While being the biggest fan boy dream ever, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics will have a hard time explaining why Sonic could be outrun by...well...anybody else.

The team behind the game has implemented a clever way to balance all the characters out. First, you have three kind of characters: a Power-based, a Technique-based and a Speed-based. Mario and Sonic are Speed characters (better for running), Knuckles and Bowser Power (better at throwing) characters and Luigi and Tails Technique characters (better at jumping).

But every character also has certain points in four different stats being: speed, acceleration, dash and technique. While Mario is a Speed character, his stats are the most balanced, Sonic on the other hand is the fastest but has low acceleration.

Also, disciplines that involve fast running are put together so that the slower characters could keep up with a faster one. The makers did this by restricting everyone to a certain speed for the first half. If you go over it by shaking the Wiimote/nunchuk too fast, you're character will stumble and slow down. In the second half of the race there's no restriction on the speed. But if you mess up in the first half with Sonic, his low acceleration could make you lose nonetheless.

This kind of degree of balancing also shows that Nintendo is quite a bit involved with the project, which is a very good sign.

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