There has been a severe lack of high-quality athletics games over the past 25 years. This is a little strange considering how big the Summer Olympics are and that there have been countless successes in the past, such as Summer Games for Commodore 64, Track & Field II for NES, Olympic Gold: Barcelona '92 for Mega Drive, Athlete Kings for Sega Saturn, International Track & Field for PlayStation, and of course Virtua Athlete 2000 for Dreamcast.
The only athletics games with a reasonably large budget that have been released are the Mario & Sonic games, which unfortunately have not been as entertaining as one might have hoped, considering the two iconic companies behind the series. And the fact is that they almost didn't happen either, because Sega had the audacity to suggest on the cover of the first game (Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games) that Sonic might be faster than Mario.
This was revealed by the series' producer, Ryoichi Hasegawa, in an interview with Arcade Attack Retro Gaming Network (via Insider Gaming), where he explained that Nintendo was very upset over the fact that Sonic was a few centimetres ahead of Mario on the front of the game:
"But there was one funny story. There was, of course, artwork of Mario, Sonic, and other characters standing on the field. Those artworks were used for the package, the instruction manual cover, and the cartridge label, and things like that. There was one small error. Sonic's foot was in front of Mario's foot. Nintendo demanded us to change the priority. I still remember that. We were like, 'Oh my God! We have to change it, or there'll be no deal.'"
And so it was. Now you know why Mario appears to be a few centimetres ahead of Sonic in a race that one might think the latter would win with ease.