Almost twelve whole years ago, came the release of the first Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games. (Oh God, we are all getting old and video games remind us of how short of a time we all have left.) Friday, it was announced that there will be a sixth release in the series for the upcoming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. This was not the only announcement made by Sega on Friday night. There will be three other games released alongside this established series.

The first to release will be “Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020,” which will be released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. This will continue the series tradition of reuniting everyone’s favorite cast of who’s who of the lesser known franchise players, like Blaze. The first title boasted a total of 21 playable characters, including Mii.

Later releases have included more obscure and annoying characters, as the 2016 Rio release included Big The Cat (a non-playable character). People are speculating that due to Nintendo’s addition of other developers characters into the Smash Bros. series, the same may very well happen in this series too. A stretch for sure, but a worthwhile one to speculate on.

The second game in question had me speculating for a moment, as the trailer was combined with Mario & Sonic‘s announcement. Olympic Games: The Official Video Games will be made by Sega this year, releasing for PS4 and Nintendo Switch. This will not include any video game characters aside from generic gentleman 1-12 and non-specific noble lady 1-5. This will be the sequel to the 2012 edition which saw some high criticism for its PC release and, what some called, “poorly optimized,” “cheaply made,” and “dreadful controls.”

Another very interesting release will be a sequel, in conjunction with the console release, and that is “Mario & Sonic At the Tokyo Olympics the Arcade Game.” Yes, an arcade release of the prior mentioned Mario & Sonic game will be released in 2020. As I had assumed all arcades were dead and had been turned into somewhere else for children to be loud, I thought this would exclusively be released in Japan. However, the Rio release also came to the arcade, first in Japan and then in North America and Europe to coincide with the Wii U release.

The fourth and final release to come in 2020 will be Sonic at the Olympic Games. This will be the first of its releases and only confirmed for ISO and Andriod. As the logo is, “still in working progress,” we doubt this will be a release we’ll hear about until a couple of months before launch. A strange release for sure, though not an unpredictable one.

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