Decathlon or The Activision Decathlon as the full name is is about the sporting event where you have to compete in ten different events. These are: 100m dash, longjump, 110m hurdles, discus throw, javelin throw, 400m dash, polevault, shotput, highjump and 1500 meter distance run. You get to compete in each event and your aim is to get the highest amount of points and whoever has the highest total at the end of the events is declared the winner. If you fail an event totally you will still continue but you will seriously decrease your chance of winning. All events rely on you moving the joystick as fast as you can from left to right and occasionally pressing the fire button to throw or jump. The hardest of all is probably the 1500 m run because it is the longest and final event and in the last 200 m you have to do a dash for the finishline!
The graphics are nothing special and they get the job done. The olympic theme is done nicely at the start and end of the game and also there’s a little victory music when you get over 1000 points in one event. The events where you have to throw or jump are a bit of a letdown because unlike some other games you can’t control the angle at which you jump/throw and this lowers the difficulty level quite a bit. You can play the game with two players at once on the running events but the others are played individually. The exception is the atari 2600 version which can be played with up to four players but every event is played out individually. The fact that you can continue the game even if you fail an event means that you can finish the game with ease in only 15 minutes or so and there isn’t much replay value unless you play a two-player game. It was great back when it was released and it was one of the earliest games based on the olympics but it was quickly superseeded by other games that offered more varied events. Still not bad for a games that’s over 20 years old.
Overal rating: 6.5/10
This game was released for three different systems here are some notes:
| Atari 2600 | Released in 1983. Game has been tested but not completed with Stella v1.4.1. There is no sense of speed because the ground does not seem to move or anything. |
| Atari 5200 | Released in 1984. This is much like the Atari 2600 but a souped up version I’d say. Some of the graphics are quite different from the other versions like the high jump. |
| C64 | Released in 1984. Game has been tested but not completed with CCS64 v2.0 win. This and the colecovision version are pretty much the same. |
| Colecovision | Released in 1984. Game has been tested but not completed with KOLEKO v1.21. |
| Date added | Dec-16-2004 11:56 |
| Name | Decathlon, The Activision |
| Developer | Activision |
| Publisher | Activision |
| First released | 1983 |
| Genre | Sport |
