Game Theory: How Mario BEATS Sonic at The Olympics!

[Music] who's the new guy i'm a pretty sure that's the gecko wait did you say geico no the gecko well then why does this lane say geico he probably wants the people to know that with geico 15 minutes could save them 15 or more on car insurance wait so this is some sort of sponsorship thing yes he's here to let people know that the geico has been saving people money for over 85 years you mean he came here all the way to the olympics to let people know about geico's award-winning mobile app and amazing 24 7 customer service we are not actually at the olympics we're in a video wait we're not at the olympic what video yes haven't you seen the camera hello internet welcome to game theory the show that goes for the gold but usually winds up with a respectable bronze summer is upon us the world is opening up again and i feel like we're finally catching up on all the things that we didn't get to do last year going to see movies in theaters attending live music events and uh oh yeah finally getting hyped for a little thing called the summer olympics now while the old sports ball isn't usually part of my brand mario and sonic absolutely are and i feel like i'm long overdue to talk about mario and sonic at the olympic games the game series that kind of feels like it should have been a bigger deal than it was i mean you've got two of gaming's biggest icons facing off against each other hearkening back to the days when there was a genuine rivalry between the sega genesis and the super nintendo why has this crossover never been a bigger deal probably because it's happening in a glorified sports mini game crossover no need for a theory that time friends anyway considering the number of videos i've done on both mario and sonic it seems like the olympics would provide a perfect opportunity for a theorist like me to pit the two against each other and see who would really come out on top in competitions like 100 meter dash the javelin throw in the pole vault except uh there's a reason i haven't done a proper mario versus sonic theory video in 10 years and that's because do i even need to say it the two aren't even remotely close in power level mario is an italian plumber who probably gives at best a human performance in any racing event while sonic could run an entire marathon in a blink of an eye that's not even hyperbole if you take sonic's canon speed and calculate how long it would take him to run a 26.2 mile marathon it would literally be less than the tenth of a second that it takes a human to blink so already sonic wins every speed based event hands down admittedly mario's no slouch when it comes to raw strength my buddy austin already did a video calculating how much raw power it takes for mario's punches to shatter blocks when he jumps but he's still vastly outclassed by sonic in that area because sonic's acceleration is off the charts and as long time followers of the channel know with great acceleration times mass comes great force which means that sonic is also gonna win the strength based contests as well in short mario is a very strong human but sonic is a force of nature who runs faster than the speed of light reaching speed so fast that he actually warps the fabric of space-time so despite the mario and sonic at the olympic games series existing for the entire 10-year run of the channel i've kind of willfully ignored the topic for the simple reason that an olympic face-off didn't seem like it would be an interesting face-off at least that's what i thought until i started digging around into the history of the olympics because while we all know the big traditional events like running and swimming and gymnastics the olympics actually have a history of forgotten and downright wacky events like no joke town planning step aside athletes it's time for the architects to shine there was also dueling you heard that right you could gold medal in the sport of shooting a gun at a human-shaped mannequin or other mind-boggling events like solo synchronized swimming seriously solo synchronized swimming if the point of synchronized swimming is that you have a team of two swimmers who are totally in sync how do you do synchronized swimming when there's only one person to which the olympics response was apparently uh the swimmer's movements are synchronized to the music anyway this was a real life event that appeared in the olympics three times from 1984 to 1992. so equipped with these and a bunch of other silly olympic events i finally decided it's time to pit the two of them against each other in a video tribute to the mario and sonic at the olympic games franchise the little series that could not to see who's the better athlete but to see who has the best chance at taking home the gold in the olympics most forgotten and most bizarre categories first off since i teased it we gotta go back to that solo synchronized swimming the idea of sonic swimming at all is probably something that will get a few eyebrow raises from people considering his history because sonic and swimming don't exactly play nice together oh sure he has no problem moving around underwater which is how we have that iconic anxiety-inducing warning sound to let you know when he's about to run out of oxygen [Music] but in these levels sonic isn't actually swimming in these levels his body just sinks to the bottom making the underwater levels basically just normal ones with slightly sluggish controls sonic as originally conceived cannot swim this came to light in an interview with yuji naka famous as the former head of the sonic team who shared the following through a translator quote he assumed that hedgehogs can't swim so that's why he made it that sonic can't swim but then recently he saw a photograph in germany of a hedgehog swimming so that isn't quite accurate and quote in fact real hedgehogs are actually great swimmers according to bbc earth a hedgehog can swim as much as two kilometers in a single night night not day because they're also nocturnal creatures so when it comes to the fundamentals like being able to float to the surface so as not to drown at the bottom of labyrinth zone his swimming skills seem to be lacking maybe that's why in the mario and sonic at the olympic games series we see him wearing a life vest for the swimming events here he is in the latest game zoom in on him poised at the starting position and you can clearly see that he's wearing a blue life jacket apparently he needs to wear one in order to make himself buoyant enough to stay above the surface good job game designers great attention to detail also just look at sonic's atrocious swimming technique he isn't even swimming so much as treading water forward compare that to mario in the same game who swims like a