"Seems flippant, but a well-thought-out sequel to Track and Field"

Hyper Sports continues where Track and Field left off; the seven events are a bit more obscure, but you still have the familiar characters that performed them in Track and Field. The events are in the following order: freestyle swimming, skeet shooting, gymnastics(long horse,) archery, triple jump, weight lifting, and pole vault. You are graded on distance, time or accuracy, and you usually get more than one trial. You still get points based on how well you do at each event, like a classic arcade game, but there's not much violence aside from when you release the pole too soon on the pole vault or land on your head in gymnastics. This game, wisely, retains the ''world records'' that appear for each event: the three people with the best results get their initials at the top, and anyone who breaks into the top three gets a special commemorative pause in the game.

Although you control your man with three buttons, each one serves different purposes in different events. There are two ''run'' buttons with a third, for action, in the center. The purposes are tough to grasp and not immediately obvious, so it may annoy people who do something wrong when the controls aren't clear, even if they seem sensible enough after the fact(or two quarters down the slot.) For freestyle, you hit the ''run'' buttons alternately and use action(breathe) every ten meters. Breathing too early is punished by having your guy sit head-up in the water for a second, which counts a good deal more of computer time(qualification is two minutes, but that might be too long for you to keep hitting buttons--good programming there.) For skeet shooting, the left and right buttons fire at red squares that act as gun sights. For gymnastics, you hit the run buttons alternately until you hit the vault board. You jump again on the horse, and you hit action a bunch of times to do somersaults in the air--the more, the better, but you don't want to land on your head. You get three trials for the second and third events.

There's a short entertainment break after this; when you return, you go to archery, which is anything but entertaining. First there's a constantly changing number on the screen that stops and becomes the wind direction and velocity when you hit the button. From your overhead view you see a target coming down on the right. You shoot from the left and must take the arrow's time of flight and angle of elevation(holding the action button down costs time and increases elevation) into account when firing--you have seven arrows, your score is cumulative, and you only have one round to qualify. For triple jump, you hit the run buttons and then jump. Holding down the action button gives you a higher angle, but too high an angle will cause you to trip and foul on one of your three tries. For weight lifting, you only get two chances to lift a weight. You can choose the weight you will try to lift. The easiest one will qualify you, but you can go for double that by pushing the left-run key. The action key starts you, and the trial is like running(bash keys alternately) until the weight glows--then you've pulled it up to your chest, and you'll need to raise it with the action and one of the running keys. You can change the weight you choose to lift. This is the most strategically interesting one, because you are setting a maximum score for yourself before the trial starts. The final one, pole vaulting, requires you to hold the action button down to put the pole in the pit and to launch yourself. When you release it, the right button will move your man right and hopefully over the bar. You don't need to worry about speed in this event as the computer keeps it constant(and rather quick too. How many people can run 100 meters in ten seconds--carrying a long pole?)

The graphics are slightly more complex than in Track and Field. Your guy looks the same, except in weight lifting, where he gives a cheesy grin if he qualifies, and in skeet shooting, where he will wink at you. You also still have the handy gauge at the bottom that tells you how fast you are going. In the triple jump, you always seem to have jumped farther than it looks, but that can be appealing. The sites for skeet shooting are accurate as well, and you seem to get the benefit of the doubt in close shaves on the pole vault. In the cutesy department, the long horse has a whole litany of visual gags, and instead of crying when he fails to qualify, your man now bangs the floor/ground. The sound consists of footsteps, splashes, cheering, gunshots, and some cute ditties at the start and end of the game. It's hard to botch, and Konami didn't.

Hyper Sports made the acknowledgement that its events would be less mainstream than its predecessor's, and fortunately it did not over-press into the strangeness that is today's X-games. With the limited controls, there was only so much you could do, and it exploits them admirably. Some events are similar to the original without being carbon copies: pole vault resembles high jump, triple jump is like long jump, hurdles mirror freestyle. Unfortunately, a decent player will probably achieve his best performances rather quickly, except in archery, which requires, perhaps unfairly, a few bulls-eyes to advance. Overall, the unevenness between the difficulties of qualifying events is not enough of an annoyance to drag the game down. The events are amusing, and you have the option to wait around a bit to rejuvenate your hands--which get tired from hitting the buttons.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/01, Updated 04/24/01