Hyper Sports

Hyper Sports is the 1984 sequel to Konami's Track & Field - the game the Japanese market knew as Hyper Olympic '84 - and it keeps the formula that made its predecessor an arcade phenomenon: brutal button-mashing sprint inputs plus perfectly timed single-action events, now seven events instead of six.

The roster: 100m freestyle swimming, skeet shooting, gymnastics horse vault, archery, triple jump, weightlifting and the 110m hurdles finale. The mash events (swimming, vault, the hurdle run) test raw tempo; the timing events (skeet, archery, weightlifting) test a single button press at the perfect moment - the lift requires holding the bar steady under a trembling-arm animation that still feels cruel. Four players alternate in relay-style competition, which made it a record-chasing social machine in arcades: the world-record chase for Track & Field-style games is one of gaming's longest-running score battles. As a sequel it is more polished and more varied than the original, and the hurdles finale remains one of the great button-mash tests.

• ▸Seven events: swimming, skeet, vault, archery, triple jump, weightlifting, hurdles
• ▸The classic split: mash-tempo events vs single-press precision events
• ▸Four-player alternating competition, relay style
• ▸The weightlifting steady-hold as pure nerve vs trembling arms