Original Release: Konami, Arcade, 1983
Other Releases: Atari 2600 (1984), Spectrum / Amstrad (1988), Game Boy (1992), DS (in Konami Classics Series – 2007), Xbox 360 (2007)
Konami’s early arcade approximation of Olympic games centers on beating the absolute hell out of controllers.
Track & Field (Arcade, Konami, 1983)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Track & Field was a cute and visually impressive title for 1983, but its simplistic button-mashing action has really aged poorly (especially with today’s tendency to not-so-well-made controllers). There isn’t really much reason to go back and visit with its pornstache athletes.
The game has surprisingly interesting lore, though. It was the first arcade game to heavily feature repetitive button-pounding as the main gameplay mechanic, and thus spawned all kinds of interesting techniques for gaming the system. But this was also pre-internet or any comparable form of communication, so depending on where you were you would encounter different local traditions that some inventive kid had cooked up: placing a comb or pen over the buttons balanced on your fingers and just tapping one side of it, sliding various objects across the buttons, etc … many of these techniques would go on to be used in many other games, some are even still used today in competitive Tetris and other modern applications.
And forget Street Fighter 2, this game actually holds the world record for largest single tournament; it drew literally a million players in the summer of 1984 (across assorted arcades and Stop-N-Gos throughout the world), with the American finalists eventually flown to Tokyo to take on the Japanese champs. Some kid on the American side developed some gangster button-rolling technique that was so good the Japanese team protested the outcome.
And while it’s not something really worth going back to today, it did have a far-reaching legacy in gaming. The flare-up of popularity in the early ’80s sparked a revival of the flagging sports game genre, which had been suffering from too many samey baseball and basketball games and Pong knockoffs that weren’t very good. You can also thank it for joke game QWOP, if you’re into that.
Videos
Gameplay Video
Cabinet restoration
Track and Field (Atari 2600, Konami, 1984)
Where to Buy: eBay
Review by: C. M0use
Track and Field is about as graphically and aurally impressive as an arcade port on the 2600 can be, but it gets low marks due to having a dumb control scheme likely to break a joystick or three (waggle the stick rapidly left and right to run rather than tapping buttons), and due to the fact that the computer trolls you by running slow for the first 3/4 of the race then getting some ridiculous speed burst to win at the very end most of the time.
Almost a really impressive port, but they forgot to put as much effort into the gameplay as they did the graphics and sound. Originally came packed with a special three-button controller but they’re pretty pricey on the secondhand market now.
Links
Videos