First released in Japan on both N64 and PS1 on December 18th 1997, this is a
winter Olympics game by Konami. The game is part of the Track and Field series,
which is called the Hyper Olympic series in Japan. The series began in the
arcade in 1983. The last release was the 2010 iPhone game Hyper Sports Track &
Field. The British publication N64 Magazine gave the game 32% and called the
game "Quite literally crap."
The game features 7 events but depending on which console you have the events
have slightly different versions. There are also 18 nations in the game but 2 of
them only appear in the PS1 and 2 of them only appear on the N64. I imagine this
was because the game was developed by two different branches of Konami Japan.
There are several exclusive events as follows;
PS1
Alpine Skiing - Super G
Short Track – 500 and 1000 meters
Ski Jumping – Large Jump
Exclusive Countries – China and Korea
N64
Snowboarding - Halfpipe
Ski Jumping – K90 and K120
Exclusive Countries – Finland and the Netherlands
The game requires 32 pages on a controller pak to save data.As you might have
guessed, the four owls on the file select screen are the Olympic mascots for
that year. Since there are four of them, they represent both the 4 elements, the
4 major islands of Japan, and the four years between each Olympics. Their names
are Sukki, Nokki, Lekki and Tsukki. The first two letters in their name spell
out the word Snowlets, both a pun on the word for baby owl, Owlet and the phrase
“Let’s enjoy the Snow.”
Another pointless fact about this game I want to introduce is saving your game
changes the owl that represents your save file. This is useful because if two of
the owls are the same, it means the save data is also the same.
The real life Nagano Winter Olympics were held in February of 1998. Over two
thousand athletes from 72 nations competed. It was the first winter Olympics for
Azerbaijan, Kenya, Macedonia, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Germany won the most
medals (29) followed by Norway and Russia. The total cost of holding the games
was estimated to be over 15 billion US dollars. The biggest expense was the
construction of a 221km shinkansen line between Tokyo and Nagano, which is still
in use today. As usual the selection process was marred in controversy when it
was revealed that the Nagano Olympic Committee spent over 14 million US dollars
entertaining 62 Olympic Committee members.
2.Events
There are two modes of play in the game
Olympic – Compete in one event and try to win a gold medal.
Championship – Compete in seven events to get the most points.
You beat this game by earning a gold medal in all 12 events in Olympic mode AND
then winning a gold in Championship. Theoretically you could turn the game on
and win every event on your first try, beating the whole game in less than half
an hour. But it is not that simple. Each time you attempt an event the results
of the other athletes will be randomized. This means that even if you are
playing perfectly it will be impossible to win gold. However the chances of the
CPU playing badly are much less than them playing well.
Silverwings is the only person who has beaten the game with proof. He finished
the game in a highly respectable 5h 15m 40s. I have incorporated his strategies
into this guide, so all credit to their discovery goes to him! Without his run I
would have been unable to finish the game myself. It took me twice as long to
beat the game, at 10 hours 49 minutes and 15 seconds.
As you can see, you will be spending a lot of time restarting races and watching
the excruciatingly long demos over and over again. This game is pure boredom in
plastic, sold for 45 pounds at retail.I believe the country you pick has no
bearing on your athletes abilities. I finished the game using Great Britain, and
Silverwings used America. The game is equally hard whichever country you pick.
I will first explain the controls, because the game fails utterly at this,
despite showing the controls before every attempt. Then I will describe how to
play to actually win a medal. I will also include my gold medal winning time so
you know what is actually possible.
1 Alpine Skiing, Downhill
My time - 1:23:21
Use the control stick to move and the A button to reduce speed. If you miss any
of the gates you will be disqualified. You need the CPU to get a time of 1:24 to
make it possible to win. If you press the A button too much or turn too often
you will lose too much time. Basically you want to touch the control stick and
press the A button as little as possible. If you are not in the lead at the
first checkpoint you may as well restart. As you can see, I won a medal by about
80 milliseconds. It took me about 3 hours of attempts. The section just before
the first checkpoint has a very tight turn, you will win or lose here. I think
it is ok to press the A button here for half a second just to make that turn
possible. The game also randomly throws wind effects at you which slow you down.
Great.
2 Alpine Skiing, Giant Slalom
My time 1:36:18
Use the control stick to move and the A button to reduce speed. If you miss any
of the gates you will be disqualified. This is a slower and more boring version
of the previous event. Which was also boring.Just like the previous event, you
should touch the control stick and A button as little as possible to preserve
speed.
