Athletic World

Athletic World is one of the more unusual sports games in the NES library because the controller is not really in your hands. Instead, the game asks you to stand on the Nintendo Power Pad and use your feet to control what happens on screen. Originally released in Japan as Family Trainer: Athletic World, the game arrived in North America in 1987 and became one of the early titles built around Nintendo's floor-mat accessory.

Rather than focusing on a single sport, Athletic World offers five different events that turn the living room into a small obstacle course. Hurdles challenges you to run while timing your jumps over barriers. Animal Trail has you weaving around animals, while Dark Tunnel sends you through slippery slopes and dark passages where speed and timing become important. Hop-a-Log requires you to jump between logs without falling into the water, and Rafting has you moving, jumping, or crouching to avoid obstacles on the river.

The game includes Training, Beginner, and Expert courses, giving players a chance to learn the events before tackling the harder challenges. Expert play adds extra hazards and changes the conditions as you progress, so simply knowing the basic controls is not enough. The game also asks for information such as your name, age, and gender, using it to adjust certain time limits and provide a more personalized experience.

Athletic World feels more like an early experiment in interactive fitness than a conventional NES sports game. The graphics and presentation are fairly simple, but the physical control scheme gives it a charm that ordinary controller-based games cannot reproduce. Today, it is especially interesting as an early example of the fitness and motion-controlled games that would become much more common years later.