GC: Hands on with Konami's New International Track & Field DS

Sometimes during big game shows, all you want to do is sit down and take a rest. And luckily, despite its athletically-driven gameplay, Konami's New International Track & Field offered a seating area, which certainly encouraged us to give the game a go.

The most obvious change with this game compared to previous examples in the Track & Field series is a stylistic one. Gone are the realistic-looking athletes and in their place is a selection of cutesy anime characters, some original and some from other Konami franchises. So if you ever wondered about how Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 would fare in the 100m sprint, or how far Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures could manage in the long jump, this is the game for you.

We still think the original T&F characters looked more charming, though, but of the characters on offer we opted for Pugster, an elderly scorn-faced drunken kung fu-master type.

The finished game will have three self-explanatory game modes – Career; Challenge; and Single Event – as well as a total of 24 different Olympic events. But this being an early version of the game, only three of those 24 were available. These consisted of the 100m sprint, the 110m hurdles and the long jump.

Seasoned medal winners of the Track and Field series will know how punishing the game can be on the digits (not to mention controllers), with speed bashing the buttons as fast as possible being the order of the day for success in most events. New International Track and Field continues in this time honoured tradition but incorporates the DS's stylus to strain and torture your fingers and forearms in previously uncharted ways.

In the 100m sprint, for example, you're presented with a bar on the bottom half of the touchscreen. When the starting gun goes, you need to sweep the stylus frantically back and forth across the bar to sprint. In order to get going, however, you need to start slowly and build up your pace until you're at full pelt.

This scratch-to-run movement is repeated for the long jump's run up, too, but when you get to the jump line you have to quickly tap a centre point just above the middle of the speed bar in order to perform the jump. The run-and-jump process was much the same for 110m hurdles, with both events requiring ninja-like timing. Perhaps with practice we could have got the hang of it, but on our various attempts, we have to confess to failing miserably.

Despite this, the cartoony-visuals (which are in 3D) combined with simple backgrounds and spot effects (characters are shrouded in wind when running for example) all make for an attractively presented game. In fact, we would have loved to have played more events.

But, of course, for now we'll have to keep our enthusiasm in check. As with other Olympics tie-in games (ranging from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games to Asterix at the Olympic Games), New International Track & Field isn't due for release until early 2008.