The face of the first own video game was the athlete -apkrig

Celebrities will no longer surprise anyone in video games today. They feature famous actors, athletes, musicians and comedians. And he often lends his titles and form to such titles. They will simply become their face. But how was it in the beginning? Who actually started this invasion of stars into the digital world? The answer may quite surprise you.

At the dawn of video games, developers and publishers could not yet afford to connect with familiar faces. But in the 1980s, video games began to become real business. And so real personalities began to appear in them. And now I don’t mean the fictional heroes of various licensed films and series, but the real people who shielded the game with their true identity.

An unlikely star?

I was actually brought to this topic by a completely random thought. It’s not something I’ve learned somewhere abroad. When I asked myself this question, I assumed that a “footballer” or other global star “of course” took the lead. The result of my search surprised me.

The very first real person I managed to find out was the decathlon fighter Daley Thompson in the sports game Daley Thompson’s Decathlon in 1984. The former British athlete shone at the Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980 and in Los Angeles in 1984. It’s doubled Olympic winner, world champion and two-time European champion. He also scored at the Commonwealth Games. He broke the world record in decathlon four times.

Thompson is considered one of the greatest decathlon fighters of all time. Nevertheless, from today’s point of view, it may seem somewhat insignificant. However, his successes made him a huge star in his time, and thus attracted the attention of the gaming industry. Ocean Software created a variation on Konami’s famous 1983 Track & Field with his name and face on the cover.

The game was released on Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC systems and sold for less than £ 7. It included the disciplines of 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400 meters, 110 meters hurdles, pole vault, discus throwing, javelin throwing and 1500 meters running.

A year later, a sequel called Daley Thompson’s Super-Test was released, and in 1988, Daley Thompson’s Olympic Challenge was released.

Success did not take long. Daley Thompson’s Decathlon became the ninth best-selling game in the UK in 1985, collecting great marks in reviews and winning several awards. A few years ago, Eurogamer magazine described the game as one of the most important for ZX Spectrum.

A year later, a sequel called Daley Thompson’s Super-Test was released, and in 1988, Daley Thompson’s Olympic Challenge accompanied the Summer Olympics in Seoul. Daley Thompson also took part in them, but he finished fourth.

In his day and for his generation, Daley Thompson was like a decade later Tony Hawk. It was a symbol whose name it sold. It is certainly no coincidence which discipline the developers have chosen or disciplines. From today’s point of view, athletics or decathlon may not seem like a cool sport, but it has great preconditions for a video game. It’s actually a set of relatively straightforward “mini-games” that were well simulated back in the 1980s, and you got several games in one. After all, remember the uproar in a few years caused by the titles The Games: Summer Challenge and Winter Challenge by Accolade.

There is one interesting thing connected with the original game for ZX Spectrum. Daley Thompson came from a mixed marriage. His father was from Nigeria and his mother from Scotland. In the original version of the game, however, he looked like a white man with a strange hairstyle that was supposed to look a bit like Afro, even though Thompson didn’t have it. This may be partly explained by the limited color palette and the limits of the technology of the time, but it is a special detail. On the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC platforms, he already has dark skin as in reality.

When will we see the game with Emil Zátopek’s face?

The classic game was so popular that in 2012 it received an upgraded mobile version for iOS and Android with new graphics. The Black Company Studios team was behind it, but the triumph of the original title could no longer come close to the remake.

Only after Thompson did world-famous celebrities such as Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson see their own games. When I think about the story of Daley Thompson, it would be interesting if Czech and Czechoslovak athletes received similar honors. Well, just imagine what it would be like to play the “Olympics” with the faces of Emil Zátopek, Barbora Špotáková, Jan Železný, Roman Šebrle, Jarmila Kratochvílová, Helena Fibingerová or Šárka Kašpárková…