A playthrough of U.S. Gold's 1992 license-based sports game for the Sega Genesis, Olympic Gold: Barcelona '92.
This video shows the full Olympics mode on the national difficulty level.
Olympic Gold was the first game that I remember seeing based on the real Olympics. I mean, sure, we had Summer Games, Winter Games, Track & Field, Caveman Games, and about seven million other multi-event sports games, but this one had the Olympic rings, the opening torch lighting ceremony with the doves and a vaguely TV broadcast-like presentation. It was nothing revolutionary, but it was a cool way to get into the spirit of the Barcelona games - not to mention it was heaps better than the lame Atlanta '96 game.
Here are some time stamps for the events:
100M Dash 1:37
Hammer Throw 3:31
Archery 4:56
Hurdles 7:31
Pole Vault 9:26
High Dive 12:14
Swimming 15:21
Taking a page from Epyx's game designs, most of the events lack the blissful simplicity of Track & Field's button mashers, but they could still be mastered fairly easily. For anyone that misplaced the (very helpful) instruction manual, hope wasn't entirely lost: the game included a training mode that was surprisingly effective at teaching you how to play each event. Nice!
I still hate the high dive, though, if I'm being totally honest.
The graphics were nice - nothing too spectacular by 1992 standards, but attractive nonetheless - with its large-ish sprites and detailed venues. The look of it actually reminds me a lot of Hudson's World Sports Competition on the TurboGrafx-16 ( • World Sports Competiti... ). The music was also pretty good at dropping a catchy beat or two, though the sound effects were really rough. The crowd sounds like it has a permanent case of laryngitis. Why are the digital effects so distorted?
I think it's fair to regard any game that was developed by Tiertex and published by U.S. Gold with suspicion, but this was one of those occasions where the stars seemed to align. It was actually a good game! I don't know if it was a fluke, but it does feel like they invested far more effort and resources in Olympic Gold than their usual fare. Maybe they decided to treat a license with a bit of respect for once?
If you find yourself wanting an official Olympic experience from gaming's 2D golden age, you won't find too many games to choose from, but at the very least, this one does its job well.
Did anyone else ever get a kick out of how your lone Olympian, D. Stead by default, can manage a clean sweep and take home all of the gold medals on his own? What in the world did his parents feed him?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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