Decathlon

A really nice port of David Crane's amazing design for Atari 2600. How was he able to accomplish so much on 6KB?
However, credit should also go to Timothy Smith. He designed the very first Olympic themed game for the TRS-80 and the Apple back in 1980!

My favorite C64 event is the high jump. Really nice animation and playability here. I was even surprised when I received a fanfare and a cheer for a high score!

Otherwise, I'm still a bit disappointed. There are too many quiet parts. More should have been done in the backgrounds too. Even the Atari 5200 version has a scoreboard and backgrounds for the field events!
Recommended! ...but didn't get a 10 for those reasons.

And finally.. Does anyone really like playing the 1500m race?!

Not bad at all for 1984. Many a Quickshot joystick was snapped in two with this one!

Best joggle-game on the C64 in my opinion. Okay, you have not such things like "best angles", which you must hit to reach good distances in jumps or throwing competitions, that some other games have, but the controller-polling here is really good. You can try joggling on your joystick as hard as you can and the game really converts all these movements. Some similar games, like "Track & Field" or "Daley Thompsons Decathlon" for example, sometimes have problems with this, when the player joggles to hard and when his movements on the controller are not in a certain left/right moving-limit. This game not and therefore I like it. I already played the predecessor of this game on my Atari-2600 and even there it was fun to play. But this version here is even better. I destroyed a lot of joysticks with this game, but nevertheless I had fun. Especially when I played it against some friends. We all remember the 400-Meter-Run, when the whole arm hurts on the last 100 meters and both players are head to head. Sometimes we played, until we had some blisters on the hand from the joggling, hahaha.

Gameplay Video Link:
youtube.com/watch?v=qpCvJJdZv0E

This is so much better than Daley Thompson's Decathlon by Ocean.

This must have been a definite face palm for Activision when then realized that Ocean were bringing out a Decathlon game and it was endorsed by Daley Thompson. A decent game but DTD was much better and took the shine off this.

While not among the best olympic sports games, Decathlon was quite a good achievement for its time. Definitely better in 2-player mode!

Only got to play this in '92 when I picked it up for 50p! It was still a lot of fun then and must have been streets ahead on it's year of release. Some good old joystick waggling!

One of the most fun multiplayer games ever made. The review on here highly underrates it in my opinion -- it's a bit of a shallow game, but it is a TON of fun. Trying to get the crowd to cheer for you by scoring over 1000 pts for a the particular event always seemed to be just out of reach...

Play that with a competition pro
hohoho!

I broke one or two joysticks playing this game! Really good game, I had fun with my games competing.

Superb in it's day and a real joystick wrecker! I remember if you owned a Quickshot II they would be shot playing this but my Euromax Arcade held up brilliantly. Who could forget the lactic acid build up doing the 1500m?!?!

Joysticks? What Joysticks? So much fun, rewarding to the tenacious game player, but yes, it was the all-time biggest joystick killer. We finally had to stop playing the game, because we couldn't find enough replacements. Lots of fun, though.

Very good game, just somthing about it that made want to play it and ruin joysticks.

Wonderful, wonderful games there was a fair bit of skill involved as well as the breaking of joysticks.

Hilarious comments about this game. The destruction of countless joysticks, the sheer heart attack and muscle cramps after the 1500m. Priceless!

I actually figured out a trick. I connected the mouse in the joystick port and tapped on the housing with my fingers rapidly. The power bar would be full most of the time and my high score reached 12, 000+. Good times!

Had some great times with this!
Remember playing with mates and my dad. Used 2 make eachother laugh, (or at least try to) or just have a good laugh watching eachothers expressions while waggling the joystick!!! Aaaah the MEMORIES!!!

A great game in its day.

This one was garaunteed to break those old Atari Joysticks. Joystick manufacturers must have been raking it in because of this game.

You could tell which of your mates did extra practice under the blankets at night due to how well they played this game

A great 'party game' for when you're hanging out with 3 of your buds and want to do some trash-talking and ass-stomping. Got a great workout on your arms and wrists too from yanking that damned joystick back and forth as fast as you could forever - especially the 1500 meter race! That thing seemed to NEVER end.

This broke joysticks like no other ... THAT excepted an awesome game, both in graphics and playability. 86/100 For Mine.

Excellent game. One of my favourites. Brings back good memories.

The only sports game that probably burned more calories than the actual sports...

Nat as good as the Atari 2600 version but a great game. I think the 400m dash exhausting than the 1500m. Great arm training

Another Activison classic, and a true joystick killer :p Easy to play, maybe too easy. One game now and then is a good pace to play this.

