Sydney 2000

Overview

Sydney 2000 was the official video game tie-in of the Summer Olympic Games hosted by Sydney, Australia in the year 2000.  It was developed by ATD, published by Eidos and was released on the PC, Playstation and Dreamcast.  It was the follow up game to the Olympic Summer Games: Atlanta '96 and was the first Olympics video game to be released on 32-bit consoles.  It got mostly positive reviews in the press and sold remarkably well for an Olympic tie-in.  It recieved the BAFTA award of "Sports Game of the Year 2000" because of this.

Gameplay

Much like previous Olympic Games video games, button mashing is the main style of gameplay involved.  Two face buttons are used for power and a third face button used for actions like jumping a hurdle, throwing the javelin, etc.  All of the track and field events use this style of gameplay while other events like the 10m Platform Dive, which uses a rythem click the right button in a sequence style of gameplay, Skeet Shooting and K1 Kayak Slalom use different control schemes.  The Chase Cycling event also requires a slightly different approach as you have to pace yourself throughout the early laps so that your rider on the final lap isn't too tired to perform well in the final Sprint section of the race.

There are 4 different game modes in Sydney 2000.  Olympic Mode which is the main game mode, Arcade Mode where you take on each event in order, Training Mode where you can practice any of the events to hone your skills and Head to Head Mode were you and another player can pit your Olympic Mode athletes against each other.

The main Olympic Games mode was radically changed in this game to closer represent the Olympic Qualifying tour.  You can choose to represent one of 32 countries over 12 events but rather than see your athlete start out at the Olympic Games you have to qualify for each event by going through 3 qualifying stages first. 

Each event has the same 4 stages: -

• The Open Trials
• The Initiation Event
• The Championships
• The Olympic Class

For each stage you have to complete a series of training mini-games which take place in the "Cyber Gym".  The Cyber Gym mini games, which look a lot like the new Madden IQ mode in style, range from running on a treadmill, sit ups and squats to things like reaction training and are tied into one of 3 attributes for each event.  Completing a Cyber Gym mini game will raise your athletes stats temporarily.  When you are happy with the athletes atributes you can then try to advance to the next stage by competing against CPU players of your skill level.

Although its perfectly possible to win the Olympic Class event without doing any of the training mini games for that level, the task is made substantially easier by completing every mini game to 100% before hand.  As they game relys more on the athlete atributes than the actual players button presses, athletes which are at 100% can easily smash the world record without too much effort.

Events

• 100m Sprint
• 110m Hurdles
• Javelin*
• Hammer
• Triple Jump
• High Jump*
• Skeet Shooting
• Super Heavyweight Weight Lifting
• 100m Freestyle Swimming*
• 10m Platform Diving*
• Chase Cycling
• Kayak K1 Slalom

* denotes an event where a female player model is used.