Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for the Nintendo 3DS

Review by J, aged 11:

On Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games there are four different modes. Road to Rio, Quick play, Versus mode and Pocket marathon. 'Road to Rio' is the story mode, where you choose to play for team Mario or team Sonic and compete to win gold medals. In 'Quick play', you can play the Olympic events. In 'Pocket marathon', you have to walk with the Nintendo 3DS. Every step that you do turns into an in-game metre. You can earn rewards from walking certain amounts of steps. In 'Versus mode' you can with your friends in local play or download play.

My favourite events to play in quick play mode are football, 100m sprint and rhythmic gymnastics. The plus events are the same events but played a bit differently to normal events. My favourite plus events are BMX, where you have to avoid the goombas and collect rings, and archery, where you have to hit the moving targets that the boos are holding.

In 'Road to Rio' mode, you train for the events doing different training exercises, and can level up by training to increase the amount of clothes that you can wear. Different clothes help your mii in different ways. They can increase or decrease the amount of speed, power, skill and stamina. You can wear different clothes for different events. For example, in the 100m sprint, you would wear clothes that increase your speed. You choose whether to play for team Mario or team Sonic. Then you collect gold medals in the events for your team. You can buy clothes and gear using apples and melons.

In the 'pocket marathon' mode, you put your Nintendo 3DS into sleep mode and walk with it in your pocket. Every step that you do turns into an in game metre. There are three courses to run. The first course is 10,000 steps, the second course is 20,000 steps, and the third course is 42,195 steps. You can get rewards for walking a lot. One day, I walked over 22,000 steps with the Nintendo 3DS just for the pocket marathon!

In 'versus mode' you can play in local play with others that have the game, or play in download play, with others that don't have the game. You can play all the events in 'Quick play', including the plus events. You can get achievements for doing certain things in Quick play, Pocket marathon, Road to Rio, or Versus mode. You can get rewards for completing certain amounts of achievements.

This is a game that I absolutely love. My favourite things to do on it are football, rhythmic gymnastics (it's so funny watching my mii do it), BMX and Pocket marathon.

I think it is so cool that the game is named after the Olympics that are actually coming up this year and it makes me really excited about the real Olympics too. I think I will always love this game more than the real Olympics though.

Find out more about Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games here.  It is available for the Nintendo 3DS family systems (making it also compatible with the Nintendo 2DS) and is rated PEGI 7.

Disclosure: As Nintendo Family Bloggers, we received a download code for this game for the purposes of review.