SEGA and the International Olympic Committee have today announced that they are teaming up on a new "co-branded merchandising programme" featuring none other than Sonic the Hedgehog.
The multi-year deal will see the blue blur cropping up alongside the Olympic rings in a whole range of merch planned for release next year. According to the official announcement, SEGA and the IOC will now "explore opportunities to license the new designs for select merchandise collaborations", and we got the following first look at the 'Five Rings' collaboration to boot.
To be clear, the only specific that we've got so far is that the collaboration will feature merchandise. Importantly, that's not games. But come on, you know where everyone's mind went...
The collab announcements on the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter and BlueSky accounts have been awash with replies hopeful of an 'at the Olympic Games' comeback. Of course, Nintendo — and therefore, Mario — doesn't appear to be on board yet, but let's not pretend that Sonic hasn't had solo Olympic adventures in the past too.
The last we heard, the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series was dead in the water after the IOC apparently chose to end its partnership with Nintendo and SEGA to focus on NFTs and esports. That was according to series veteran Lee Cocker, who, after working on each entry in the franchise, claimed that it was "finished" after the Tokyo 2020 instalment.
Whether the series actually returns or not remains to be seen, but at least the IOC and SEGA are back on speaking terms. We'll be keeping an eye out over the coming year for more information.