First of all, let’s note that this is an occasion where I have the all formats chart, and Hyper Sports is #1 in it despite not being #1 in any individual machine’s chart. It was also #1 in the Spectrum chart at one point, though, with Computer & Video Games and Your Sinclair clearly running charts from different weeks in their respective October issues. Since there isn’t an all formats chart that shows individual formats at this stage, I’ll go with the combined, since the different versions are broadly the same game.
Certain bits of video game history get revisited and revisited. The series and companies which are still successful today frequently help their early games to live on, even as technology advances away from them. A lot of the appeal in writing about the history of UK #1 games is in how much of it is specifically British and has not made it to that extended life. Nonetheless, we were not entirely isolated, not an island completely cut adrift from the wider world. And in video games, the wider world often means Japan.
It’s a while until we get to our first game published directly by a Japanese company, but plenty made their way in via arcade conversions, and Hyper Sports is one. Originally Hyper Olympic ‘84, the licence doesn’t make it over to the home computer version but the iconic name of Japanese publishers Konami does, still there on its loading and menu screens alongside Imagine. And in related news, there is a 2018 reboot of Hyper Sports on the way.
In the case of Hyper Sports, the arcade conversion aspect is more obvious than the Japanese aspect. First, it has a colourful visual flair that goes with the task of drawing people towards it in a room full of competing cabinets. The bold flash of a red text box next to your swimmer to tell you to breathe; the grotesque exaggerated wink of celebration on gaining a successful score in the shooting event; the somersault blur of the gymnast in the vault long horse event. It’s all that bit more attention grabbing than more simulation-oriented games.
There’s an even more fundamental clue to Hyper Sports’s origins, though. Its structure is broadly similar to Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, a set of trials in different sports, but here there are no second and third chances if you fail. Reaching the target is much more important than any sense of possible narrative to the different events in Hyper Sports. Unlike Decathlon, it isn’t caught between a new way of doing a sports game and the old, tough way of doing things but firmly planted in the latter, and the reasoning seems obvious. The harder the better to get your coins, finish things off quickly, and be ready for some more.
The different emphasis means that the relentless focus on the player doesn’t feel like a missed opportunity. Even when it makes a gesture towards sporting competition in the swimming, where you have three other swimmers on screen, it makes sense that they’re just set dressing for a race against the clock. The way they adjust to your speed and it’s difficult to finish anywhere other than second or third makes clear how much it’s still all about you. It’s a more limited model, but at least it’s quick and clear about what it does – arcade spectacle and the temptation to have one more go to see the next flash set of visuals, all without the need to leave your home.
