[Throughout this project, I will be handing over to the viewpoints of others for guest posts. This one (including the gifs!) is by Joshua Minsoo Kim, who previously wrote about Sam and Max Hit the Road and The 7th Guest]
For the 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta had opted for a mascot that wasn’t particularly emblematic of its city: Izzy, a blue blob of a character who starred in his own video game and television special in 1995. Originally named Whatizit, Izzy’s ambiguity pointed to Atlanta’s own marketing strategy: in struggling to paint the city as one with individual characteristics, Olympic planners had decided to utilize a nonspecific approach to appeal to the masses. The idea was that Izzy didn’t represent anyone at all, and in turn could represent everyone.
In Olympic Summer Games, you sense that same absence of personality, place, anything. While Winter Games at least featured mascots Håkon and Kristin, Olympic Summer Games doesn’t have anything that indicates that we’re in Atlanta. Of course, part of the problem is that even if Izzy were present, the game wouldn’t even help players feel like they’re in the United States.
The most immediately noticeable aspect of Olympic Summer Games is the lack of directions in order to play its ten events. This isn’t a terrible issue for most of the mini games as the majority of them involve repeatedly pressing the A and B buttons in alternating fashion, but timing certain button presses proves frustratingly unclear in the javelin and discus events. Onscreen indicators, especially when opting to just play individual games, would have been helpful—it took far too many plays to get a semblance of how to achieve a particularly noteworthy score in a third of events.
While a dearth of instructions certainly defines Olympic Summer Games, the simplicity of most of its gameplay fosters replayability. Upon playing, I gained an interest in achieving a gold medal in all ten events in a single playthrough; while the game contains a list of world and Olympic records for each event, more satisfying than beating the accomplishments of real athletes is the endurance test that the primary game provides. This proves especially intense in the first stretch of events, as high emphasis is placed on rapid button-pressing (100m, 110m hurdles) and performing the same task repeatedly (pole vault, high jump).
Olympic Summer Games ultimately proves to be a novelty game that most will likely play for its association with its namesake. Future video games based around the Olympics would improve upon the formula, but few would feel as anonymous as this 1996 version. The soundtrack (specifically on the Mega Drive version and not the SNES one) is colorful and flashy, but it’s not enough to give this game a sense of character. That its title doesn’t even have a year only contributes to that feeling. Izzy is perhaps a perfect analogue for this game’s lack of identity.
