Keyboard Athletics

In the spirit of the olympic events soon to open in Beijing, i want to suggest a multiplayer athletics competition, which is sadly lacking from the web. Multiplayer (hot-seat) multi-event sports games were very popular in the olden days of 8-bit - names like Epyx' Summer Games and Daley Thompson's Decathlon spring to mind. Today the gameplay is a tad simplistic for hardcore game systems, but perfect for a quick round on the web.

The olympic multi-event gameplay did evolve somewhat during the years, and especially lately on cellphones. While once upon a time much of the game was based on button bashing and joystick wrangling, a somewhat hardware unfriendly and inelegant interface, today that type of game has moved to being timing-based. So, instead of pressing keys repeatedly and as fast as possible, you have to press keys in time and rhythm with the event - be it running, swimming or long jumping.

The very best examples of the genre are to be found in Mr. Goodliving's mobile sports series, the Playman games, the lastest of which is Summer Games 3. You are strongly advised to try it and its predecessors out. In principle, an avarage event is based on pressing one or two keys when you pass the correct mark on the track - the more accurately you press, the more speed you get. Miss the mark by too much and you will slow down instead. Additional keys are used to jump or throw before the white line (at the right moment you start pressing the key. The jump or throw angle rapidly rises, and when you release the key you jump or the object is thrown at the current angle).

A multiplayer web version will allow players to freely practice each of the 5-10 events included, and to challenge 1-3 extra players for a competition that spans all events. A gold medal will be worth 3 points, a silver 2, a bronze 1 and fourth place earns nothing. An alternative scoring system can be based not on relative achievements, but on absolute achievements on each event. A formula will be needed that gives each event about the same importance.

Because many of the events are similar, the game won't need 5-10 different engines, only one engine (or maybe 2 or 3, for an ambitious collection of events) with support for different features, such as jumping for hurdles, throwing for javelin etc. Each player will play in his or her turn, and watch the other player's turns, so no lag problems to throw a spanner in the gears. This also means short events - 200 meter hurdles should still be ok, but 1500 meters is a little too much.

As well as winning competitions, players can aspire to be the record holders for an event, for the channel and maybe also globally. All records will be kept in the server, and you could also give each player an analysis of his performance compared to the avarage and to the top players.