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A series of sports games by Konami in which players can compete to set world records in various athletic events by mashing buttons.

The original Track & Field arcade game released in 1983 (known as Hyper Olympic in Japanese). It and its close sequel Hyper Sports were notable for their lack of directional controls; each playernote  had three buttons, two for running and one for jumping/throwing. Since the Atari 2600 joystick only came with a single button, the 2600 version of Track & Field was bundled with a special three-button controller. However, the Hyper Shot controller reduced the number of buttons it took to play the MSX and NES versions of Track & Field and Hyper Sports to two.

Not only do different games in the series have different selections of events (though most begin with the 100 meter dash and the long jump, with other decathlon events coming later), but also the same title released on different systems may have added or removed events.


Tropes:

  • Bonus Stage: T&F2's Olympic/Championship Mode has two events that aren't present in Practice Mode: Hang Gliding and Gun Firing/Pistol Shooting. These are accessible after you successfully complete a set of three events.
  • Button Mashing: The normal mode of gameplay.
  • Guest Fighter: New International Track & Field has many unlockable characters from other Konami games, from Solid Snake and Simon Belmont, to oddities like Pyramid Head and Evil Rose.
    • Long before that, International Track & Field 2000 had Konami Man, available via a certain code.
  • Konami Code: Used in International Track & Field 2000 for the aforementioned Konami Man.
  • Palette Swap: The four playable athletes are color swaps of each other. Player 1 has brown hair and wears a white shirt with blue shorts, Player 2 has brown hair, a yellow shirt and red shorts, Player 3 has brown hair, a blue shirt and white shorts, and Player 4 has red hair, a white shirt and red shorts.
  • Trope Maker: Almost every athletic sports game for the next twenty years featured the exact same mechanic as this one.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: ESPN International Track & Field includes a Rhythm Game.

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