I thought more people knew that it was the last one, but I think it was more that I was in that bubble when I knew what had happened. My name's Lee Cocker. I was executive producer on Mary-Ann Sonic at the Olympic Games franchise. I had multiple roles during 17 years, 18 years from the initial concept from the first game, which was Marion Sonic, Beijing. I all the way to the very last game, which was Mario and Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

First question is, who is your favorite character?

It's like asking your favorite child, but I was very lucky. I grew up as a massive Sonic fan. I had the Game Gear and I played Sonic to death on the game gear. Then I got my SEGA Mega Drive and played Sonic 2 to death and was a big Sonic fan. And when When I took on this role, I had to be impartial after that. But Sonic's always been my favorite video game character.

I suppose you don't have to be impartial anymore.

Yeah, I'm saying that now, but when I took on the role and I couldn't really say, Oh, yeah, I prefer Sonic over Mario, I had to be biased. Was there really that you can't pick?

That's quite interesting. Was it actually you couldn't Because I guess you meet all the creators and stuff like that. So you got to be a bit...

Yeah, and also presenting. And obviously, I had to... I was very lucky I got to travel the world. I had to present to the Olympic Committee and show that there was a balance of the characters and the range of characters and stuff like that. So I had to be fully knowledgeable and also in terms of approvals and what we had in the game and what characters were in the game and knowing a lot about each universe and additional characters, bullet bill and stuff like that. I had to have a greater knowledge of both the Mario universe and the Sonic universe.

For a lot of our audience, they probably finished school. They went on the wee with their parents, carers, and played it. How did that partnership between the Olympics and Sonic and Mario come to Because they don't... I suppose they both run a lot. Well, Sonic definitely does.

From my memory, way, way, way back, I think it was about 2006, 2007, the company I worked for had the Olympic license to do anything with video games and mobile games. So it's what we call entertainment software. And the initial idea was going to have Sonic at the Olympics. And then someone said, Oh, there's someone at Nintendo. There's a possibility of doing Maryanne Sonic at the Olympics. And me as a person that grew up with the console wars and the 16 bit wars, I was like, That's never going to happen. And the progress and the talks got more and more. And then there was concept art, there was pencil sketches of Maryanne Sonic playing football. And then part of my involvement and how I got involved in the games was, how do you make the games more Olympic? And my son, who was quite young at the time, was playing a game, and I saw him reading what was on the loading screen of a game, and I was like, Oh, that grabs the attention. So I said, Oh, would it be good to have Olympic trivia? And I did some mockups with Sonic and Mario with speech bubbles.

Did you know Tug of War used to be an Olympic event? And my boss liked it. We presented it to the IDOC. The IDOC liked it. Nintendo and SEGA liked it. It was educating kids through the about the Olympics through the video game characters. And that's how I got involved from the initial thing. And then it just became a thing. And I had to keep it secret for ages and was waiting for the first trailer to drop on that.

And it went huge. I think it's sometimes quite hard to remember just how big... Every family, most families, I know not everyone is into sports, but most families probably had copy in their living room alongside their wee.

Yeah, I think I said it to you when we spoke on the phone. It was the perfect storm. It was two of the most iconic video game characters coming together at the Olympics and it was on the Wii. The Wii was the new Nintendo machine that had gestural gameplay, so it was physical gameplay. And it brought the consoles back into the living room. Everyone had their consoles in their bedrooms thing. But the Wii became the family console, and it was a perfect storm. It just people competing in the 100 meters and doing the javelin and stuff. It was the perfect storm. And that was why it went on to sell about 26 million copies.

And did it maintain those amount of sales throughout, or was it Beijing that was really the big one?

It did do well. I don't know all the exact figures and stuff, but it was always... We didn't release during the Olympics. We released usually about a year before. So there was a lot of sales leading up to that. But it was a very successful franchise. But it also depends on what concert it was on. Obviously, it went to Wii and then Wii U. And obviously, the Wii U wasn't as popular as the Wii. And then obviously, the last one being on the Nintendo Switch, which was Tokyo.

And this time round, there isn't a Sonic Mario or a console game. Is that disappointing for you? I know the license laps and all that, and people are well within their right to choose a different supplier. But a lot of people are asking, why isn't there?

Well, this is not of a shock to me. It was like, obviously, I put the tweet out and The reason why I put a tweet out to say, Tokyo was the last one. I thought more people knew that it was the last one, but I think it was more that I was in that bubble when I knew what had happened, that the license had moved on, the IDOC had taken the license and gone with another partner. So I thought it was more public knowledge, but a lot of people were asking, a lot of people were suspecting that there was going to be a Paris 2024 Mario & Sonic game. And Would I have liked to have seen a Mario and Sonic Paris game? Yes, I would have done. But I also think we book-ended it in Tokyo, the mecca of video games and the home of Mario and Sonic, you would argue. Finishing it there was really good. But what I always liked about Mario and Sonic and working on it is introducing new sports and seeing skateboarding, sports climbing, and surfing that we got into Tokyo. This time around in Paris, not many people know, but breakdancing is an Olympic sport this year.

How good would it have been to see Maryanne Sonic doing breakdancing? I think it's called breaking is the actual technical term. But seeing Balz spinning on his show or something. A lot of the new sports in my head, I see the characters. I build the game in my head. It would have been great to see. Obviously, the success of the The Sonic movie, you got Sonic 3 coming out this year, and then obviously the success of the Mario movie. It would have been great, but I understand that the license has moved on and we, as I said before, book-end it with Tokyo 2020.

