Track and Field

Original System: Atari 5200

Port of the 1983 Konami arcade game, Track and Field was part of the final wave of Atari 5200 games in development before the crash hit. Although completed by May of 1984, the Atari 5200 version never saw the light of day. The Atari 400/800 port on the other hand barely made it out the doors in late summer just in time to coincide with the 1984 Olympics being held in Los Angeles. The Atari 400/800 port is considered one of the rarer releases for the system and even came with a special three button controller to mimic the control scheme of the arcade game. It is unknown if the Atari 5200 port would have included this controller as well, but since the Atarisoft ports did (coming with an adaptor for the computer if needed) it is highly likely that it would have.

The two versions are exactly the same except for the title screens. The Atari 5200 version is missing the Atari copyright at the bottom of the screen since it already displays it on the splash screen. The Atari 5200 version also uses # and * for selecting the options while the Atari 400/800 uses Option and Select. The text on the title screens are adjusted to show this change.

Track & Field was released as Los Angeles 1984 Games in PAL countries while in the US the box and manual simply noted that the game was the official video game of the 1984 Games. Well it would have anyway had it actually been released in any PAL countries (as mentioned, the 2600 and 400/800 ports barely got out the doors). This is most likely due to the fact that the arcade game was better known in the US than it was in Europe. While the Atari 2600 version had a separate PAL version developed with this title (although not released), the Atari 400/800 port automatically detects what kind of system it's playing on and adjusts the title screen accordingly. The Atari 5200 version does not do this which is just as well since there were no PAL Atari 5200's and by this time Atari had given up on the idea of releasing the 5200 in PAL countries.

Atari 400/800	Atari 5200

	N/A

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