A Look at Swimming in Video Games
For years, sports like soccer, baseball, football, and hockey release a video game every year with improved graphics, updated players, squads, and new features. However for sports like swimming and diving, they only come out every four years in a video game based on the Olympics for that year.
Some games that have come out in the past that are known are the Olympic Games for 2008, 2012, and 2020. While swimming and diving might not be the main part of the game because it’s the Olympics, both are an event that you can play whether it be on PC or console.
Out of the 2008, 2012, and 2020 games, I personally think that the 2012 one looks the most realistic and the most fun. The 2008 and 2012 game look very similar graphic and gameplay wise, but in the 2012 version, Sega, which has played a role in publishing and developing the three games, just refined and made the game much smoother and appealing to the eye.
For Tokyo 2020, Sega took a different approach and made the athletes look cartoonish, so it takes away the realistic feeling as you can also customize and boost the stats of your created character in the game. Regardless it’s still a fun game to test out all the new Olympic events that will be featured in 2021.
Overall, the events represented in each of the three games are not the exact same ones from that year, however Sega still makes sure that there are a variety of events that people can pick and play from. With swimming and diving in all three games, the sports have been represented, in what I think is, a fairly well-done manner. When it comes to doing the various strokes like freestyle and butterfly, it takes a lot of button mashing and the use of the triggers to make your Olympian swim.
As for diving, it was interesting to see how Sega tackled the way it could represent the sport and still have people play it. For this event, it follows like it would in the Olympics or a regular meet. Every round, you’re given the chance to choose what dive you want, all varying in difficulty. In order to get a good score, you have to press the buttons that appear on screen as well as the important part, stick the landing using one of the sticks on the controller. However if you try to straighten out your diver too early or too late, or just can’t get the timing right, it can lead to painful belly flop.
Maybe while we’re still in this pandemic, it could be a fun idea to get some of your friends to play with you as it is a multiplayer game. So you and your friends could see who’s the best swimmer and diver for the time being while in quarantine.
One thing I wished for in the Olympic video games was that Sega could be like Entertainment Arts (EA). EA uses scans of real life athletes to implement in their games to create a more realistic game.
Playing any of the Olympic video games and seeing athletes like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Katie Ledecky would be really cool. If the creators took things a step further and added in signature celebrations or mannerisms before races that would just bring a lot more realism into the game and would make a better experience for players.