The main story mode of this one – Road to Rio – is absolutely awful. It’s all about grinding stats by playing “training” games as your Mii instead of the main sports. These training events aren’t even original, they’re taken from the 3DS London Olympics game, although I do like the admission that the events in that game aren’t proper events. It makes the mode very tedious.

Luckily, the individual events are much better, with this version being a lot more enjoyable than the Wii U version. It had 14 events and each one has a “plus” version, which is essentially the dream variant.

Golf is a particular highlight. The main mode is a very good gold game, using the 3DS touch pad to hit the ball. The plus version adds lots of fun obstacles and features, such as ? blocks, ramps and boost pads. It’s an extremely fun mode. I would have loved to see this turned into its own game with more courses and it may by my favourite event in any of the Olympic games so far.

The rest are all pretty good, some utilising the touchpad (like Javelin) and some using the buttons. Archery uses the gyro really well. There’s nothing overly annoying such as blowing into the microphone, so it created a nice variety of events. The plus versions are a lot of fun, except for Boxing which just made it much worse. Volleyball has an interesting bingo mechanic, while Long Jump adds a spring which you have to use as a right angle.

While the main story is quite bad, the events more than make up for it, especially golf.

The second to last Mario and Sonic Olympic game I need to complete for this marathon, this one is pretty polorizing for me. It’s DEFENITLY a step up from London 2012 on 3DS, but it still borrows so many of the minigames, just reskinned. First, some things I like about this game. I like that the events that aren't copies from London 2012 aren't as shallow as the former and pointless. I like most of the plus events better than most of London 2012’s dream events. I think Golf is a CRAZY good addition to this game. It’s basically a full game in and of itself, and to top that off, these are legit the same exact courses that were used in the real Rio games. So they will always be preserved in video game form which is so cool. I LOVE the idea of Pocket Marathon and wish more games did stuff like this. I can tell you now, as someone who still carries his 3DS everywhere to use it as a pedometer (and hope the lone person in 2021 will streetpass with me), I will definitely be booting this game up from time to time, to unload my steps into pocket marathon. Now the bad. Road to Rio is super boring and grindy. Not as bad as London 2012’s story mode, but thats an insanely low bar. The dialogue is just so robotic and not fun to read, and the structure was really getting on my nerves. I beat the Mario storyline and decided to get the Sonic ending as well, but by day 5 I got stuck on Javelin with Wario for like 30 minutes until I just got so fed up and quit. I really don't feel like grinding the gyms and events just to get passed a second ending for this games story mode. Like I said earlier, all the events are lesser versions of the Wii U counterpart (except Golf). Another problem I have is the fact that you mainly only play as your Mii if your playing story mode. This is an issue with the Wii U version too, I dont want to play a Mii in a Mario and Sonic game. Overall, not as bad as London 2012 because of its redeeming quality in Golf and Pocket Marathon. But the superior handheld only Mario and Sonic Game is definitely 2008, which was basically a high effort port of the Wii game.