Sydney 2000? Please, the Olympics were good!!

Back in the day Olympic games were the thing. There were several computer games (Summer Games, Winter games, California games), and a couple arcade games (Track and Field 1 & 2) all of which were later ported over to the old Nintendo. I have many fond memories of sitting in the basement with my friends whooping it up as my Japanese team spanked their sorry butts. AHHHH many a controllers were snapped in two during those times.

Now comes along Sidney 2000. Similar to the games of old, this game is a keyboard beater. Where you either alone or with friends sit back and hit either two or three buttons to get your little Olympic athletes to run faster, push harder and lift more.
There is one game that doesn't require you sacrifice your keyboard to the Gods of Mount Olympus, and that's skeet shooting.

Graphics
The graphics are updated from the old sprite driven games. The athletes are modeled nicely and well animated. The stadiums are 3D as well the crowds aren't the most beautiful people in the world, but at least they move a little. The only problem I have graphically is at times they seem a little bland.

Sound
Nothing special here, mostly crowd noise and an announcer.

Game play
Not a whole lot of mechanics in this game. Except for skeet shooting there are three buttons to control your athletes, two to power up and one to perform some sort of action. In skeet shooting you use the arrow keys to move the crosshairs and the action button to fire.

There are 3 modes of play, 12 events, and a good selection of countries to choose from. The three modes of play are Arcade, Olympic, and Head to Head. Arcade is you against 8 other countries; you compete through all 12 events. Each player is awarded points based on their standings in the events. The player with the most points at the end of the competition wins. Unfortunately there wasn't any champion movie or anything; at the end of the competition they simply ask you if you want to play again.

Olympic mode wasn't much better. They tried to add depth by allowing you to "train" your athletes. This is what I will refer to as pseudo-depth. What you do is hit the same 3 buttons and wear out your forearms and controllers.

Multiplayer
Talk about disappointing the only way I was able to play multiplayer on the game was my friends and myself on the same system. There was no online nor LAN gaming. It wasn't even head to head we had to take turns. This sucked.support for real multiplayer gaming, by way of tcp/ip, could have made this game a little better