Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Wii Impressions

We're no stranger to athletic competition between hedgehogs and plumbers. Our hands/tush-on preview gave you a glimpse of alpine skiing and bobsledding, while our latest demo gave us the scoop on figure skating, ice hockey, and dream ski cross. It also revealed two new playable characters: Donkey Kong and Metal Sonic.

The first event we saw, figure skating, is a on-rails rhythm game in which your chosen character (in our demo, it was Mario) glides around the ice on a predetermined route. Your character will approach colored circles and have to match the prompted remote motion. You can also shake the remote in time with the music, and your character will perform flourish and dance maneuvers along his or her normal route. You enter tight spins by twirling the remote like a lasso, and when you're gliding across the ice on one foot, you'll have to balance while holding the remote upright.

Ice Hockey looked a bit like a toned-down Mario Super Strikers. Four characters take the ice for each match, and up to four human players can join the action. There are no power-ups or super shots, but the more you pass the puck, the more charged up it will get. Firing a charged puck gives you a significantly better shot.

The final event we saw was Dream Ski Cross, which looked a lot like Mario Kart on skis. This was confirmed by Sega, who said that the course we were seeing actually took many design elements from the Mario Circuit course. Sure enough, there were glowing item boxes, boost pads, and sweet jumps aplenty. Holding the remote and Nunchuk parallel, players point them left and right to control their skis. Swinging them down will give you a slight boost, and waving them around midair will allow you to perform tricks that will, in turn, grant you a speed boost when you hit the ground. On larger jumps, shapes will appear onscreen, and if you trace them in the air with your remote, you'll get an even bigger boost. There are also coins scattered about the slopes, and if you collect five of them, you can unleash your characters special move (a boost move that will knock over any enemies you hit).

Dream Ski Cross looked like the most fun event, drawing as it does on some of the core elements of Mario Kart. Figure skating also looked surprisingly amusing, and many of the events also featured Balance Board support. Every event in the game can be played multiplayer, so folks looking for some diverse competition can look forward to Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games when it's released this October.