Olympic Gold

Olympic Gold is a 1992 sports game for the Master System, inspired by the approaching Summer Olympics in Barcelona, in which the player can choose a country to represent and work through a series of classic athletics disciplines matching the real Olympic program of the time. The lineup includes, among others, the 100-metre dash, long jump, javelin throw, pole vault, and shot put — disciplines typical of this popular type of multi-event sports game derived from the real Summer Olympics.

Controls for most disciplines rely on rapidly, repeatedly tapping buttons to build up the needed speed or power, complemented by precise timing of a second button for the actual attempt — a principle made famous by older arcade titles like Track & Field and its many later imitators on various platforms and consoles. The Master System version tries to adapt this concept to the console controller's smaller number of buttons and offers solid graphical presentation of the stadiums and individual athletes, matching the late and technically more mature phase of the system's lifespan and its graphics chip. Between disciplines, the game shows brief summaries of results and country standings, which supports the competitive atmosphere of the whole Olympic contest.

Olympic Gold is among the last major sports titles released for the Master System in Europe, where the console remained relevant even after the arrival of sixteen-bit systems and their more sophisticated sports games, thanks to Tectoy's support in Brazil and other markets. Today the game is valued by fans of the multi-event sports genre as one of the solid representatives of this type of game in the late era of eight-bit consoles, even though it naturally faces competition from more elaborate versions on more powerful platforms of the time, such as the Mega Drive.

Why play: For fans of multi-event sports games from the late eight-bit console era who will appreciate solid production values despite the competition from more elaborate Mega Drive versions.