Video Game Review: Track and Field

I first stumbled upon Track and Field while perusing the (at that point) small number of Xbox Arcade games available for download. In the early days, there weren't a lot of third party software companies making games specifically for Xbox Arcade. Instead, Xbox chose to port old arcade games to fill out the game roster. How they got the rights to a game that was originally released for NES, I do not know. All I know is that I wanted to buy a new game, and I didn't feel like handing 60 dollars to a chubby kid with a beard in a sweaty Gamestop polo. Are they all virgins? I'm not sure, but it would explain why every summer I was refused a job at Gamestop. I'm convinced the fact that I had seen a vagina was working against me.

Track and Field is essentially an arcade version of the Olympics. The gameplay is simple. There are six events (yup! A full six events!) that all require you to run and then perform an action. In order to run you wiggle the joystick back and forth as fast as you can. To perform an action you press A (on the Xbox). Each event has a qualifying time or distance that you need to beat.

Hey look! I qualified!

The first event is the 100 meter dash. If you have a pulse and one functioning thumb, moving the joystick back and forth quickly enough to qualify in under 16 seconds is easy. The next two events are basically the same thing: the long jump and the javelin. You wiggle the joystick as fast as you can, then press the action button to jump or throw before the fault line. The longer you hold the action button down for, the greater the angle of leaping or throwing. Each of these events gives you three tries to qualify, but chances are you will have no problem qualifying on your first try during these incredible easy events. With the first three events under your belt, you're probably thinking "Hey this game isn't so hard, I wonder why I spent 1000 Microsoft Points* on this...". I can measure my life in terms of the time before I attempted the fourth event and the time after I attempted the fourth event. Nothing was ever the same.

The fourth event is hurdles. The mechanics of the event are nearly the same as the 100 meter dash: wiggle the joystick a fast as you can, timing your jumps over the hurdles with the action button. In theory its simple, but if you make one mistake (ranging from not running fast enough between hurdles, knocking over a hurdle, slightly catching a hurdle on a jump) you are pretty much guaranteed failure. So you're probably thinking "Oh that's not so bad, if you don't qualify you can always try again!". You would be wrong to think that. If you fail to qualify at any point in Track and Field, you have to start over from the beginning. Again, this doesn't sound so bad, but the first three events are maddeningly easy, lulling you into a false sense of security until you get to the hurdles. Compacting this problem is that the long jump and the javelin are identical events, with three tries each. Meaning on average you need to play the game for almost 10 minutes real time, before you get a single chance to try the hurdles again. Most likely you will fail, and need to start over.

This guy has two more hurdles to go, and he's already .25 seconds too slow to qualify.

I've beaten the hurdles well under 10 times (exact figures are hard to come by, as I was high a lot in college). The fifth event is the hammer throw which requires you to spin around as fast as you can, throw a hammer in the right direction and throw the hammer far enough to qualify. You get three tries, but I've never qualified. I had to look up what the sixth event was because I've never played it. It's the high jump. Chances are I'll never get to try it. Chances are you'll never get to try it either, unless of course you are Asian, or have surgically attached Asian hands.

It may sound like I'm complaining about Track and Field, and that I hate the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's incredibly addictive and challenging. I recommend it for any stoner out there, or anyone with kids. Or you could be neither (like me) and still enjoy it for some sadomasochistic reason. The safeword is "Vintage"

*Upcoming rant about Micrsoft Points to come. Hopefully featuring an interview with an expert on the subject, lets call him "Beardy"