New International Track & Field Updated Hands-On

Last night, at a Konami press event held in San Francisco, we had an opportunity to get our hands on a playable version of New International Track & Field for the first time since last year's Games Convention in Leipzig. Being developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS by Sumo Digital, the game really isn't that different from the Track & Field games of old. The graphics are cuter, there's online functionality, and you won't be breaking any joysticks or buttons this time around, but this is definitely still Track & Field.

The version of New International Track & Field on display appeared to be more or less final, though only four of the game's 24 athletic events were unlocked when we grabbed the stylus for the first time. Those events were the 100m sprint, the long jump, the 110m hurdles, and the javelin. Rather than alternately mashing two buttons or waggling a joystick to pick up speed, you'll be rubbing your stylus left and right on the touch screen. You might think that rapidly moving the stylus is a far less punishing control scheme than the joysticks and buttons of old, but after spending about 20 minutes with the game, we can report that you'd be wrong.

Other actions, which in the aforementioned events include jumping and throwing, can be performed in one of three ways: tapping up on the D pad, using the X button, or hitting a buttonlike symbol on the touch screen. Again, these controls feel exactly like those in older iterations, so where applicable, you'll need to hold down your chosen button and release it only when a suitable jumping/throwing angle has been set.

After checking out the four available events in the Practice mode, we decided to put our skills to the test in Career mode on the easiest of three difficulty settings. Our "standard" character, chosen from a roster of eight, was pitted against three others in all of the aforementioned events--earning medals and gold stars en route. The gold stars automatically unlock new items as you progress, and on this occasion, we managed to unlock a new outfit for the female goth character we were using. There are also 10 "special" characters to unlock, as well as the remaining 20 events, of course.

Upon winning the four-event series, we were promoted to a "novice" rating and invited to participate in another series made up of the events that we'd just unlocked. The events in question were the 400m, the shot put, skeet shooting, and the vault. The controls for these events offered more variety than the previous series because the skeet shooting and vault disciplines are so different from anything that had come before. To perform a successful vault, you have to nail three well-timed button presses (start run, jump, vault) before rapidly drawing circles on the touch screen to perform somersaults before landing, for example. Skeet shooting is definitely one of the easier events because you just move your crosshair left or right with the stylus (vertical aiming is handled automatically) and hit a button to shoot.

Most of the events, we're told, will support New International Track & Field's "voice boost" feature, enabling you to improve your performance by shouting or blowing into the microphone. Given that we were playing the game in a noisy environment, it's difficult to say whether or not we had a chance to put that feature to the test. A far more exciting feature that we definitely didn't get to see in action is online play, which will purportedly support online tournaments and worldwide rankings, in addition to the head-to-head competitions that you'd expect.

New International Track & Field for the Nintendo DS is currently scheduled for release sometime this summer. We'll bring you more information on the game as soon as it becomes available.