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Daley Thompson was a great British athlete and Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was a great British video game. Â The Spectrum version possibly had the edge over the Commodore 64 version just because you could use the keyboard to play, which made the running much easier in my opinion. Â If only the Spectrum had had the C64’s keyboard…
Anyway, of the ten events that make up the Decathlon everybody had a favourite and least favourite event in the video game. Â For me, I liked all the throwing events, although I think the High Jump wins because it was the one I was best at, and it had probably the worst animation of all the events, so had comedy value too. Â Vote for your favourite below…
And my worst event? Â Definitely the 1500m (if I managed to get that far). Â Far too much joystick waggling or keyboard bashing, and I still invariably came last. Â Which was your worst event?
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DT’s decathlon knackered many a spectrum keyboard !
As much as I like DT’s Decathlon, I actually preferred the Activision (I think) Decathlon on the C64.
You’re right Mark, the C64 Decathlon by Activision was a much better game, especially graphically.
I remember buying it but because it was joystick only I swapped it for DT’s instead, since a friend had the Spectrum version which used keys. Unfortunately the C64 version of DT’s still didn’t support keyboard after all that.
Even if it was joystick controlled, I still remember it being a pain at the 1500m.
I remember a local computer/electronics shop which I used to hang around in as a kid on Saturdays in the town centre (like you did as a kid), actually created a modified joystick that used something similar to the auto-fire, for toggling left and right.
Never actually got one myself, but it was great to see it in action.
I never had the luxury of a spectrum but can remember playing this as an arcade game in the local scuzzy cafe with my best mate and being utterly hopeless at hammering on those coloured buttons to make Daley run! Now when it came to Defender or Donkey Kong we were the bees knees….!