UR TV CAST

“Even the game’s swimming-pool tiles are identical to the ones you’ll see broadcast from the antipodes.”To reproduce the ultra-realistic athletes in the game, ATD used – and struggled with – motion capture. ATD’s lead artist, Pat Fox, was involved in turning motion capture data into virtual athletes. “Some of the disciplines could be turned around in a matter of hours. The high jump, however, proved difficult because the motion capture area was too big for us to work from. The jump had to be broken down into its constituent stages and as a result, it would take up to three days to produce a realistic and complete jump.”Producing the different facial expressions on the wheezing and grunting weight-lifters didn’t prove easy, either, and work had to be restarted several times. But their efforts paid off – even on the PlayStation, the athletes’ movements are fluid and probably as close as graphics will ever get to realistic on the comparatively limited console.Track and field games were established early on as a genre which the gaming community loved Gibbs sees their attraction as purely visceral.

“These are games where you know exactly what you have to do – be the fastest, the strongest and the quickest. The game comes as close as possible to matching the real physical prowess of a player with what happens on screen. So if you’ve better stamina and wrist action than your opponent, you’ll win.”As with most game genres, you either love or hate track and field events. Pat Fox isn’t an aficionado of the bash-the-keyboard-like-a-lunatic track and field genre but nevertheless can see its almost timeless appeal. “The genre’s heyday was probably with Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, but the instant satisfaction offered by the races and competitions means that this type of game is still popular.”But authenticity and popular genre doesn’t necessarily make for a game that will sell.

With a plethora of sports games currently on the market, ATD decided it had to differentiate its Olympic version from the others of the genre. Fox was involved from the very start of the development process and agreed that there had to be a “must-have” factor. “Track and field games generally work well as good multiplayers. We wanted to provide something which would make the game that little bit different and increase its appeal, so we decided on the addition of the Olympic training mode and virtual gym which is geared more towards the single-player.”The official branding, thanks to that IOC license, will also help the game to stand out among the crowd. But despite the quibbling over where those interlocking rings should go and what colour they should be, Gibbs says that the IOC was a delight to work with.