Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist ’80s computers to the happy days of Windows XP. When the Olympics were on TV, showcasing countless extraordinary feats of human athleticism, and the warm summer sun was shining over grassy playing fields, it was almost as if the universe was encouraging me to play some sports.
Good luck with that; I have a body built for typing and the pallid skin of a blind cave fish whose entire species hasn’t seen light for millennia. But in the spirit of the season, I was prepared to meet reality halfway and do the Olympics, or at least some nascent digital version of them, my way, with Konami’s ’84-’85 Hyper Sports trilogy of MSX-PC games.
Revisiting Classic Sports Simulations
If I can use games to impersonate a tough mech pilot, a powerful samurai, or pretend I’m a vampire elf’s walking juice box, then surely acting like I could bounce off a springboard at high speed without twisting an ankle at a medically terrifying angle wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. I wasn’t expecting much more from the games beyond half an hour’s worth of fun, if I’m honest. Sports games, especially ones as old as these, are best known for being entertainingly shallow button-destroying collections of middling minigames and not much else. Waggle a joystick to sprint. Waggle the joystick to swim. Mash the keyboard to jump really high. Mash the keyboard to jump really high, but this time the background’s blue instead of green. Not exactly gold medal-winning experiences.
Challenges of Early Gaming Technology
Japan’s MSX wasn’t considered an especially high-powered computer even in the mid-1980s. Authentically capturing the complexity of gymnastics movement, the fine skill of archery, or the frenzied brushing of curling was surely out of the question. Professional sports are highly skilled events where years of intense training, mental focus, and physical effort combine in a few intense, life-changing seconds into something new and wonderful. The MSX thought being able to display 16 colours at once (and at most) was all anyone would need, and having a dedicated digital controller to play games with was a nice optional extra.
Surprisingly Engaging Experiences
So how was I suddenly obsessed with Hyper Sports 1’s opening diving event, determined to perfect my double somersault plunge into the water and finally prove the one judge who dared to give me a progress-ruining 6/10 wrong? Part of the reason for that was the linear progression of the games, which insisted I play through events in a strictly linear order with no skips or continues. No weight lifting for me unless I learned how to clear skeet shooting first, no long horse or bouncy trampoline fun without nailing this dive.
However, the main reason I kept playing was that I was having a lot of fun. Even this simple starter event demanded a lot from me, and I wanted to get it right. The initial leap off the board was crucial to my success. If I could hit the spacebar at just the right time, every time, they’d bounce higher and higher into the air, giving me more time for the next part—the somersaults. The more somersaults I could squeeze in, the higher the score I’d receive. This required hitting the right cursor key on my keyboard fast enough to make me wonder if I could bill Konami for keyboard wear and tear.
