As we saw with Match Point, many game developers in 1984 had to go out of their way with hidden messages to get their names on record. In August, two games that were an exception to this rule simultaneously reached the top of the two UK charts. Full Throttle didn’t just show M J Estcourt’s name in-game, but Micromega put it on the front of the box too. The same goes for its counterpart at the top of the non-arcade charts. On the cover, above a photo of a running athlete with some extra speed effects applied, Decathlon is written in big text. Above it, in smaller text, “The Activision”. And below the photo, in the same size, “David Crane”. 

This inclusion was fundamental to Activision’s model. They had come out of the enormous American success of Atari’s first console, called the VCS on release in 1977 and later renamed the Atari 2600. A group of four Atari programmers, including Crane, had felt that they weren’t getting their due, in credit and monetarily, for creating the games that made up the majority of Atari’s sales. So in 1979 they set up Activision, initially working in Crane’s garage. Activision would do things differently, including putting a photo of each game’s designer in its manual. In 1982, Crane made Pitfall! and it did very well indeed. People started asking for his autograph at the supermarket. He mentioned this is part of a long-form feature for an in-flight magazine, because that was the sort of thing he got asked to do now too.

Activision was based in California and in 1983, it was one year until the Olympics in Los Angeles. For his next game for the Atari 2600, David Crane decided to turn to athletics, and a simulation of the decathlon, ten events in one. He put his graphics skills to use in making some impressive running animations and a scrolling track, and came up with something which would provide a physical endurance test itself in addition to a test of skill. Every event involves running by waggling the joystick left and right. In this he may have taken influence from Microsoft’s Olympic Decathlon, which came out on the TRS-80 back in 1980, the year of the previous summer Olympics. Olympic Decathlon involved pressing two alternating keys, although with much more basic graphical illustration.

  • The Activision Decathlon (Activision, 1983, Atari 2600)
  • The Activision Decathlon (Activision, 1983, Atari 2600)

The Activision Decathlon was another success and Activision commissioned a Commodore 64 port. The C64 version made it to the UK right after the 1984 Olympics ended, perfectly timed to catch a moment and make it to the top of the charts. Chart compilers ASP Market Research Group chose to put it in the non-arcade chart, treating it as a serious simulation, an interesting decision which they soon reversed. The manual we got over here doesn’t feature David Crane’s photo, but does have his signature. Also missing compared to the American version is the option to send Activision proof of your high score to get a scout-style badge, and a group photo of Action Graphics, who handled the Commodore 64 version. There is no mention of them at all, in fact, although they keep their place on the game’s title screen.

The Commodore 64 allowed for significantly better graphics than the technology of 1977, but Action Graphics only take advantage of this in some places. The athletes take a step further away from stick people in their detail, but when you have two of them on screen they are identical to each other. Adding the names of each event on advertising boards behind the athletes is a neat touch. In the long jump it still looks like you’re jumping on the track rather than into a sand pit, though, and while the high jump and pole vault do have crash mats, those were there on the 2600 version already. You still shuffle along a straight track for shot put rather than having anything resembling a circle.

The Activision Decathlon remains a simple game, with the pole vault and hurdles the only events that do anything beyond waggling and a single button press. A structure of slightly different versions of the same thing, scored in precise detail, is a good one for competition though, especially with more than one player. To pick a current example, a Mario Kart grand prix is a reasonably similar setup for a reason. And there is something brilliant in how the different lengths of running races in The Activision Decathlon take on the characteristics of the real life ones because the limits of endurance for joystick-waggling line up so well. Going full pelt is evidently possible for the 100m, plausible but draining for the 400m, and impossible for the 1500m even before you add that it’s the last of ten events.

The game’s appeal worked just as well a year on. Reading the reviews of The Activision Decathlon in UK magazines is also quite the illustration of just how much the Atari console revolution passed us by. Computer game revenues in the UK in 1984 were ten times those for console games, despite each computer game costing several times less, and the four reviews I read reflect that gulf in popularity.

Across them there is not a single mention of David Crane or of Pitfall!, even as a Commodore 64 version of Pitfall! charted the same week as The Activision Decathlon. It’s obvious that Activision’s name didn’t carry any real currency here either. Computer & Video Games, befitting the console reference in its name, comments that the need to “pound the stick to death” had carried over from the console version of The Activision Decathlon. Bob Chappell in Personal Computer News and the appropriately-initialed P.C. in Personal Computer Games don’t even mention the existence of any previous version.

Most extreme in its context collapse is the review by K.I. in Home Computing Weekly. “At long last”, it starts, “someone has sat down and written an excellent version of Hyper-Olympics for the CBM 64. If you have never heard of Hyper-Olympics then I suggest you rush out to the nearest amusement arcade”. That is, they read The Activision Decathlon as being a copy of an arcade game by Konami which dated from after Activision had released their game on console. That’s how little impact it had here. Still, despite the error, the reviewer did have a certain point. Hyper Olympic, rereleased to UK arcades as Track & Field, was a big hit. Maybe a home computer version of it would be a good idea. Especially if someone could find a way to more directly tie it into the 1984 Olympics…

  • Hyper Olympic (Konami, Arcade, 1983)
  • Hyper Olympic (Konami, Arcade, 1983)
ASP individual formats (non-arcade) for week ending 25 August 1984, Home Computing Weekly

Top of the charts for weeks ending 25 August 1984

UK games (non-arcade): The Activision Decathlon (Activision, Commodore 64)

UK films: Romancing the Stone

UK singles: George Michael – Careless Whisper

UK albums: Various Artists – Now That’s What I Call Music 3

Sources: