One is a portly plumber with a habit of bashing his head against bricks to flush out growth-inducing mushrooms, the other a diminutive blue hedgehog who wears spotless white gloves.

The International Olympic Committee has decided, however, that the pair make ideal ambassadors for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and has paved the way for their first outing together.

Mario’s trademark moustache and blue overalls first appeared on Nintendo screens in 1981 and have helped to make him perhaps the iconic character in video gaming.

He was conceived in an earlier game, Donkey Kong, but soon earned his own franchise and spends his days journeying through fantasy lands in search of treasures, which he discovers by jumping up and smashing his head into passing ceilings.

Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega’s creation, is known principally for his ability to travel at supersonic speeds. He and his friends Tails, a two-tailed fox, and Knuckles, “the last living echidna”, are charged with saving the world from Dr Eggman, a genius with an orange moustache who hopes to establish an evil empire with this robots.

Along the way they meet, among other cohorts, Cream, a naïve young rabbit who lives with her mother, Vanilla, and Rouge the Bat, who is Knuckles’s great rival but secretly fancies him. The Sonic brand now extends to two television series, comic books and a film.

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