Originally released on TurboGrafx-16, 1993
Wii Points: 600 ($6)
Review it yourself

Every four years, athletes from around the world (1-5 of them) gather to meet in the ultimate festival of sportsmanship. These champions of many nations (anonymous), colors (3), and uniforms (8) meet in friendly competition, striving to be the best of the best in up to 18 events. Sometimes there are cutscenes. These are the World Sports Competition games!

If that description sounds a little underwhelming, rest assured: this is only the beginning.

World Sports Competition developers Hudson Soft couldn't license the real Summer Olympic Games, so they went ahead and made a game about javelin tossing and backstroke swimming anyway. It's that kind of brute-force determination that drives World Sports Competition, which probably should have been called World Button Mashing. Because that's what you'll be doing in World Sports Competition--mashing buttons until your thumbs wear down to useless nubs. The development team members are probably all now enjoying advanced stages of arthritis. Still, I'm sure they still look back fondly on the storied days when they were World Sports Competition champions.

Never has a title so embodied the spirit of a cheap excuse for uninspired minigames. In a game about world athletes, there are more variations in uniform color than there are choices of skin tone. So while you may not be able to look Chinese, you can at least look fashionable in a fuscia miniskirt. After registering your three-letter name with the World Sports Competition officials it's off to the races, with 18 minigames to select from, and under 18 minutes of enjoyment to look forward to.

Olympic and Training modes are your two options for gameplay. There is no appreciable difference between these modes, other than the fact that Olympic makes you play every game once, a curse in the disguise of a feature. Competitions include the standard lineup of archery, trap shooting, track, swimming, and field games. Each of the categories has a certain amount of games, such as freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, and individual medley swimming.

While a wide variety is usually a good thing, there is little difference between each trial. Olympians (Competitians?) run or swim along pre-defined tracks, with the player's control typically restricted to the rate of acceleration, achieved solely through the rapid alternation of buttons. Sometimes a secondary control is incorporated, such as an oxygen meter that must be replenished by using the directional pad. These slight variations are a bit like Michael Jackson putting on a new shade of makeup--they do little to hide the grotesqueries underneath, merely highlighting how empty of a shell it is.

Make no mistake, if you still find enjoyment in the act of pushing buttons faster than your friend, like a research monkey competing for a handful of M&Ms, then look no further: World Sports Competition is your game. Up to five players can jump into the mix, putting their digits to work against each other. Unfortunately, the worst of the minigames are those that work best in multiplayer. Trap shoot, a harmless Duck Hunt-esque game, obviously isn't an event conducive to simultaneous opponents. However, the 100 meter dash may feature all five players on screen at once, but the gameplay boils down to a simple exercise that is unlikely to hold up for more than a few minutes.

Cutscenes between trials consist of a sports broadcast that laboriously sums up the results of each competition. "Sorry, AAA disqualified. Would you like to try this event again?" the sportscaster asks a very confused audience. "No!" I shout at the screen from my room at the World Competition Sport village, "I'm not World Sports Competition material! Let me out!" The woman just smiles and winks. "Okay. See you tomorrow!" This isn't a competition. This is hell.

There is no innovation at work here. Even mechanics that seem to function well are simply old standards with new paint jobs. Archery functions much like a kicking meter in a football game, which provides an endless source of fun, if you are insane. Javelin tosses are a combination of button mashing and an angled, timed release--like a Flash game on the internet, but less precise. Sure, there is strategy to World Competition Sports, just as there is strategy in using toilet paper. The team at Hudson Soft probably should have spent another roll's worth of time on World Sports Competition, but here we are.

I'm not exactly an Olympic video game aficionado. World Class Track Meet (NES) at least tried something new with its Power Pad running mat, although that didn't stop me from sitting on the floor and pounding it with my fists. Come to think of it, I could use a round of Track Meet power slamming to vent my frustration after playing World Sports Competition. The bottom line: If pressing buttons is your thing, World Sports Competition might be a match made in hell. To everyone else, buy at your own health (physical and mental) risk.

Go back for Chris Remo's review of Bloody Wolf, or continue on for Chris Faylor's review of NES Open Tournament Golf.