Video game facilitates something that you can’t do IRL, including participate in Olympic tournament even though you have unathletic body. By you, I mean myself. So, here’s Tiertex’s Olympic Gold: Barcelona ’92 (1992), published by U.S. Gold Ltd.
What can I say about the title screen here except accurate Olympic logo, I guess?
On to main menu screen. It’s pretty neat. There’s electronic board that serves as main menu. Then there are tribunes on each side along with audience. Some of them flash their camera at you. Don’t forget the Spain flags! They’re pretty cute. On some occasion, a blimp with U.S. Gold logo flies across the sky. I had this game when I was young kid if you’re curious why I’m stumbled into this game.
Back then I played the game in training session until bored which doesn’t last more than 15 minutes. I like to attempt the Full Olympic session but before that I practice a bit in training session on 1 very specific sport and that is…
…diving. Because this is the only sport event with complete instruction. There’s demonstration along with the button instruction. It’s not like the game tells you exactly what the d-pad or any buttons will do. All you need to do is to copy what the demonstration press buttons or when so you do the trick perfectly.
The demonstration always scores perfect with 10 on 5 juries. This is the best that I can do, so I reckon I can move on to the real Olympic.
Before starting the Olympic event, you have to pick athlete to play as. You can choose up to 4 players by ticking the names above. You can even change the name and nationality. Unfortunately, there’s no Indonesia. The nationality choices are: Spain, UK, USA, German, Italy, France, and Japan. I pick a flag that I consider the most “neutral” nationality which is EUN that probably stands for Europe union. Not even close to Asia. :(
Then I have to choose the difficulty between: Club, National, and Olympic. I don’t want to push my luck too hard so I choose the middle option. After choosing the difficulty, there’s this opening ceremony. Medic_cheers01.wav
First event is: marathon run. The camera decides not to move further because someone cheating by running before the gun signal. I swear it wasn’t me. I ran the latest there, see?
Engineer_negativevocalization11.wav. Someone else cheat! Can we run properly so I can end this suffer as soon as possible? There’s flag for the cheater. If the cheater tries to cheat again, he will be disqualified for the rest of the race.
There you go! As you can see, I’m the slowest runner but again I hate this sport event so why do I bother to try harder here? I even hate running in real life. There’s one time, I was forced to do marathon running for high school graduation test. It was grueling experience and -you can guess- that I was the slowest in the class. That was the peak of marathon running’s experience and/or performance in my whole life and I hate that moment to this day.
Anyway, the control is: mash the “A” and “B” button to run faster. I don’t think there’s any addition control in this sport event.
I was in last place. Sure whatever. At least, I was 4 milliseconds slower than the git in front of me and not 1 seconds or more. That is glorious prestige to me!
I’m given option to watch other marathon running. What’s the point of that? Why would I want to see race in which I don’t participate? It’s not like I betting money on them like horse race or something.
I’m in very low position on leaderboard but not the most bottom of the barrel. Not sure why Takenaka did worse than me. Probably something to do with the time record
Next sport event is hammer throw. I remember I like it more than running. But can I do well at it? We shall see!
Soldier_negativevocalization04.wav. The hammer doesn’t fly that long. I have to take this more seriously. I can’t rely on fuzzy childhood memory regarding the control. Thus, I resort to FAQ made by someone named AlaskaFox. To swing: mash button “A” and “B”. To start the forward spin: press “C” button. To stop the forward spin and throw the hammer: press “C” button again. AlaskaFox said that I have to stop spinning at the 2/3 parts of the circle zone for maximum throw distance.
After several save/load state, I manage to throw the hammer to distance of 52.9 meters. I’m happy with that.
The game gives me 2 more attempt. I finally manage to throw further at 61.5 meters. I’m even more happy with that. Other (computer) athletes can throw the hammer to 62 meters with no sweat. One of them even can reach 84.8 meters! No idea how you can do that. It seems the swing speed doesn’t matter even though I swing it as much as I can.
Now, I’m really at the bottom of the barrel. Takenaka did slightly better than me. Good for him.
Next event is archery. I remember really liking this and pretty good at it. By the way, look at that Sega blimp. It’s quite cute.
I’m confident here. Pressing “A” button will begin the drawing phase. Then press and hold left on d-pad to draw the bow longer otherwise your shot will become inaccurate.
Pressing “A” button once more to bring the aim phase. Then you have to guide your wobbly arm so the reticule gets to the bullseye and hopefully your arrow lands on it. Bullseye yield 10 points. Each outer circle yields less than 1 point than the inner ones. So forth until the white circle on the most outer part of the target yields 1 point. Not hitting the target at all, won’t give you any score and audience will boo at you. Considering I haven’t played this game for ages, I reckon this result isn’t bad.
Like in hammer throw event, the game gives me 3 rounds but the difference is the points accumulate between round. Each round, you get 6 arrows. There you go! I hit bullseye! The gameplay is not that hard taking aside of the wobbly arm. There’s bar on the left top corner when in drawing phase. No idea what it does. There’s moving reticule inside of it. It moves left or right and sometimes it’s steady at the center. Perhaps it indicates how tired your aim is. The more time you take to aim, the wobblier the reticule on the bar. Or maybe it’s wind indicator? I’m not sure myself.
There you go! I’m on top of leaderboard on Archery section. Sniper_award01.wav
Good thing there’s no shooting sport event because I don’t have that much confident to defeat that Turkish athlete Yusuf Dikeç and be no 1 on the leaderboard.
