Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games: Where is the 2024 edition?

Another group of people upset by the lack of a new Mario and Sonic game are speedrunners – players who spend hours competing to log the best times in the games’ different events.

Although the series was a fun family hit, speedrunning has a dedicated community built around it.

JH2000, who holds two world records in the Winter Olympics versions, says there’s a surprising amount of depth to the titles.

“Each character has its own set of stats,” he says.

“You’ve got your speed characters, the all-around characters, the technical characters and the power characters.

“And each one has their own feel in different events.”

JH says the speedrun community was “gutted” when they learned Mario and Sonic wouldn’t be heading for Paris.

“When we heard nothing about it we were completely and utterly gutted,” he says.

“We just thought, ‘we can’t just end like this’.

“We heard nothing, so we just thought, OK, maybe it’s coming out later, until we found out it wasn’t.”