World Class Track Meet (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Nintendo's 1988 Power Pad-based sports game for the NES, World Class Track Meet.

This video shows both of the game's primary modes. Tournament mode begins at 0:17, and The Olympics mode begins at 7:56.

World Class Track Meet is an Olympic-style, multi-event competitive sports game, but it was unlike anything that had been seen before on the NES. Instead of asking you to manically bash buttons on a gamepad à la Konami's Track and Field (   • Track & Field (NES) Playthrough - Nin...  ), World Class Track Meet forced you to get off the couch and work up a sweat.

It was one of the first games to require the Power Pad, a sensor-filled floor mat that plugs into the NES's second controller port. The vinyl mat is covered in blue and red circles that show you where to place your feet, and when you run on it, your on-screen avatar will mirror your body's movements and speed.

It didn't drop button presses, and there was no perceptable input lag. It was a simple and intuitive design that worked exactly as intended, completely free of jank. In fact, it worked so well that Konami ended up reusing the design for their PlayStation DDR dance mats a full decade later.

World Class Track Meet features four separate events: the 100m dash, 110m hurdles, the long jump, and the triple jump. In tournament mode, you compete against six CPU-controlled opponents (including the notorious Cheetah, a guy who 110% lives up to his name) in the 100m dash and the 110m hurdles. The Olympics mode features all four events played back-to-back, supports up to six players (two simultaneously) per session, and the player with the most points at the end of the game wins the gold.

It was pretty popular when it was new - several of my friends had Power Pads - but funnily enough, this was the only game that any of them had for it. There were a few Power Pad games, but World Class Track Meet was by far the most popular one. You could buy it as a standalone game, and it was also included as a pack-in title with the "NES Power Set," a console bundle that included two control pads, a Zapper, a Power Pad, and a multi-cart that included Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet.

In the modern day, World Class Track Meet is perhaps best known under the name Stadium Games. Bandai initially released Stadium Games and the Family Fun Fitness pad in North America in the summer of 1987, but it was immediately recalled and pulled from store shelves after Nintendo struck a deal with Bandai to release the pad and games as first-party Nintendo products. The few copies that were sold before the recall went into effect are highly sought after by collectors, so the game sells for astronomical sums. A loose cartridge alone will set you back $15,000-20,000 USD, and if you want a complete-in-box copy in decent condition, expect to pay 2-3x that amount.

There are only two notable in-game differences between the two versions. The title screen is different, and the Bandai advertisement on the back wall of the stadium was turned into a scoreboard display for World Class Track Meet.

Still, they are considered separate releases, so I went ahead and recorded both. You can find Stadium Events here:    • Stadium Events (NES) Playthrough  
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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