Thoughts by Wandrell (14 00 2012) – Olympic Games 92' – PC
Even if I’m not a fan of Olympics games, I had to give a chance to this one. After all, it is one of those game that when you played as a kid you found them fun, no matter it was from a genre you didn’t like. Maybe it’s due to Opera being behind it, a Spanish company from it’s software golden age, which knew how to make a fun game.
Before I start saying anything else, as it’s to be expected on this kind of game, most of this fun is aimed to multiplayer, with up to four players competing against each other.
Playing alone, it’s all practicing the sport categories, or playing alone the highly demanding competition mode. It’s quite harsh for a simple reason: you have to do all the sports, one after the other, trying to qualify. Manage to do that and you get a medal, fail even once and you get kicked out from the competition.
In the end, it’s an elimination mode, as I said, this game is clearly thought for multiplayer.
So in that makes the practices become the main part of the game. You can play any sport you wish, as many times as you want. All of the eight sports, until you get bored. Because who would like to try again and again the same mini-game until he masters it or, more easily, gets bored? And to make it worse, many of them are quite similar.
But this is the common problem in Olympic games. What makes this game better than the usual is that it manages to make the sports easy to play. Except for the 100 meters hurdles, that is never easy on any game.
Well, if you are aiming at the competition mode some other sports are also hard, but just because you need to do nearly optimally to qualify.
For those who want a bit of help, there is a curious feature: doping. On the player’s options screen there is one box to activate the use drugs. And most of the time this won’t be a problem, as nobody does a check unless you manage to surpass a record on competition mode.
In the end, this is a decent game. Maybe somebody who does play this kind of games can give another opinion, but to me this is another Olympics game, but with a big point on its side: the mini-games are actually playable.
Archived Thoughts
Thoughts by Mr Creosote (30 00 2000) – PC (DOS)
Who does not know the classic waggling sports games on the C-64 or the Amiga? They were as good to get cramps as they were joystick killers. But this game is different! It leaves out the hectic movement of the input device and replaces it with…NOTHING.
You can play 8 disciplines on the whole. But some of them are so similar to other that in fact there are much less. Not much change.
The sprints are 100m and 110m hurdles. The simple sprint consists of just choosing the running speed and adjusting it again after it has gone down slowly. That is done by simply pushing a button until a bar has gone as big as possible. And that’s it. The hurdles one make the difference that you have to push fire sometimes in order to jump.
Then there is jumping. Long Jump is the simple pushing of the fire button at the right time. Triple Jump is the same, only three times. The timing is a bit more difficult here. In contrast to that, High Jump is almost completely different! You have to hold the fire button for a short period of time. A huge variety! Strangely enough Javelin is completely the same. Lastly, there are the other throwing-disciplines: Weight and Disc. Again, you just have to push once and then once again. Each at the right time. Great!
The competitions consist of achieving a certain degree to qualify depending on the chosen difficulty level. If you manage to do that, you will get the gold medal. If you do not, your out of contest. After all, other possibilities do not exist in reality, either! Because of the highly complex demands success is guaranteed after a short time.
The extensive options menu deserves special mention. Here you can choose wind and weather. Unfortunately, this does not have any effect, neither graphically nor to the gameplay. But because you put yourself so much in the position of the athlete that you can even feel the breeze in you face while reading Wind<1.3!
Then there is the option to dope your athlete. Allegedly you perform better then (this cannot be proven, though…). After each event the it is determined randomly if you get controlled or not. If you are tested, you are disqualified. But because it never happens that you slip through the controls eight times, this option cannot be chosen anyway. You are even morally educated!
One of the emptiest games ever. In the old days the games may have been a threat to health. This botched-up job causes deadly boredom for it.
