Olympiad

Copyright : Atlantis | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Putting a different slant on the plethora of multi-event sport games that had been leaking on to the Amstrad since Daley Thompson took part in his original CPC Decathlon, Olympiad looked to focus its attention on timing and reflex rather than waggling and in doing so succeeded in setting itself apart from the competitionÂ… in much the same way as the person who finishes last is set aside from the medal winners.

The first of the five available events is weightlifting and employs a simple technique to ascertain whether your lift is succesful or a failure. At the bottom of the screen an indicator wheels its way round a circle at the bottom of the screen, to make a succesful lift you have to press the fire button when it is pointing directly north. Do it correctly and youÂ're rewarded with a dodgy animation of your beautifully coiffured weightlifter casually lifting the bar above his head, mistime it and you lose one of your three lives before progressing to the next level.

Suddenly, and without any real rhyme or reason you find yourself in a canoe heading down some river rapids. This time you have to avoid the randomly placed rocks and travel a pre-determined distance without sinking. Your canoe moves at a steady rate and your only control is directing your rower either left or right to avoid the rocks as they jerkilly move up the screen to greet you. Striking a rock results in the loss of a life.

Now your incredibly diverse sprite is on the running track and preparing to run the 100 metres. Again, waggling has been ditched in favour of the circular indicator method and you have to do this repeatedly to get the speed up and make your runner go faster.

Next up youÂ're out on the open range and armed with a gun to do some skeet shooting. Line up your target while the grey coloured skeets are hurled across the screen – the more you hit, the more points you earn.

Finally itÂ's time for the discus. A return to the track can mean only one thing, the return of the wheel of stamina (as I have now decided to christen it)! Press your fire button at the right time to ascertain the power put into your throw and in a cunning twist, press it again to chose the angle that you want to throw it at!

And your reward for completing all of the events? You get to do them all over again, only with a slightly harder target on each eventÂ…

Graphics are uniformly grim with poor animation and jerky scrolling. Meanwhile the limited sound that you do get is so grating that youÂ'll quickly find yourself reaching for the volume. None of the events are particularly taxing (although admitedly the running will take some getting used to) but the lack of a second chance for the two shorter timing events (weightlifting and discus) is frustrating, one slight slip and youÂ've lost a life.

All in all this is one of the poorer “Olympic” games on the Amstrad and for me, Olympiad fails to get off the starting blocks.