Track And Field 2

Track and Field 2 NES Review

Growing up, sports games were not big on my list of favorite games.  I was more into Sci-Fi and fantasy games.  For the NES, Tecmo Bowl, Blades Of Steel and Track and Field 2 were my go to games.  With the 2026 Winter Olympics coming up and me being nostalgic for a sports game, I decided to throw in Track and Field 2.  Coming back to this game now, I still have as much fun with it now as I did back when I was a kid.

Track and Field 2 is a game that lets you play through twelve different sports that are played during the summer Olympics.  The game has three modes.  Training mode lets you practice any of the twelve events.  Versus mode lets you do Taekwondo, Fencing and Arm Wrestling(exclusive to this mode) against another player.  

Olympics mode is the main game and it lets you pick one of the ten nations in the game and run through all of the events. How the mode works is that you will do the first three events and if you qualify in them you will get a password to save your progress and you then get to do hand gliding and gun shooting if you like.  These events are just for fun, you don’t have to do them and they do not affect your progress.  You will do this for all of the events, then you will do them all again but this time the requirements to advance are higher and after every three events depending on how you did the game will tell you if you got a medal and if so what color.  What color medal you get doesn't mean anything as far as I can tell.  

The events are as follows:

Fencing - Goal is to land a hit on your opponent five times.

Triple Jump - Run as fast as you can then make three jumps to get the longest jump.

Freestyle Swimming - You are the computer from one side of the pool to the other.

High Dive - Get the highest score by preforming tricks as you dive into the water.

Clay Pigeon Shooting - Hit the targets as they fly into the air.

Hammer Throw - Swing the hammer around and let it go at the right time for longest distance.

Taekwondo - Take the opponents health down to zero.

Pole Vault - Run as fast as you can and plant your pole down at the right spot.

Canoeing - Paddle through a course going through the gates the right way.

Archery - Shoot at a target three times at four different distances while compensating for the wind.
Hurdles - Compete against two computer players as you run and jump over hurdles.

Horizontal Bar - Earn point while swinging aroud on a bar and stick the landing.

Exhibition Events

Hand Gliding - Glide yourself through the air while not crashing into the ground.

Gun Shooting - Shoot any enemies that show up on the screen before they take your health to zero,

Exhibition Only Event

Arm Wrestling - Whoever uses the most power wins.

Some of these events are easy to do like clay pigeon shooting and fencing while others take some practice like archery and for me, swimming.  In the end, none of these games are incredibly hard and with some practice all are easily doable.  

For a NES game this is a decent looking game.  During Olympic mode, before you start an event they show you a in -game image of the person you are playing as.  Even the backgrounds have some decent detail to them.  The audio in the game is also good with the music and sound effects.  

While the game is basically a bunch of mini games, they are still fun.  While there are better games out there that do summer Olympic games, for the NES this was a good game at the time.  Admittedly, once you know what you are doing the games do get pretty easy to do.  A game that is fun to come back to every so often.