Hyper Olympic

Port

Track & Field is an Olympic-themed arcade game. The simple gameplay, based on quick repeating button presses, set the basics for sequels and similar games in the genre for the next decades.

Released: 27 October 1983
Platforms: Arcade Atari 2600 Commodore 64 Game Boy MSX NES Nintendo DS ZX Spectrum
Genres: Arcade Athletic Sports
Developers: Konami
Publishers: Konami
Series: Track & Field
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric Side view
Themes: Non-fiction
Country: Japan
Age ratings: ESRB E
Languages: English
Time to beat: 1hwith extras

About

Track & Field (also known as Hyper Olympic in Japan and Europe) is a 1983 sports video game developed and published by Konami for arcades. The Japanese release featured an official license for the 1984 Summer Olympics. In Europe, the game was initially released under the Japanese title Hyper Olympic in 1983, before being re-released under the US title Track & Field in early 1984. Centuri released the game in North America.

Players compete in a series of events, most involving alternately pressing two buttons as quickly as possible to make the onscreen character run faster. The game uses a horizontal side-scrolling format, displaying one or two tracks at a time, a large scoreboard that shows world records and current attempts, and a packed audience in the background.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In the original arcade game, the player uses two "run" buttons (or a trackball in later units that replaced buttons damaged from overuse) and one "action" button to control an athlete competing in the following six events:

100 meter dash – running by quickly alternating button presses.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Hyper Olympic as the top-grossing new table arcade cabinet of December 1983, and it remained the top-grossing table cabinet in January 1984. The game sold 38,000 arcade hardware units in Japan by the end of 1983. Track & Field was also a hit in North America. Despite requiring physical interaction from players, the game continued to enjoy success in North America throughout the first half of 1984.

It topped the US RePlay upright arcade cabinet charts in February and May 1984, and was the top-grossing arcade game of June 1984. It went on to become the third highest-grossing arcade game of 1984 in the United States. In Europe, it was the highest-grossing arcade game of 1984 in the United Kingdom.

Legacy

While not the first Olympic track-and-field game (it was preceded by Olympic Decathlon in 1980 and Activision Decathlon in August 1983), Track & Field spawned other similar Olympic video games following its release. For example, Ocean Software developed a licensed adaptation for home computers titled Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984). Epyx released its own multi-event collection with Summer Games and subsequently Summer Games II. Dinamic published Video Olimpic for the ZX Spectrum in 1984. Bandai's entry was Stadium Events for the NES in 1986.

Track & Field had a significant impact on the broader sports video game genre, leading to a resurgence of sports games in arcades during the 1980s. Following the release of Track & Field, the arcade industry began producing sports games at levels not seen since the days of Pong and its clones nearly a decade earlier. Sports video games became increasingly popular after Track & Field, with several successful arcade titles released in 1984, including Nintendo's boxing game Punch-Out, the Nintendo VS. System titles Vs.