Who do you think would be the best character at Breaking?

Oh, that's a good one. That's a good question. Who do you think? Shadow, any Bowser.

So you think Breaking is a bit of an evil sport?

Yeah, it would have been crazy to see some of the character animations for like, Eggman or Dr. Robotnik. That would have been long legs. That would have been crazy seeing him spin and stuff. But yeah, no, seeing what new Olympic sports that come along, it would have been great to see the characters doing the new sports. And obviously, Paris has got a lot of attention this year, and everyone's in the Olympic spirit, which is always good.

You could have even had a secret character, Snoop Dogg.

Yeah, that would have Yeah, I keep seeing him everywhere. It would have been introducing. The other thing, we always tried to add new characters, and there was always boss events and stuff like that. So it would have been good to increase the the character roster.

Yeah. And obviously they signed in 2021, which I wasn't aware of until I did my research with a mobile games company, and in particular about NFTs. Do you think it was 2021 NFTs were massive back then, but now they've died off. Do you think it was a... I don't want to call it a spear of the moment. They clearly had a business plan and stuff like that. But NFTs aren't massive anymore, really.

Yeah, it's an interesting debate. We had a feeling that the license wasn't going to be renewed after Tokyo. And my personal understanding of it was that it was going to bring... Because obviously we did a lot of the approvals ourselves as a company and approving all the assets and approving all the marketing and materials and stuff like that. Obviously, it still had to be approved by the International Olympic Committee. But they were going take it in-house and look at other partners. My money was actually going to be on Ubisoft and seeing Ubisoft doing something for Paris because obviously Ubisoft is based in Paris and something like with the rabbits and the rabbits at the Olympics, that was what my money was on. I didn't know which partner. It was only later on after I'd moved on in my career that I realized that they'd done the new deal with the mobile partner. I think they're based in San Francisco and Korea. But yeah, NFTs, I think, like you said, there's a big debate. Is it a fad? Is it another bubble that's burst or is going to burst? I think they're just looking for additional new technology.

They've announced that they're doing an esports tournament next year in 2025. They're trying to get that new audience and similar to how they use new sports like and skating, like X game stuff in the Olympics. It's trying to expand the audience and look at new technologies.

And does it boil down to money?

I do think there's an element of money because obviously, I've seen a few YouTube videos discussing since I said that Tokyo was the last one, I've seen a lot of YouTube videos. And think of it as a cake. Everyone has to ever get get a piece of the cake, the IDOC, Nintendo, SEGA. If they're doing it with another company and there's less rights, they get a bigger percentage. I do think you I would argue that the element is more money for the international Olympic Committee.

We've seen the cost of games skyrocket in recent years since, well, the economy, everyone's economy, when went to pot. Do you think that comes down to it? Because I can't imagine it being cheap to make Sonic and Mario at the games.

No. There's always games But increasingly, the increase in technology, PlayStation 5 and moving forward, the game budgets are almost bigger than moving, massively more than movie budgets. And you've got to make that money back. So again, with Mario and Sonic, it does cost a lot to make that game. So obviously, they've got to recoup that cost. But again, links to releasing early, getting the initial marketing up and then getting the initial sales. And then when the Olympics happen, it's almost like a reheat marketing campaign of the Olympic Games are on and you have that big two week period of getting massive sales because the Olympics are everywhere in the newspapers, on TV, social media. So it's that boosting in sales.

And I might be wrong, but there hasn't been that much marketing for the mobile game. Do you think it's the wrong direction of travel? Maybe you don't want to comment on that.

No, I'm happy to comment on it. And obviously, this is my own personal opinion. Obviously, when you do the app stores, when you type in Olympics, you'll You'll see the Olympic app, and usually 95% of the time you'll see whatever game is relevant. And obviously, there's a push to put the Olympic app and the Olympic, whatever mobile game is in the store. I've not seen personally, and obviously, like I said, I was in the bubble, so I knew the industry, but I've seen no marketing. I think me saying, Oh, by the way, there is a Paris mobile game and there was a Beijing one for the winter one in Me too. Not many people knew it. And again, I was quite surprised that people didn't realize that. And I was trying to inform people like, Yeah, Marion Sonic's finished and the license has moved on. And these are the two mobile games that have come out. And I've played the Paris one and it's very good. It's got some good gameplay mechanics. But again, it's on mobile phone. And again, with mobile games, it's a shorter development time and it's a smaller budget as well.

Yeah, because And I'm wary of the time. I need to go in about three minutes because someone needs to go to the studio. But Sonic and Mario went into pop culture, really. Everyone knew, and it helped the Olympics. I don't know what to say. It just went massive, didn't it? Everyone knew about it.

Yeah. I'm very pleased that I'm part of that legacy. It's a big part of my life. I got to travel the world. And seeing all the love now when I said, Tokyo in 2020 was the last one. Everyone's like, What? Really? What? I love that game. And my Twitter blew up, my social media blew up, my emails blew up. Loads of people messaging me saying, We love that game. We grew up on that game. It means a lot, and it is part of pop culture. It was incredibly iconic of these two video game characters coming together for the Olympics. That in itself meant a lot. That's what happens. It's that Olympic spirit, and that came together within a video game. There were stories of people getting into the Olympics and watching the Olympics because of Marianne Sonic. There was a story years ago about a young female fencer, and she got into fencing because she played fencing in the Marianne Sonic the Maryanne Sonic game. I think she went on to qualify for the Olympics and stuff. But it was very, very iconic. I'm very glad that people have shared that it means a lot to them and it was a big part of their childhood.