I'm not the sporty type. Indeed, the closest I get to sport these days is the 10m dash to Tesco Express followed by the oh-so-strenuous decision of which bucket of mini-cake to buy.
However, I do have a bit of weak spot for the Olympics or, more specifically, watching it on the TV. Much like the World Cup, I see it as a sporting event that seems less pointless to watch. Plus, it's only two weeks every four years, so watching it can't do that much harm to my otherwise pudgy physique.
Sadly, the same can't be said for Olympic-based gaming. Looking back, history is littered with awful athletic-themed efforts that were either specific Olympic licenses (Sydney 2000, I'm looking at you) or just a bundle of events shoddily nailed together (shame on you, Virtua Athlete 2K). In fact, I don't think I can come up with a single athletic videogame that's been anything other than rubbish... not one that's based on realism, anyway.
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Move towards the more fantastical end of the scale though, and there are great examples all over the place. Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games - which is actually an official Beijing 2008 game, believe it or not - is a perfect example of how track-and-field games can be fun, as is (not surprisingly) New International Track & Field on the DS. And it's not just recent titles. Delving back into my murky childhood, I played Decathlete and Winter Heat on the Saturn almost to death simply because they managed to throw enough non-realism into the mix.
Of course, this might be easily explained by my overall taste in sports games - I'll happily take Mario Strikers Charged over PES, NBA Jam over NBA Live and We Love Golf over Tiger Woods any day of the week. But even so, I don't think I'm alone when I say that in terms of athletic games (Olympic or otherwise), I'd rather go with fun and frolics over hardened realism every time. Are most of you with me on that? Or would you rather opt for something akin to the real deal in this case, bearing in mind I'm talking specifically about athletics titles rather than general sports? I guess we'll see soon enough, considering there's a raft of such games out on Wii and DS right now and the realistic ones are all bobbins...
