The Activision Decathlon

The Good
Since every for every event the game mechanic boils down to furiously jiggling the joystick back and forth, It's one of the few non-Power-Pad-related athletic games that will actually make you as sweaty, sore and exhausted as if you were actually, you know, outside engaging in physical activity. Premature carpal tunnel syndrome aside, this also made it much more accessible than the increasingly Byzantine button-timing procedures in later track-and-field games.

Activision always new how to put color on the old 2600 screen, at least to the extent it was capable. And there's something matter of fact about the score-presentation that I liked - it made you want to really get the most out of each event for that high overall total.

The Bad
From personal experience, I can tell you it was brutally unforgiving on Atari joysticks. Plus, the lack of gameplay variety (or a real-time opponent for the races, multiple players have to alternate) made it into a sort of Zen-state self-improvement activity for budding masochists, especially with the final event being the punishing 1500m run - the longest of them all. But the suffering seemed to make those higher scores feel more EARNED, don't you know.

The Bottom Line
You run, you run and jump, you run and throw, you run and vault, and you run and run and run some more. Though the ten events are faithfully reproduced with what for the time would be fairly solid physics (no one's going to be running 6-second 100's anytime soon), Activision could easily have swapped the title out and called it HUMAN WRIST TORTURE DEVICE. If the thought of that kind of pain appeals to you, you'll find yourself strangely compelled by this game, and wanting badly to play just one more time...for that better score, of course, not because you've been a bad boy. A bad...BAD boy...