proper freestyle swimmer in terms of speed the two are roughly even for game balance reasons but when it comes to an event like solo synchronized swimming where contestants are judged based on form and choreography something tells me that sonic's life jacket assisted performance isn't gonna be impressing any judges i'm gonna have to give this one to mario he's no michael phelps but it's not gonna take very much to beat the hedgehog in a life vest here's an aquatic olympic event that sonic might fare better at motorboats or water motorsports or powerboating depending on which 1908 newspaper you're reading look this event only happened once barely a decade after the invention of radio and apparently they weren't issuing standardized press releases so the reported naming of the event isn't consistent what is consistent from the reporting is that this event was a complete and utter disaster apparently there were three races all of which involved racing an eight nautical mile course and in each race only a single boat managed to cross the finish line due to strong winds that were disrupting the competition and i can get winds disrupting i don't know a sailing competition but this was a motorboat event i guess boat engines that can overcome strong winds are an invention that came later in the 20th century unfortunately for the motorboat operators at the 1908 london olympics so between mario and sonic i'm gonna have to crown the victor here based on who seems like they have more experience with water motor sports and i think i have to give this one to sonic considering that the only memorable thing about sonic rush adventure for ds was the boating mini games the game's opening cinematic clearly shows sonic confidently piloting a motorized watercraft mario just doesn't seem to have that kind of experience on the water when we do see him on a boat it's usually with someone else ferrying him like the guy in super mario sunshine who charges you 10 coins for a trip to the airstrip sure mario might have some experience with row boating from all those mario party minigames but row boating and powerboating are very different all evidence points to sonic being the more experienced and advantaged competitor when it comes to sports on water when it comes to motor sports on land though it's going to be a different story both of these guys have racing games of course mario has mario kart and sonic with the all-stars racing transformed and more recent team sonic racing games and yes this is relevant because land motorsports were featured in the olympics once in 1900 if you read up on the history of the event it seems more like an exhibition of each nation's most impressive cars and remember this was back in 1900 eight years before henry ford introduced the world to the model t when simply getting a combustion engine vehicle to move was an impressive feat still have to imagine that if motorsports were part of the olympics today they'd be using more contemporary technology and that means probably faster than the kart racing that we see in mario kart we know from the mario kart games that the most skill testing competition that his pals engage with use 200cc engines and that means they ain't going too fast a 200cc four-stroke engine will hit a max speed of around 75 miles per hour or 121 kilometers an hour while 200cc two-stroke engines which have higher power but less fuel efficiency fare a bit better at around 120 miles an hour or 193 kilometers an hour and mind you this is talking max speed all of it pales in comparison to most real world motorsports even nascar which features stock car racing in other words cars that at least kind of resemble a typical sedan that you or i might drive has the drivers hitting average speeds of around 165 miles an hour that's 265 kilometers an hour and the top top drivers are averaging out over 200 mph or 322 kilometers an hour in other words if mario's behind the wheel and wants to hit the speeds it would take to win a motorsports competition he's dealing with much higher speeds than he's used to but would sonic fare any better behind the wheel i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say yeah unlike mario he's not just kart racing sonic is actually driving larger vehicles that resemble the form and shape of the stock cars that you'd see in competitions like nascar bigger vehicle means bigger engine and bigger engine means higher speed so automatically it seems like sonic has more experience racing with faster cars mario is by no means a bad driver but again i'm gonna have to give the advantage here to sonic putting the blue blur ahead at two to one but enough about motorsports be they land or on water it's time to get back to what the olympics are really about physical performance while still sticking to our prompt about choosing the weirdest ones friends may i introduce you to the sport of club swinging nope that's not an activity for friday nights when you feel like hitting the town it's exactly what it sounds like an event that involves swinging a club around your body and then what you might ask throwing the club for distance slamming the club down with as much force as possible nope the entire point is the swinging the competitors are judged largely based on the style they exhibit while swinging the clubs can we please start a petition to bring back club swinging into the modern olympics in the internet age club swinging would be like the top tier sport it would rank up there with ping pong hashtag justice for club swingers club swinging apparently was a form of exercise with origins in india but it wasn't until the indian club made its way to europe that it got turned into a competition anyway what i want to know is who would make the better club swinger mario or sonic well we already know that sonic has what it takes to swing a baseball bat hard and accurately enough to hit a home run including one in the recent movie that he threw himself from the pitcher's mound so he's definitely got what it takes to swing a club athletically but when i watch videos of people swinging clubs around their body sometimes weighing up to 108 pounds there's one iconic boss fight that constantly comes to mind and that is mario's encounter with bowser in super mario 64. first he has to pick up bowser by the tail an impressive feat on its own considering that king koopa probably weighs thousands of pounds then he has to swing him around by said tail and then throw him with such accuracy and finesse that bowser's big behind lands on one of the bombs scattered across the arena could sonic do the same thing if he had to probably but he's not gonna be in as much practice as mario when it comes to contests of picking up a really heavy thing and swinging it around your body in a precise