easily the worst sports game, i have ever had the displeasure to experience.
The Good
-good graphics
-Athletes look realistic enough
-decent amount of different sports
The Bad
-literally no music (other than cheesy opening music and annoying drum beats during tuturials
-ridiculously bad control
-extreme button mashing diffuculty
-barely any sound effects
-its really boring
-theres no variety, all the sports use practically the same buttons
-absolutely no replay value
lets start off with this games only redeeming factor, the graphics.the graphics are pretty decent in this game, the athletes have alot of moving parts. it has your typical dreamcast graphics(if not a litle bit less).
now for music. there is next to no music in this game. other than the cheesy opening music and annoying bongo's in the tutorials, theres no music.why couldnt they have placed themes for each country, or backround music during totals screens
next the sound effects, another let down. there are very few sound effects. sure the crowd sound great when your running towards the long jump. but cant you hear your feet hitting the ground? NO! can you hear the big leap into the sand pit? NO! can you even hear yourself landing in the sand pit?NO! there are barely any sound effects! like, how hard could be to add in sound effects of the athletes running, or the weight in the toss hitting the ground. sound effects are one of the major factors in sports games that help simulate the feel of being in the game. i dont feel in the game at all.
there is next to no voice acting either. it will tell you if your first seconed or last (etc.) but it doest say stuff like, "oh what an amazing throw" or "just made it", that would have been awsome. But instead, even the voice acting on everything else is slow boring and uninspired. the guy doing the voice acting has even less energy than ben stein!
now, lets get to the worst part of the game,the controls. this game has the most pathetic controls i have ever seen. for all of the events you have to run in, you just tap X and B. simple enough, but thats the most annoying part.your hand gets so cramped! more than half of the events require running. and stretching your left thumb over the whole controller is tiring. and for some of the events, you have to tap X and B unbeleivably fast, and then hit the left trigger at perfect timing. but you cant stop tapping X and B. Do you have any idea how cramping that is? why not tap L and R and then hit a or somthing. that would have been so much easier! just the thought of getting to tap L R during running events would have been so much more fun than freaking B and X!
Next is the difficulty. Now i probobly could have taken the crappy control and the lack of music and sound effects but this is what killed the game, when paired with the terrible control.it is freakin impossible to place in the top third in any event. the difficulty is so extreme, that i played the 100m dash for an hour straight(that i will never get back), and at my absolute maximum button tapping speed, i could only(and barely) get 9th out of 12.your thumbs would have to be in the freaking olympics just to get anywhere near third. the ridiculous difficulty mixed with the awful control, automatically end this game for me.
Also, there is litterally no replay value. after you play this game for a half an hour, proboly not even, youll be sick and tired of this game. i tried to play this game start to finish, but i couldnt even make it half way!!! i tried all of the different events and they were litterally the same control scheme. theres not even like a career mode where you can make your own character and play through. Like i said before, there is absolutely no replay value in this game!!!
And thats pretty much it. i dont have much else to say about this game. why gamespot gave this game a 7.8, i will never ever know.i would recommend you a different track and field game, but theres one problem. thats the only track and feild game on the console. and i can imagine why. i have never played the ps2 version, but with most dreamcast reports to the playstation 2, theres no difference. so same goes to the ps2 version. this should have been a classic sports game, but they screwed it so bad, i wouldnt even declare it a sports game. i wouldnt pay even a dollar for this useless peice of crap.AND THATS WHAT I PAID FOR IT!!! i was thinking in taking i back for a refund, but never even bothered.the bottom line is, that this is one of the worst dreamcast games, and easilly makes top 10 worst games of all time in my book.