Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games

There's also a boutique where you can buy clothes for your Mii - everything from woolly mittens and ski helmets to Halloween costumes and Santa hats. There are also some very cute unlockable cosplay-style outfits for those who fancy dressing up as Mario, Sonic and their chums.

But never mind all that, the real reason you'll want to play through the Festival is to unlock the Dream Events. As with the first game, these are real treats for SEGA and Nintendo fans but also offer great fun for casual players. Happily, there are many more of them this time round.

Favourites include Dream Alpine, where you ski round a Green Hill Zone-inspired track complete with loop-the-loops, turbo boosts, rolling boulders, prize boxes and rubber band AI. Dream Ski Cross is a similar affair except the track is a homage to the Mario Circuit - all white picket fences, big grey castles, blue skies, gold coins and giant koopas.

Dream Bobsleigh takes you on a psychedelic journey through 360 degrees of tripped-out tunnels. The tracks appear to be inspired by Dr Who, Seaquest DSV and those plastic ball ponds you find in Wacky Warehouses, with a heavy emphasis on the colour purple. It's not quite up to the eye-scalding standards of Rainbow Road, but the laws about epilepsy safety have changed in recent years.

Let's not spoil all the treats in store, suffice to say it's worth playing through the entire Festival mode just to unlock Dream Figure Skating. The Super Mario World tribute is brilliant - cute, hilarious and so camp it makes Dancing on Ice look dour and intellectual.

There are plenty more examples of attempts to appeal to veteran gamers in MSOWG. It's not just about Amy Rose outfits or red shells, either - even the regular events feel more like proper games than those in the previous Mario & Sonic. There's a lot less random arm-waggling and more of a sense that you have real control over the characters and the outcome of events. It is a real shame there's no MotionPlus functionality, though, because throwing that in might have pushed this to the next level and made it a more addictive, challenging, staying-up-till-4am-on-your-own-on-a-Tuesday affair, rather than a fun party game.

But sometimes all you want is a fun party game. My Mum's never going to get the hang of Mario Kart; she can't be doing with all that old-fangled button pressing and power-up collecting. However, she can handle twisting a remote to steer a hedgehog down a mountain. And when she's gone off to take the turkey out of the oven, my brother and I can remind ourselves how much fun NHL '91 was before having a huge row over a game of curling. In this regard, SEGA has done a great job of appealing to a wide audience.

They've also done a great job of producing a polished, impressive-looking game for the Wii. Environments are a lot prettier than the first game. This is due partly to the fact it's set in Vancouver and not Beijing - there aren't so many giant metal girders everywhere and the whole game basically looks like one big ice level. Very festive. But neat touches, like the picture-perfect reflections in the ice, show that real care and attention has been taken with the visuals.

There's no doubt MSOWG improves on the first Mario & Sonic in many other respects too. The unlocking system is better designed. The story mode is more fun. The Dream Events are more imaginative and there are more of them. With few exceptions, the mini-games are accessible enough for everyone to play yet complex enough to be worth more than a couple of goes. And you don't get to say that about Wii mini-game compilations often.