Let’s travel back to 1983 for a moment. Back in those days, kids would play the best games at video arcades such as Pac-Man or Galaga, and Konami’s International Track & Field. Instead of having a joystick there were two buttons that you used to ‘run’ and then an ‘action’ button. There was nothing better than taking your stress out on that machine, banging those buttons in the 100 meter dash.

Since then, there have been quite a few track and field games on home consoles,. The one thing these games all had in common was their fantastic ability to destroy the controller you were using; you had to decide whether the reward of getting that extra hundredth of a second was worth the risk of breaking your joystick. Good times!

Twenty-five years later; we’ve seen the release of the original game on Xbox Live Arcade which was extremely disappointing – with that in mind we now have New International Track & Field which is just what the doctor ordered—and just in time for the 2008 Olympics.

Firing up the game, you’ll see something that should be in more DS games – Konami uses the Wi-Fi connection to the fullest extent. Similar to an Xbox Live game, you’ll be able to sign in before playing and your game times are transmitted to the server. In a game such as this leaderboards are very important and it’s great to see how you stand in the world.

For those completely unfamiliar, the original arcade game included six challenging events. Each event required you to ‘qualify’ before you could play the next event and completing all six had you playing them again but with more difficult qualifying requirements. Developer Sumo has increased the number of events from six to 24; the new events are less track and more field such as swimming and skeet shooting. Unfortunately the events are unlockables so you can’t go right into playing a specific event until you’ve completed a specific chore.

Basically each event entails using the stylus and either moving it back and forth as fast as possible or moving it in a circle as fast as possible before hitting a target to jump or to breathe. There are three things you need to know when playing this game – trying to play it on a soft surface is pretty much impossible; you’ll need to play on a table or other hard surface (this is not bathroom material).

Second, you’ll absolutely have to have a DS stylus screen protector because moving the stylus back and forth very fast will make you push harder onto the screen. Finally, even with a table it’s very easy to move the DS console around when moving the stylus, making it difficult to view the actual event when you’re focusing on moving the stylus as fast as you can.

The drawback to the single player is that everything is based on an unlockable so if you aren’t a great skeetshooter, you’ll have to keep trying to master it in order to gain access to other events – this is the only issue with this otherwise enjoyable game.

Even with those shortcomings, the game is a blast to play just like the arcade game in 1983. The graphics are modernized and work well on the DS – the characters are very colorful and it’s easy to tell who you are in the field of four players. Many of the sounds that you’ll remember from the old days have been classed and sound great.