The Activision Decathlon is the game David Crane designed for Activision, published in 1983 for the Atari 2600: the ten events of the Olympic decathlon — 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400 meters, hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 1500 meters — compressed onto a single cartridge, all of them solved with the same formula of waggling the joystick as fast as possible and hitting the button at just the right moment.
It became one of Activision's biggest hits of that period, part of the wave of Olympic simulators that the release of the film Chariots of Fire and the 1980 and 1984 Games made fashionable in video games. Its very real physical demands on the joystick itself — the frantic movement frequently ended up breaking controllers — became a recurring anecdote of the era.
If you liked this one
