Original Release: Konami, 2000, Game Boy Color
Konami retains the old Track & Field 2D gameplay, but expands it just a bit with a minor “career mode” of sorts
ESPN International Track & Field (GBC, Konami, 2000)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
I checked this one out because this humble Game Boy cart reportedly had some sort of “life management”/dating sim tucked into it, in the general manner of Konami’s “Powerful Pro” baseball games of later years … good luck ever uncovering it, though, between the poorly-explained and fussy event controls and the insane CPU competition. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people quit playing this well before they even found out about it!
So this is another entry in Konami’s long-running Track & Field series, with the same core gameplay as seen since it debuted with its 70s pornstache athletes back in the early 80s. In this case it’s got 11 events in total, that play out quickly with simplified (though definitely not easy!) controls. There’s some naming confusion with this one, though; first of all it’s actually part of the passel of “International Track & Field 2000” releases that came out around the millenium, and then for whatever reason this GBC edition was the only one of the crop that ESPN struck up some sort of licensing deal to put their name on.
Forget the ESPN thing, though, it means absolutely nothing and adds nothing to the game … I don’t think they even got their logo in their beyond the title screen, it was just like paying for stadium naming rights or something. You’ll also find very sparse gameplay options, at least in this edition. “Trial” each of the events to practice, go for the gold in the “Championship” mode, or uh … well that’s actually it.
I assume the life management stuff is buried in Championship mode, but good luck making it there. When you start it up, you choose a 3-letter name and then you’re launched into a series of events. You get instructions for the basic button functions before each match, but these don’t convey some of the nuances you need for the more complex ones like the high jump and the pole vault. And with the simpler ones, like the dash where you just pound the two buttons fast, the CPU opposition is absolutely insane to the point I’m not even sure you could beat some of them with auto-fire! I think you have to survive this first series to get to the “career”/sim stuff, but from watching a video about it on Youtube it looks simplistic and stupid anyway.
It has some polish and at least a little promise, it looks pretty good for a GBC title, but ultimately kind of an overbearing turd of a game that will just break your controller.
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