Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games (lost build of cancelled 3DS version of Wii U crossover sports/party game; existence unconfirmed; 2013)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Mariosonicsochi2014.png

Promotion art of the game.

Status: Existence Unconfirmed

Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games was a video game released for the Nintendo Wii U in 2013. It was a continuation of the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series which had three previous games in the series. All of these games had handheld counterparts on the Nintendo DS and 3DS. The Sochi 2014 variant, however, was special in that it had no handheld port whatsoever. However, it may have been planned at one point.

Confirmation

The game has never been officially confirmed to exist. The original announcement of the game included no indication that it would be headed to the 3DS[1] and Nintendo nor Sega (the developers of the game) have never officially spoken of the existence of the 3DS version of the game. However, IGN's Rich George spoke of the game existing in June 2013 and there are other indications that it was planned at some time.[2]

In August 2013, however, the Sonic the Hedgehog brand manager (at the time) David Corless spoke to Dutch website, N1ntendo about the game and in it, he said there was no 3DS version..[3] However, it should be noted that the actual wording of the interview is different from the wording used on the site with a clip of the exact wording avaliable. While this can be taken as the game's existence being disconfirmed, it was only stated that no 3DS version was planned to be released, not that one never existed.

Retail listings

For a while leading up to release, Amazon UK had a 3DS port of the game advertised with no box art shown. Going on the page for the Wii U version of the game will have 3DS in a greyed-out box that does not contain a link, showing proof of this.[4] Other retailers have had the game listed with it being unable to purchase.[5]

Screenshots

In June 2013, Polygon had an article where they claimed to have screenshots of the 3DS version of the game. This article, however, only has Wii U screenshots as indicated by the 'Wii U' in the filenames.[6] It is speculated they were asked to pull the screenshots of the 3DS version at the last moment until the 3DS version was officially announced.

Cancellation

As the game was never officially announced, it was never officially cancelled. The sequel, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games received a handheld port for the Nintendo 3DS in 2016. It is possible the game was cancelled to focus on the Wii U version, or that the 3DS port did not meet Nintendo's strict quality standards.

Gallery

Interview with David Corless about the 3DS version.

See also

References