Dan Parks Decathlon

Back in 1983, Konami rocked the arcade world with its button-breaking Olympic sports game, Track & Field. It offered a range of decathlon sports, such as the 100m sprint, the long jump, hurdles, and so on. Gameplay involved battering a couple of those aforementioned buttons until you could hear your fingers (and the arcade machine) crying in pain. It was great – still is, in fact.

Over the years there have been various updates to the franchise from Konami (including a great PlayStation version), plus countless 'homages' (aka rip-offs) of Track & Field. Any oldies remember battering their ZX Spectrum to death (sometimes literally) playing Daly Thompson's Decathlon?

Well, at first glance it would be easy to dump Dan Parks Decathlon into the straight rip-off category, but in converting the idea for mobile, Overloaded has made some notable tweaks to the core gameplay.

The first big change is the way that the controls for running have been reconsidered. Gone is Track & Field's button-bashing: in its place you must press the action button at the right moment as a bar travels sideways across what we're going to call 'the rhythm meter'.

This isn't such a bad idea, not least because we like still having working keys on our phone after playing a few games. However, the meter itself is too small on-screen (especially considering how important it is to the gameplay), and as you run faster and faster it becomes far too hard to keep up a good rhythm to your button presses, meaning a loss of speed for your avatar.

Elswhere, while the character graphics are fairly cute, they might also have been a little bigger. Even on our Nokia mid-spec 176 x 208 pixel screen, there's actually quite a lot of empty space.

However, at just 78KB installed space, you have to hand it to Overloaded for packing a lot into such a small file. The range of events is good, with pole vault, javelin, 100m, 400m, and 1500m races, plus discus, shot put, high jump, and long jump to play.

But the second major difference between Dan Parks Decathlon and Konami's classic is that, for unfathomable reasons, game-controlled competitors have been completely omitted from the game. You can play up to three other people in multiplayer mode, but single-player mode is a lonely experience.

It's not much fun playing competitive sport with no one to compete against, and for this, we can't forgive Dan Parks Decathlon – especially because Konami (and its many 1980s copycats) did it so well over 20 years ago.

That said, Overloaded's game definitely has an appealing look and feel, and is mildly diverting for a short while. Well, at least in multiplayer, where it comes to life (relatively speaking). If you find yourself regularly travelling with friends, then, this might be a fun way to pass the time.