15 of the most notable Olympic video games ever made

One of the oddest bits of video game trivia is that the first meeting of Mario and Sonic was at the Beijing Summer Olympic Games back in 2008. Though they would appear in Super Smash Bros. games later on in the Wii's lifecycle, this 2007 collection of Olympic-themed minigames was the first time these two warring corporate mascots would appear alongside one another in the same game. Unfortunately, that's one of the only notable things about the title; it garnered lukewarm reviews upon its release.

Track & Field was a game released in advance of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Despite its super-generic name, the game actually had an official licensing agreement with the International Olympic Committee (at least for its release in Japan). The game was notorious for ruining both arcade cabinets and NES controllers since the gameplay boiled down to simply mashing the A and B buttons as fast as possible.

Nagano Winter Olympics '98 was met with largely negative reviews when it was released, primarily due to its simplistic gameplay. Much like the previous games on the list, it treated events as minigames, largely using only one or two buttons to control the on-screen action. That said, the game was notable because it was the first official Olympics game to appear on major 3D-capable consoles like the Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64, and most likely the first to use motion capture from actual Olympic athletes to add to the game's realism.

After Daley Thompson won the gold for Great Britain in two consecutive Olympic games in 1980 and 1984, it seemed only natural that he would get a video game all to himself. Daley Thompson's Decathlon was a computer game released for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 which, predictably, saw the player taking part in all of the events of the modern Decathlon. Mechanically, like many of the other games on this list, it was a collection of minigames boiling down to button mashing most of the time, but unlike many of the other games on this list, Daley Thompson's Decathlon was a best-seller, becoming the top selling game for the Spectrum in the quarter of its release in 1984.

Just the next year, EPYX would release Winter Games. Though it is another collection of minigames, Winter Games would quickly become notorious for its earth-shattering awfulness. Well, that is, if you were playing on the NES. Other versions of the game had great soundtracks and tight controls, but as for those of us with Nintendo consoles... well, let's let the Angry Video Game Nerd explain it for you.

By 2010, Olympic video games had transitioned from more simplistic mini-game collections to fleshed-out affairs that give you complete control of your characters. Unfortunately, this added control wasn't enough to garner critical acclaim for Vancouver 2010. Though the game included 14 events and additional challenges and mini-games within the events, the game lacked cohesion, and players were frustrated to discover that there was no career mode, or really any way to link your play across events.

Not all Olympics games were sports-related. Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings was a 16-bit platformer that saw players taking control of Izzy, the ubiquitous mascot of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta in an adventure to, well, retrieve the Olympic rings. The game was a standard platformer, but unlike some other 16-bit Mario wannabes, it featured some unique powerups that give Izzy Olympic-themed powers. Yeah, the game is odd, and not that great, but at least it was unique.

...Right?

Created by the team behind the NBA Live series of video games, Team USA Basketball was a 16-bit, officially licensed game that, naturally, focused on the 1992 Dream Team. Featuring international player licenses, the game was also the first (and only!) Olympic video game that focused only on basketball.

By most accounts, Winter Olympics: Lillehammer 94 was a serviceable Olympics video game, featuring a career mode, multiplayer, and 10 events (which was a lot for 1994, mind you). It was also the first official Winter Olympics game ever made. That's not the reason it's on the list. It's on this list because its manual includes such helpful hints as "Made of concrete to high standards, competitors are subject to forces up to 4G" and "Do not hit objects off the course as this will result in fatal injury, preventing you from completing your run". Fortunately, later Olympics games would invest in better translation services.

Though Gold Medal Challenge was not an officially licensed Olympics game, it is notable for being published by Capcom, one of the titans of the gaming industry. In fact, the game itself was designed by Keiji Inafune, one of the minds behind the Mega Man series of games and the current creator of Mighty No. 9.

Salt Lake 2002 is notable for being a crucial misstep in the progression of Olympics video games. Releasing to critical (and commercial) failure, Salt Lake 2002 only featured six events. Further, popular events like speed skating, figure skating, and biathlon were not included at all. As if that weren't enough, the controls for certain events were very hard to grasp, making results very unpredictable.

Olympic Gold was the first officially licensed Olympics game, and it definitely started off strong. Though the game only featured seven events, it contained multiple game modes allowing players to customize their experience. In addition, this early Olympics game featured a surprisingly complex diving event that allowed players to create their own custom dives on the fly instead of completing a predetermined series of moves.

London 2012 is a bit of a bittersweet Olympics video game. Though it had a frankly ridiculous list of 31 events and released to generally okay reviews, it would be the final officially licensed Olympics game that featured realistic environments and real Olympic athletes. Every officially licensed Olympics game after London 2012 would be an entry in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series.

Yes, "Sergei Bubka's Millennium Games" sounds like the knock-off version of the knock-off version of an Olympics game, but despite the way it looks, this was a solid game for its time. The big gameplay hook was the fact that instead of button mashing, the game featured timing-based gameplay mechanics that rewarded careful play (and prevented players from breaking their keyboards).

We would be remiss not to close the slideshow with the newest officially-licensed Olympics game, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. As opposed to the more career-focused games that feature real athletes, the Nintendo-published Olympics games are presented as party games, meant for short bursts of play. Despite a lack of depth, most critics agreed that this game is, at the end of the day, enjoyable and beautiful, taking full advantage of the Wii U's graphical capabilities. Though it's still pretty darn weird that Sonic doesn't just completely dominate all of the track and field events.