one example of the approach we took.