Hyper Olympics (track n field)

[rockhopper]

Hey all,

I was showing a friend of mine my cocktail machine a few weeks ago. Knowing full well he used to love the game Hyper Olympics, I fired it up much to his amazement!

After chucking a couple of coins in, I hit P2 button and we got to playing. When he went to enter his name, he asked why the joystick wasnt working?

joystick? i said, this game only uses the three buttons.

It seems the old machine he used to play as a kid (here in Aus) used a joystick instead of the run buttons. Is this a common thing? I know the originals used the standard three button layout, but seeing how easy it is to hook up the wires to left and right on a joystick, I thought it might be something you'd see on converted machines but until that point never thought about it.

Now i have only played the game a few times before this, but when I reconfigured the controls to use the sticks, straight away I broke numerous records, doing better than i've ever done before!  anyone else try playing this way?

[DrewKaree]

I've played it with a trackball, and with buttons, but I've NEVER heard of it being played with a joystick!

[Dexter]

I've seen two versions, one with the standard three buttons i.e. left-jump/throw-right, and one with a joystick and single button. IIRC th jostick version was a generic cab like an electrocoin. Hope this helps.

[teef two]

When I first played Track and Field, many many years ago, it was with a joystick. I think it would have been on a generic Electro coin cab with a joystick and three buttons.

What I can say is that the blisters on the palm of the hand hurt for days!

[Jabba]

I played this game a lot in my time. Don't remember a joystick ever being there. But I have to admit, it probably would make it easier to play. I'll have to try it when I have a moment. Thanks for the tip.

[rchadd]

i remember spending many nights in my bedroom as a teenager frantically waggling my joystick...

playing daley thompsons decathlon on the c64

[GGKoul]

i remember spending many nights in my bedroom as a teenager frantically waggling my joystick...

playing daley thompsons decathlon on the c64

That's some personnel information that I didn't want to know...  

Was this the C64 game had the 1500m run that took forever to complete?  

[_Iz-]

you could easily remap the game to use the joystick instead of the buttons if you/he really wanted to play that way...

[DrewKaree]

i remember spending many nights in my bedroom as a teenager frantically waggling my joystick...

*insert Butthead voice* So what was your...."high score"....hehe...hee...hehe

[RetroBorg]

Yeah some Hyper Olympics in Australia had joysticks, from my memory they first came out with buttons then later on I saw joysticks, I never saw one with a trackball but have read they did have trackballs as well, not sure if there were trackball ones in Australia though.

The other thing that was strange in Australia was I never saw a Track n Field machine only Hyper Olympics machines, when I first got into MAME I very surprised to see that Hyper Olympics was a clone of Track n Field.

[teef two]

Arrrgh - Daley Thompsons Decathlon  . We used to have to do the 1500m in shifts with the horrible commodore 64 joystick.

The PS2 Athens 2004 game brought back memories of that with its extreme pain in the 400m.

[Floyd10]

I cant even watch this sport.. how can you play it?

[rockhopper]

Yeah, never saw a Track n Field here.

And I remember the good old decathlon days of the C64 too!

[microwrx]

Track n Field is the US name for it (same situation as Sega Genisis and Mega Drive).  I have a Konami Hyper Olympics PCB and it has a dip switch to set it to either Hyper Olympics or Track n Field.

The only Hyper Olympics machine I ever played had buttons, very low profile buttons that it was easy to run a coin over, not that I ever did.  I watched plenty of people who did though, one guy even brought in an electric toothbrush to run over the run button.  Hard to beat records that have been scored that way.