Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92 (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Capcom's 1992 sports game for the NES, Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92.

The 1992 summer Olympic Games came and went without a major console or arcade release in Konami's Track & Field series, but Capcom came prepared to pick up the slack on the NES.

Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92, called Capcom Barcelona '92 in Japan, allows up to eight players to compete in eighteen events (eleven athletics events, five swimming, vaulting, and weightlifting) that play out over the course of six programmes.

As is the case with most Olympics-style video games, you'll spend most of your time mashing buttons as fast as humanly possible to build up speed and power, though the swimming events place the emphasis on managing stamina and require slower, rhythmically timed inputs.

The game isn't the best of its type on the NES - the presentation, variety, and overall fun on offer fall short of what was seen in Konami's Track & Field II (   • Track & Field II (NES) Playthrough - Ninte...  ) - but it is a fun, challenging cart bearing Capcom's usual late-gen NES veneer of charm and polish. The cartoony graphics are lively, the music is catchy (the menu theme reminds me of Wall Street Kid!), and the controls are sharp. The difficulty level skews awfully high at times, though, especially in the swimming events.

Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92 is a solid game, and it was arguably the best of the console-based Olympics titles released around the time of the 1992 Barcelona games. It's worth checking out, especially for anyone who has already played Track & Field II to death.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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