Marathon

Marathon is an Athletics Event that appears in the Nintendo 3DS version of Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The objective of the event is to collect differently colored water bottles to earn points, with the winner of the event being the one at the end with the most.

Gameplay
In this event, the four characters run one after another towards a table with four water bottles on it, with each character being in a different position every round. When the player's character approaches the table, a red cursor in the shape of a bottle outline appears, which moves along at the same speed as the character. When the cursor turns white, the player can press to grab the bottle, and will gain the number of points that the bottle is worth. White ones are worth one point, blue ones are worth three and rainbow colored ones are worth five. There are a total of four rounds, meaning that the player can get a maximum of 20 points. Grabbing the white and blue bottles plays the 1-UP jingle from the Super Mario games, while grabbing the rainbow bottle plays the Chaos Emerald jingle from the Sonic games.

Controls
1) Grab bottle: Press the A Button.

Medley Match
In Medley Match mode, Marathon appears as a bonus event with several adjustments to the gameplay of the event. In medleys, only a single round of the event is played, with the characters running through in the opposite order of their current overall placement for the medley, such that the fourth place player runs though first, the third place player comes second and so on. Additionally, the water bottles each have different scores, with the rainbow coloured water bottle being worth 15 points, the blue water bottle being worth 10 and the white water bottles being worth 5 points each. Marathon appears as the second event of Footrace Medley 2, Cat-like Reflex Medley and Quickie Medley, and the fourth event of the Laser Focus medley.

Story Mode
Marathon appears as part of challenge 6 in the Heroes Episode 1 Mario and Sonic, along with Pole Vault and 100m, where Sonic must beat imposters of Mario, Luigi, and Tails. It also appears as part of challenges 1 and 2 in Heroes Episode 5, The Promise to Toad, where Mario must beat imposters of Luigi, Tails, and Sonic in it as well as 100m and 100m Freestyle, and Sonic must beat imposters of Mario, Luigi, and Tails in it with Modern Pentathlon and 20km Race Walk. As in Medley Match mode, Marathon always appears as a bonus event in the medleys with the adjusted rules and point scoring system.