SEGA, the gaming company responsible for the gaming characters like Mario and Sonic, announced today the release date and the first details about Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.

This is the first title to feature both iconic gaming mascots, Mario and Sonic and it will be released for Wii and Nintendo DS on November 23. The game was announced in March this year.

Sonic The Hedgehog is one of the most popular videogame icons of all time with over 44 million games sold worldwide while Mario games alone have sold more than 193 million worldwide.

Published by SEGA across Europe and North America, and published by Nintendo in the Japanese market, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is licensed through a worldwide partnership with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), the exclusive interactive entertainment software licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

According to SEGA, players will compete in events that take place in environments based on the official venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

SEGA revealed that the players will compete as one of 16 characters - 8 from the world of Mario and 8 from the world of Sonic. Also the company announced the complete list of events available in game:

Fencing - Individual epée
Archery
Shooting - Skeet
Gymnastics - Trampoline
Gymnastics - Vault
Field - High Jump
Field - Pole Vault
Field - Long Jump
Field - Triple Jump
Field - Javelin Throw
Field - Hammer Throw
Rowing - Single Sculls
Table Tennis - Singles
Aquatics - 100m Freestyle
Aquatics - 4x100m Freestyle
Track - 110m and 400m Hurdles
Track - 4x100m Relay

Also SEGA said that the games offer four playing styles to choose from and players can decide their game strategy: all-around, technical, speed, and power - for example: Mario and Amy (All-around), Peach and Tails (Technical), Sonic and Yoshi (Speed), and Knuckles and Bowser (Power). Players will be able to choose and try out, in both single and multiplayer mode, each event individually with Single Match mode (where players can choose their event and play until they score top marks).

They can also compete for the highest overall score in a series of events in Circuit mode (where players can create their own circuit by choosing the individual events, choose a pre-determined circuit, or randomly generate a circuit).

At Tokyo Game Show 2007, Sega predicted that their upcoming title, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, will sell 4 million units, Bloomberg reported.

The ambitious goal was announced by Masanao Maeda, a corporate director at Sega's game software division, but he declined to give a specific time period for the sales target.