Olympic Summer Games

The Good
Graphically the game is OKish. While the running track only has four lanes, each one of the 32 nations has it's own colours, and to top things up, each competitor has its own name. However, this doesn't work as well as in Olympic Gold, where you could expect some of the athletes to perform better on some events and worse on others, but it still remains the last (Nagano'98 is too dire to be mentioned) where your opponents aren't "USA1" or "Computer 3", which has to be worthy of mention. The medal ceremony is well designed, but visually is lacking a bit.

The competition is well also organized. In running competitions, there are two heats and the final, in jumping events, three qualifying jumps and three more for the top eight. Nothing to point fingers at here.

The Bad
Considering the game was released already very late into the console life, I'd expect the game would feature some kind of battery save for the World and Olympic records. It doesn't, so it's pen and paper time again for the records.

The variety and balance of events is also at stake.Out of the 10 events, 8 belong in athletics, leaving two shooting events. I know the athletics are the core of the Summer Olympics, but they are the biggest display of sports in the whole world. Swimming, gymnastics, track cycling, rowing or weightlifting are all events that would have improved the overall experience of the game, and were already featured in one way or the other in the past. Some of the events are also quite unbalanced. The high jump and pole vault are a bit of "hit or miss" events, while in the discus throw - even without any effort - it's possible to reach a 73.55 mark, enough for an Olympic record. Others, like the skeet shooting, suffer from being terribly basic. There's only one position and five skeets on each round, for a total of five. It isn't hard to guess how the difficulty level affects top competitors - In hard they hit all 5, in medium 4 and easy 3. Medal ceremonies here can take more than than some competitions, with sometimes 5 or 6 bronze medal winners.

A final note, making such a game is pretty much a matter of transmitting the Olympic experience. Sadly, a mockup mosaic and a "laser show" for opening and closing ceremonies does a pretty bad job at it. The game is also very poor when it comes to sounds and music - tunes aren't all that inspiring and sounds are pretty much average.

The Bottom Line
While Olympic Summer Games does not offer that much when compared to other button mashers, and does a even worse job at showcasing the Olympics, it gets some extra points for having the two qualifying stages in running and the three extra attempts in long/triple jump/discus/javelin throw.

It pretty much shouts "average" at most times, so it you can rest assured that there's nothing here to be seen that wasn't done before.