At the start of the course turn right slightly so that you can pass through the
first four gates without using the stick. This will build up a lot of speed and
should be enough to put you almost a second above the top time. Turning to aim
for the next set of gates as you pass through the current gates is good. But you
need to turn as little as possible to preserve speed.
You should aim to hit the inside pole of the gates. If you hit the center of the
gates your skier will stumble, despite the fact that there is nothing to collide
with. But simply hitting a single pole will not cause you to slow down. You can
also sometimes avoid the collision detection by turning as you hit the pole,
perhaps it changes the size of your hit box. This might have been intended by
the devs to simulate the way in which skiers clip the poles in the real sport,
but since they didn’t bother to add any kind of animation for this effect I
doubt it.
3 Ski Jumping K 90
My score 306.5
4 Ski Jumping K 120
My score 254.0
These are two different events but they play exactly the same. The wind may have
more of an effect in the K120 jump as the distance you must jump is much
further.
You have two jumps to fly the furthest with the best landing. Hold down on the
control stick and press the A button to start your jump. If you don’t keep the
3D stick held down your skier will just jump at the top of the ramp and fall to
their death in front of hundreds of people.
Just before you get to the end of the ramp release the 3D stick to jump.
Immediately push forward on the stick to make your skier lean forward and fly
further. If you do it correctly they should fly high into the air. If they do
not fly very far, immediately push start and retry while you are still in the
air. If you land you will be forced to do the second jump as well, so save
yourself some time if you mess up.
While you are in the air push forward or back to make sure your skier is
parallel to the ground. You can see this by looking at the icon on the left.
Then look at the bar on the right. You need to hit the A button as the arrow is
in the green section to land correctly. If you are going very fast you will have
very little time to react.
If the wind is blowing so hard that you have to push left and right to adjust
your positon you may as well restart because you already have enough to worry
about with keeping your skier parallel to the ground and sticking the landing.
This whole event is over in seconds but everything must be done perfectly. That
being said, although they may seem hard at first, they are actually easier than
some of the other events once you know what you are doing.
5 Freestyle Skiing, Aerials
My score 264.20
This is another trick based jumping event. First you have to select which trick
to do. You have two jumps so choose trick 10 for your first jump and trick 9 for
your second. When the event starts you can’t do anything until your athlete has
skied down the hill. As soon as you reach the flat snow tap the A button to
increase your power gauge. Keep tapping as your athlete jumps and is in the air.
When the back of the skis touch the ground press the B button to land perfectly.
Landing is the hardest part of the event, if your athlete falls immediately
restart the event or you will have to do the second jump as well.
You have to really mash the A button to build up enough power to pull the trick
off well, so please use a mashing method that does not hurt your hands too much.
I personally put the controller down and tap with two fully extended fingers.
But do whatever works for you. You can press L or R to change the camera angle,
although why you would want to do that I don’t know.
6 Snowboard, Halfpipe
My score 29.6
You first have to select 8 tricks to do. My suggestion is four number 13s
followed by four number 12s. They are both Alley-Oop tricks, they are the
easiest tricks to do that earn you enough points to win. The number 13s are
harder to do in my opinion, so I put them first. That way if I mess up I can
start over again quicker. I also put the same tricks next to each other to
reduce the chances of getting confused about what trick to do next. The game
doesn’t care if you do four of the same tricks over and over, but it does care
if you do 8 of the same trick. That’s why you have to use at least two tricks.
Enter the commands shown on screen to perform tricks. The Alley Oops use the
control stick and the A and B buttons. You have to input the tricks before your
athlete jumps or they will bail. If you bail you may as well restart because you
will never win gold with such a run. Once you have got used to the input method,
this event is not too hard to win. You can press L or R to change the camera
angle.
7 Snowboarding Giant Slalom
My time 1:13:71
Use the control stick to move and the A button to reduce speed. If you miss any
of the flags you will be disqualified. This event is basically the same as the
Alpine Skiing Salom event. Try to move your athlete as little as possible and do
not press the A button. That way you will conserve speed.
8 Speed skating 500 meters
My time 1:13:15
Alternatively tap the L and R triggers to increase speed. Look at your power
gauge at the start of the race. As soon as the marker moves from the middle you
can press the corresponding button. At the start of the race you will have to
tap very quickly but the rhythm will soon change. Make sure you tap the very end
of the triggers because they are less responsive if you tap them in the middle.
You must tap the corresponding button when it reaches the very end of the gauge
in the red area. Because this race is quite short you can go all out and not
worry too much about your stamina. 3 false starts will result in a
disqualification.
