A demo for Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games is now available in North America, giving gamers a taste of the game before its February 14 release. The demo contains a quick, five-round medley featuring five different events. Here's a rundown:

1. 25m Rapid Fire Pistol - In this event, the cursor slowly moves across five targets and you have to attempt to hit the center with your five shots by timing presses of the R button. The cursor moves faster as you progress through the event's three rounds. Overall, this is awful. It's not fun and it just feels twitchy. It's like they took the concept of archery and decided to make it not fun.
2. Football (aka Soccer) - Sort of like how the previous event ruins archery-style games, this ruins soccer games, but it's less egregious. You prepare for oncoming passes by holding back the Circle Pad and moving it so you can aim your shot. As the pass comes in, you go forward with the Circle Pad to try to score a goal. It's as simple as that. Sometimes the goalie moves. Sometimes there are two goalies.
3. Trampoline - Presented from a top-down perspective, the goal is to press the A button at the right time jump off of a trampoline, and then navigate your character back to center with the Circle Pad. It's sort of fun, though I have no urge to ever play it again.
4. 100m Backstroke - The only stylus-driven game in the batch is confusing. You have to draw a circle on the touch screen to match the one displayed on the top screen. It would make way too much sense to display that circle on the touch screen, so for some reason it's not there. Thus, this is just a frustrating mini-game, as it requires you to be very quick and deliberate in drawing a circle in the same manner as it is done on the top screen.
5. BMX - They saved the best for last in this demo, as BMX just feels like 3D Excitebike (potentially like Excitebike 3D, but I never played that). The Circle Pad controls your bike, and the A button propels you off of ramps. While in the air, you have to tilt the 3DS with hopes of getting your bike to be horizontal when you land. If you do that, you get a boost. It's not too fancy, but it's fun.