Olympic Summer Games (video game)

Olympic Summer Games is an official video game of the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games. It is the successor to Olympic Gold and Winter Olympics. It was the last "Olympic" video game released for the fourth generation of consoles, as well as the Game Boy.

It follows the already common button mashing techniques of previous (and future) games, with the usual exceptions.

It has 10 events (three more than Olympic Gold), with all but two based on track and field events.^[1] Unlike Winter Olympics, there are no major differences between each event on different platforms.

Athletes

The game comes with eight preset athletes to choose from, but the player can customize their names and nationalities before entering events.

• Paul
• Chris
• David
• Kevin
• Gary
• Colin
• Ian
• Jon

Events

• 100 m sprint
• 110 m hurdles
• Pole vault
• High jump
• Long Jump
• Triple Jump
• Javelin
• Discus
• Archery
• Skeet

Gameplay

As in the previous titles, there are three difficulty levels and both Olympics and mini-Olympics (here called "custom game") modes. However, the points table was removed, and the only way to compare results is by the medals' table. In the sprinting events, there are two qualifying rounds, and only the winner (out of four competitors) passes to the next round. On long jump, triple jump, discus and javelin each player has three attempts; the best 10 progress to the final and have three extra attempts. The best result overall wins. In high jump and pole vault there aren't qualifying rounds; the players jump in turns until missing three consecutive jumps.

Reception

GamePro's Bruised Lee and Johnny Ballgame gave negative reviews to, respectively, the Genesis and Super NES versions. They criticized the bland, simplistic graphics, shortage of sound effects, repetitive music, and the lack of variety in the gameplay of the different events. Bruised Lee remarked that the Genesis version was even worse than the Super NES one.^[2]

References