9 Speed skating 1500 meters
My time 1:51:19
This is the same event but the increased distance means that running out of
stamina will be your biggest problem. To conserve your stamina you need to rest
on the corners. So in the corners only press the R trigger and ignore the L
trigger prompts. You should stop pressing the L trigger after you pass the blue
and red lines before the corner. Then you should start pressing it again just
before you pass the blue and red lines at the end of the corner. Finding the
exact place to start and stop recovering is the hardest part of this event. If
you don’t recover enough you will have no stamina for the last straight. But if
you recover correctly, you will have just enough. If you athlete stands up
because you are going so slow you might as well restart. If you are 1 or 2
seconds ahead of the best time at the interval checks you are probably going too
fast and are going to run out of stamina later. You want to be winning or losing
by a small margin.
10 Bobsleigh Four Man
My time 53:96
Tap the A Button to increase speed. Then press the B button when the athlete’s
position lights up to make them climb into the bobsled. You should press their
button when the power gauge is near it. My best speed at the start was 30 m/s.
You need to get the last guy in the sled before you cross the red line. If they
trip whilst running restart. I recommend tapping the A button with your right
thumb and pressing the B button with your left thumb.
You can then control the bobsled with the 3D stick. It is very easy to flip the
bobsled if you over or under steer it. So tap the stick towards the corners
rather than holding it. You should line yourself up (by tapping) to take the
inside line in each corner as well. If you hit the side you will either lose
time or crash. So try to take each corner as tightly as possible while also
avoiding the wall. Repeatedly tapping the stick towards the corner is what
worked for me.
11 Lunge Single
My time 56:902
Tap the L or R trigger when the power gauge is at its highest point. Then
alternatively tap the L and R triggers to increase speed. My best speed at the
start was 30 m/s. When you hit the course your athlete will lie down, so use the
controls stick to move them. Just like the bobsled event you need to avoid
hitting the wall otherwise you will bail. This time however, you should hold the
stick towards the turns rather than tapping it. Make sure you line yourself up
for the inside line each time as well.
12 Curling
They saved the most entertaining sport for last. The third worst thing Scotland
has inflicted on the world after bagpipe music and golf. Teams throw four
stones, the stone closest to the center is the winner. Use the control stick to
determine the direction and strength of the throw and then press the A button to
throw. Press the B button before the throw to add spin on the stone.
The default veiw makes aimming impossible so tap C Up to zoom in on the circles
at the end of the lane.After the stone is thrown repeatedly press the A button
to sweep the ice to make it travel further and faster. Although it makes you
watch the CPU play as well you can hold the Z trigger to speed it up. This is a
curling tournament so you will have to win 4 games. However you can save between
each successful game.
To land in the middle you need to aim slightly off center and adjust your power
so that the green arrow does not go over the center line of the circles. Then
throw the stone, and hold Z to speed up the animation. After the stone passess
the red line let go of Z and start tapping A to polish the ice. When the stone
is about to leave the outer blue circle and enter the inner white circle stop
tapping. There is a slight delay in the controls so you want to stop polishing
early otherwise your athletes will send the stone too far. If you start
polishing from the red line and end at the blue circles then your stone should
almost always stop where the green arrow indicated it would.
Throughout the match you want to make use of tbe B button to spin the stone
either left or right to get around the other teams stones. You also want to use
some of your stones to block the other team.
The points are based how many stones are closest to the center. For example if
you have one stone in the middle you will get one point. But if the next closest
stone to the middle is an opponents, one point is all you will get. On the other
hand if you have the three closest stones to the middle you will get three
points.
Once you have got a hang of how to land stones exactly where you want them this
event is not too hard. If you lose a match you can always restart, so keep
going!
13 Championship Mode
My score 1295
This is the last mode you need to win gold on to beat the game. You need to
finish with the most points out of seven events. Luckily you can save between
each event so winning is just a matter of time. I recommend doing this mode last
as you will need the skills you have learned from the rest of the game to beat
it. Sadly this mode is just as difficult as Olympic mode, so go for gold and
silver medals at the least. Some of the events are easier than the others so
make sure you get the absolute best score on them. As long as you are in first
place its ok to keep playing. I had real trouble with the first event, the
Alpine skiing so I settled with 4th on that event and earned first on 6 others.
That was enough to ensure victory.
After you get gold on every event and the Championship mode the "amazing"
credits will play. Three static images, they really spared no expense did they?
I will also note that there is supposedly a special 100% ending which you can
see by getting every medal of every type in every event. Let's end this guide on
a qoute from a true Olympian.
"No matter how many people say you can't do something, use that as inspiration
to prove them wrong."
Eddie the Eagle
