Sega: Don't expect a Mario-Sonic crossover outside Olympics

That laughing, smiling, and enjoying each others' company during the Olympics? Just a farce. A contractual obligation. Once all the medal winning and probable steroid usage has died down, Mario and Sonic go their separate ways. That's just the way things are, and according to Sega's Takashi Iizuka, they're not likely to change.

"It took a huge event like the Olympics to make it possible to bring Mario and Sonic together," Iizuka told Nintendo Power (via GoNintendo). "While I'm personally interested in bringing various characters together for a crossover game outside of the framework of a sporting event, I don't think we'll be seeing Mario and Sonic costarring in a game outside of the Olympics."

Plumbers and blue hedgehogs not working together? As usual, we blame racism. Also of note: Iizuka gave some insight into Sonic Generations' development process, revealing - among other things - that the game was originally slated for release on Wii.

"The primary goal for the console versions of Generations was re-imagining the series' classic zones in vivid, high-definition graphics," he explained. "The Wii hardware wasn't a good fit for that concept, so we abandoned development on that, and decided that for our Nintendo audience, we would make a fresh start with a N3DS version of Generations."

A mild disappointment, seeing as Sonic Colors actually didn't make us contemplate an incredibly elaborate attack on Sega HQ. Oh well. What could have been, etc.