For doing pretty well in Archery, I’m granted the digital image of gold medal. It doesn’t even look like made of gold. It’s too murky to me. But whatever. I win the archery for my childhood pride of doing well in this sport rather than for fake gold medal.
There’s also leaderboard for medal tally. I don’t see your name there, Takenaka. ;)
On the score leaderboard, I move up to position 8. But I doubt I can be higher than this because Archery is the only ones that I can do very well. One of the reasons is: it doesn’t involve button mashing with vague result.
Next event is hurdle race. I won’t bother to try hard here, you know why.
The control is the same as the running except you get additional “C” button to hop the obstacle. You get hit by the hurdle, you slow down. You hop without the hurdle to jump over, you slow down unnecessary. That’s about it
Next event is probably the most iconic sport event of all: Vault pass! Though I remember I can’t do this well.
To run faster mash “A” and “B” buttons as always.
Then you press down on D-Pad on the zone. If you time it too late, the vault stick stuck on the base. It’s pretty funny to see.
I manage to vault. The bar drops and I get boo from audience. But I did everything correctly! AlaskaFox said that I have to follow up the vault with holding up/left on D-Pad. The game also gives me 3 attempts but I pass.
So, we’re on the diving. So, you have to choose the style/move or whatever you call it from these various icons. The icons on 2nd from the bottom is about the number of rolls, spins, or whatever they are. Use “A” button to select from these icons. The checklist icon is to start the course. I reckon this style setting/load out yields 69 points if done perfectly. I know I won’t reach the “nice” number but at least I try to.
This is the best I could do. 51.75 is quite far from 69. But I take it
Oh damnit! The game gives me 4 attempts but for every style on first column from the top: Front face – spin forward, front face – spin backward, back face – spin forward, and back face – spin backward. That’s how I interpret those icons. I only learn 1 move. Clearly this is very bad. By learn, I mean memorized. That’s right. You’re forced to memorize the process of doing the move from the demo. No reminder hint or anything like that. You have to remember everything by yourself. I mean of course you can take note on paper or something but that’s quite wasteful in my opinion. The demonstration only available in training session. It’s the eye icon just besides the checklist icon.
Actually, the game gives me 5 attempts. The last one is whatever style of your choosing that you think you can do best. But in the end, my score is the lowest. Scout_jeers06.wav
That’s me. The only swimmer with blue pants. As per usual, I have to mash button “A” and “B” buttons to swim faster. I was in the lead, until for some reason my swimmer goes slower no matter how hard I mash the buttons. Is there some kind of stamina indicator that I forget to remember? Probably so. So, the swimmers swim left and right until like 4 laps or so. I’m not supposed to go hard from the beginning.
In the end, I’m at no 13 in leaderboard even though I’m doing so well in archery. But no matter, fireworks for everyone. Everyone, go home now! Actually, I want to check something really quick first.
In practice session, there’s 2 bars on the top-left corner. Top bar is for strength/speed indicator. It goes up if you mash the buttons well. The bottom one is the stamina indicator that I expected before. Funny is: during the practice, the stamina bar rarely goes down drastically even though I mash the button very hard like in Olympic session. Or maybe now I know that I there’s stamina bar, I begin to conserve the energy or my hands already tired from the Olympic session.
Not only in swimming, there’s bar indicator on other sport event but only in training session. Why they hide it in Olympic session? That severely handicaps the player in unfair way. Do they expect the player using their sharpened keen instinct to cover the absence of important HUD? That’s total bullcrap. Imagine playing classic Doom and you’re not given any important HUD. No ammo count. No armor status. No health status. So, there’s no way you know how much ammo or health you have. That’s quite unplayable experience. Based on AlaskaFox’s FAQ, the developers expect you to play the training session for weeks or even months to succeed in Olympic session. I’ll be very bored playing this game for months. I don’t think you need to win at all anyway. There always be celebration night with fireworks at the end. So, what’s the point? There’s Olympic records that serves as top score for sport event at Olympic session but that’s barely good reason to play the Olympic session. I think I’m really done here!
At least, they got Indonesia’s geography fairly accurate. More or less 85% accuracy.
Tiertex’s Olympic Gold: Barcelona ’92 (1992) is my childhood game that I end up not liking it. They do so many things wrong. No controller setting that allow you to customize control or even see what the buttons do. They hide important HUD that I mentioned before, to make the Olympic session unfairly challenging. If the game doesn’t hide the HUD, the game will become serviceable by nowadays standard. I’m not sure how they should fix the diving event. Maybe they should put the demonstration only to be viewed once. If they keep the instruction on the start, the game will become QTE game. I do believe even the diving sport event become QTE like that, I won’t score perfectly though. The archery probably the most doable because it doesn’t involve button mashing. It only requires accurate aim. The music is okay-ish yet not memorable. The sound effect also fairly ok. The graphic is pretty smooth and good.
Olympic Gold: Barcelona ’92 (1992) is not good or interesting collection of sport games. I prefer that weird sport events participated by international superhuman or Gaul people that based on Frenchcomic that I’m very familiar with. I know I’m asking too much for real Olympic video games to be zany and fun. But at least, don’t hide the HUD for the sake of making the Olympic session challenging! That’s so unfair and also ironic because fair sportsmanship is what Olympic is all about. So, the game betrays the essence of Olympic sport event itself which can be indicator that the game is not recommended by official iseng review. By that I mean me, yeah.
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