Hello dear readers and welcome to an Olympic Special here on Shoot the Rookie! With the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics drawing to a close, I thought it would be good to put together a post about some of the medal winners from the competition but with an important twist – all the winners are video game characters! So come join me to see who won what at the Video Game Olympics.
Now, you might be thinking that there are far to many different medals at the Olympics for me to possibly cover all of them, and in this you would be correct since there are something like fifty different disciplines and that would make for a blog post the length of a PhD thesis. As I thought no one would want to read that, I’ve come up with an ingenious solution: I’m only going to include the sports from Olympic Gold!
Olympic Gold is a video game that appeared on various Sega consoles around the time of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, which coincidentally are the first Olympics I can remember. It features seven Olympic disciplines for you to go for gold in, and if you get really good you might even break a world record or two. Between the different sports it features a number of different types of gameplay, using aspects of speed, timing and precision to recreate those sports. But what sports are featured and which video game characters will be coming home with the gold medals? Let’s jump dive SPRINT into the action!
🥇100 Metre Sprint: Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog series)
The iconic blue hedgehog has to be the first one that comes to mind when thinking about speedy video game characters so he was always going to be the favourite for this event. I’m sure that someone (possibly a fellow blogger?) once tried to calculate the speed at which sonic runs, and whilst I can’t remember the figure I’m sure he’d give Usain Bolt a run for his money!
🥇110 Metre Hurdles: Rayman (Rayman series)
A lot of video game characters can run and a lot can jump, but none do so with such speed and precision as Rayman, who can frequently be found indulging in rhythmic platforming. His ability to jump perfectly along with the rhythm of a song would be easily translated to the rhythm of the hurdles, and if he does happen to miss a jump he may well be able to just blast his way through or float over the top.
🥇Hammer: Kazuya Mishima (Tekken series)
As you can probably tell from his picture, Kazuya would excel at any sport which asks for a fair amount of strength and aggression, but he has found his way to glory in the Hammer due to the years of practice he has put in to his awesome spinning kick combo. Not to mention that he attached a picture of Heihachi’s face to each hammer to give him extra motivation.
🥇Archery: Eleonora Yumizuru (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE)
As you can see, Ellie is an experienced Archer. She shows her prowess with a bow and arrow fighting mirages in the Idolasphere and hunting monsters in her hit show Horror Hunter Angel. A flamboyant Olympian, every time she releases that arrow you know it will fly straight to the heart.
🥇Pole Vault: Bayonetta (Bayonetta series)
Given her well documented skills with a pole (see above), it makes sense that Bayonetta would get the gold in this event which perfectly combines her strength, accuracy and that nifty double jump ability.
🥇Diving: Kat (Gravity Rush series)
Tom Daley look out! Kat’s ability to fly through the air, manipulating gravity as she goes would definitely get her to the top of the leaderboard when it comes to diving into water from ridiculous heights. She can spin, she can twist and with her gravity defying abilities she will certainly be able to keep the splash down.
🥇200 Metre Freestyle Swimming: Tidus (Final Fantasy X)
He may be better known for his Blitzball skills (sadly that isn’t an Olympic sport), but through his rigorous training for that event he has equipped himself with the perfect transferable skills for the 200 Metres: speed and endurance. Tidus could swim back and forth in that pool all day long and still have the stamina to mount a sprint finish for gold if he needed to!
So there we have it. The gold medals have been presented in the 2021 Video Game Olympics! But what did you make of the winners? Do you think there are other characters who were overlooked for selection? Let me know below in comments and join me again soon for more video game and anime nonsense!
Thanks for reading,
Pix1001 x
Shoot the Rookie 