Muhahaha, I have lost more than 5 Joysticks while playing this DAMN PIECE OF ! (§%&!!!

It's damn good, but the 1500 metres... Urgh.

I'm playing much old C64 games on my GP32 (Korean handheld), but I will NEVER put Decathlon on my SMC... ;-)

Booooooooooooy - how my arm was hurting. A real "sportsgame". I loved it !

Criminal game! THE joystick-killer in the 80's. Rating: 10/10

I think I was actually sick after the 1500 metres once.

I loved this game too. Even my mum liked this game, and she always said the Commodore 64 was the worst present I ever received. Sadly enough I have my high scores listed down somewhere. Did anyone ever get over 5'10" (i think that was the height) in the Pole Vault? One of the best multi-player games there was. The muscular older brother of the Epyx games series.

I must be some kind of pseudo masochist but I loved this game... Broke many joysticks thou...

Hmmm, playing this game alone is loosing half of his fun... But you save a joystick )

I like most of Activision games on C64 especially this type of athletic game called Decathlon. Tough game, same piticular music like Summer Games which is good, good graphics and sounds.

I early had constructed a special mechanical "cheat" facility for this game: A joystick shaking machine built with Lego. You just had to turn on the crank, a speed-up gear with a connecting rod meachnism generated the needed speed to always get world record results... :-)

While Decathlon lacked the visual splendour of Summer Games II, it made up for it by being a lot more accessible. There was nothing quite like playing it with a group of friends and then trying to make one another laugh or put each other off as they strained to concentrate on their frantic joystick waggling! Incidentally, we found that the best joysticks for these sorts of games were the joysticks that came with the revamped Atari 2600 -- the slim sort with red buttons on either side of the main body, very short travel distance. (I don't know how widespread the knowledge was that Atari 2600 joysticks were compatible with the C64. I just noticed that the ports looked identical, tried plugging one into my C64 and was surprised to find it worked!)

Perfect game!!! Joystick crasher, but worht of it!!!

A very good conversation of Decathlon, but this one never saved your world records or you couldn't even take screen-shots in those days. So many this game rather pointless to me.

I can't remember the exact count of destroyed joysticks But it was worth every single one of them! It was much fun!

A true classic.. I played this with my friends for hours and hours.. For days.. Weeks.. I is true joystick-killer. I remember we used to warm up running the 1500 m to gain speed. We used Kraft joysticks for the game.. They increased our speed to the outer limit.

I did not play this game a lot because I had to save my strenght in my right arm for other things.
Score 8

Joystick-killer. Gave me many hours of pleasure and still do...

The ruined joysticks and the big biceps! Even better in two player mode. A classic!

I remember that I wanted to go to the max of the meter and then chose the "0" game... 1500 meters long run. Afterwards, the wiggling gave a better reult. --- =)

Still remember the day I got this game

me and all my pals played it furiously ruining the commodre joystick I got with the C64 (remember it... Atari style, white case and big red button?)

we all had blisters monday morning in school from frantic joystick waggling

So much fun to play this game with friends, yeahhh!
diesem spiel habe ich meine kräftigen unterarme zu verdanken... :-)

Oh, what a game.
Grandma's birthday 17 years ago and all kids sit in my room and we're playin' Decathlon. Great fun & joystick killing. One of the best games ever

I'm glad I'm not alone! Just the mention of Decathlon to my C64 pals in the '80's brought flashbacks of busted wrists & joysticks... TAC-2? How 'bout on the factory C64 sticks?? AARRGGHHHH!!! Great game but...

Remember sitting in the sofa at my friend and playing this when doing 100 m run. It was summer and hot and the front door was open. Neighbor went by and looking in when it was full speed at the joystick but to them it looked we were doing something else )

I've always disliked "joystick-wreckers" on the commie, but this one's a classic! I remember once I finished the 1500m, but I swear I'll never do it again!

Now this is truely a sports game! You need to take a cold shower after a good session of this wrist demolisher... =) Definite system requirements: a real C64 and a TAC-2!

What a game! I think I ruined 20 joysticks with this one.

Aaargh! The cramps...
Falling from your chair playing it,
sweating all over... Unbeatable with a couple of others competing. Not for emulation, only the REAL thing!

A shame there are no TAC-2:s to the PC. The game is pretty unplayable without it

One of my favourite games. I ruined three TAC-2 joysticks back in the 80s playing this game.

Ahhh, Decathlon. No other game probably has ruined as many joysticks as the infamous 1500 meters in this one. Silky smooth athlete animations! Get sporty ...