and specific manner so i'm gonna have to give this one to the plumber bringing us back up to two to two for our final event today and our ultimate tiebreaker i'm gonna go with potentially the most fatal of all olympic events pistol dueling yep the same sport whose lethality i'm reminded of every time i look at a 10 bill and see alexander hamilton's face though usually when i do that i'm thinking something more like wow this guy doesn't look like lin-manuel miranda at all anyway at the 1906 olympics competitors dressed in frock coats counted to 10 and attempted to shoot a human-shaped dummy better than their opponents is it just me or is there something really weird about making this a competitive sport like they didn't even try to abstract it by shooting at a bullseye or anything they actually dressed the dummies up with frock coats to look more like a real person knowing what this olympic sport is based on really amps up the stakes for winning the gold doesn't it anyway this is one area where i feel like both mario and sonic aren't gonna have that much experience for reasons that might be obvious nintendo and sega have both been reluctant over the years to have their family friendly mascot characters wield guns that being said if you've watched sonic videos on this channel for long enough you might know one of my favorite places to turn to for uh unconventional sonic lore the archie comics where it should come as no surprise that we see sonic actually using real firearms and while they're certainly not his preferred method of problem solving when we do see him use them he seems to be perfectly accurate one shot always seems to be enough to do the job mario in contrast has zero firearms experience even though in the original super mario brothers mario actually did have a gun in early prototypes in an interview with famitsu magazine translated by one up shigeru miyamoto revealed that quote during much of development the controls were a for shoot bullets b to dash and up on the control pad to jump obviously mario's gun didn't survive the development process and was eventually replaced with the fireballs that we now know and love anyway all of this means that sonic has way more firearm practice than poor mario who's never had the chance to use a gun at least that's what i would be saying if it weren't for the fever dream that was 2017's mario plus rabbids kingdom battle an x-com inspired tactical combat game made by ubisoft get in its sequel next year i had to look this thing up just to remind myself that it's a real game that does in fact exist i still have trouble believing on some level that nintendo signed off on it because in it yeah mario has himself a gun for an arm so does this mean that mario could actually go toe-to-toe with sonic in a shooting competition i'm gonna say absolutely yes you see usually in x-com style games which is all about tactically maneuvering characters around a battlefield to execute attacks the designers work in accuracy stats and the chance to miss shots mario plus rabbids though ignored that mario will never miss the shots he takes with his arm cannon anytime he has direct line of sight to the enemy and there isn't anything blocking the shot which are the conditions that you'd expect from the olympic event of dueling he's right on target and that's in actual combat when he's surrounded by enemies his accuracy would only get better when he's just standing there as part of an olympic event looking straight on at a non-moving target so yeah against all odds sonic and mario despite both being characters that you'd expect to have zero aptitude for guns actually seem to have incredible aptitude for hitting targets with guns when they need to maybe the fact that sonic has more experience with pistols that resemble what would be used in an actual duel puts them at an advantage but i don't think there's an easy way to settle this i know this might sound like the ultimate cop-out but i really can't call it which means that we need to go into extra rounds more wacky events more zany forgotten facts about these characters our olympic battle will continue in a couple weeks who's gonna take home the gold well it's gonna come down to other strange events like horse dancing hot air balloons and town planning all that more in a future episode time to the closing ceremonies of the olympic games in the meantime let me know who you think's gonna win down in the comments below make sure you subscribe so you don't miss this episode's finale and most importantly of all remember it's all just a theory a game theory thanks for watching and thank you geico for sponsoring this episode i don't know how they'd score in a solo synchronized swimming routine but i do know that their customer service has a 97 satisfaction rating which let me tell you someone who's been dealing with a lot of people who are very bad at their jobs recently is absolutely something to brag about i'm not just saying that because it's a bullet point on their brand guideline sheet i'm actually one of their cases we unfortunately got into a minor accident last year and had to deal with an auto claim as you might imagine accidents are stressful the process is confusing you gotta get repairs all that nonsense well with geico i can honestly say that the insurance part was actually the least stressful i 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Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 1,757,926

Rating: 4.8592081 out of 5

Keywords: mario, sonic, mario & sonic at the olympic games, olympics, olympics 2020, olympics 2021, tokyo 2021, tokyo olympics, mario sonic olympics, luigi, super mario, mario & sonic at the tokyo 2020 olympic games, mario and sonic at the olympic games, mario and sonic at the tokyo 2020 olympic games, super mario odyssey, sonic the hedgehog, nintendo, nintendo switch, nintendo direct, switch, mario kart, mario golf super rush, mario golf, game theorists, game theory, matpat

Id: T1y0C-xMy8E

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021

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[u/Boo3Berry]

I don’t know if anyone has already thought of this or if team theorists will see this but I think this could help with Mario’s case for the city planning event.

The more obscure Nintendo mobile game “Super Mario Run” provides some evidence of Mario having to rebuild a town after bowser destroys it in the opening cutscene. Plus, the “Super Mario Maker” games probably will provide Mario a clear edge as in the second he helps rebuild Peach’s castle.

I don’t know enough about sonic lore to know if he has anything to beat Mario.

[u/Yessym]

Really bothered by the fact that Mario didnt win in dueling considering in Mario Party 2 theres a duel minigame on the western board