The button-mashing mechanics of early Olympic video games served as a sort of thumb-wrestling simulation. Whether it be Track and Field or Athletic World, those games were some of the first truly competitive multiplayer titles--games that let you beat your buddy fair and square, digit to digit.

Even Beijing 2008 video game cover girl Amanda Beard remembers.

"I played the old Nintendo Olympics game with the Power Pad, where you started out as the turtle and worked your way up to the cheetah," said Beard, a former Olympic gold medalist in swimming. "My family would have competitions against other families who were close friends and we'd rock it."

The first Olympic titles were not elegant representations of Olympic sport, but at least they were new. It was a novel experience at the time, like Pong. But not many of us have paid to play Pong lately.

Today, it is hard to find a genre more stagnant than Olympic simulations. Every four years brings another recreation of Olympic sport that, much like a new batch of presidential candidates, typically disappoints us.

Imagine if football games had never evolved beyond Tecmo Bowl, and you would have something near the current state of Olympic video games. Decades later, button-mashing still reigns, with few variations. The dismal critical ratings are as repetitive as the gameplay.

But publishers keep funding them, and apparently, some people keep buying them. So while Batman might not have a video game at release, Superman swimmer Michael Phelps does.

And as expected, it's terrible.

Did Not Finish
We've seen Michael Phelps play Guitar Hero on TV, so we know the man has an appreciation of innovative video game simulation.

Imagine Phelps, video game fan that he is, picking up Beijing 2008 (360, PS3, PC) between meets--only to find that his beloved sport is still reduced to mashing the "B" and "A" buttons over and over. Even the winningest Olympic champion in history would run screaming to the pool in record time when faced with such a silly challenge.

Beijing 2008 is a 10th place finish--a minor improvement on past performances, but still a disappointment. Sure, now you can manage skill points, compete online, or check out leaderboards. Now you can alternate the analog sticks sometimes, and every now and then you get to play a rhythm game.

But even with this slight modern update, Beijing 2008 is nowhere near the podium.

On the starting line, PC installation nearly completed, I did feel a little like an Olympic athlete: nervous, but resolved to give the game 100 percent. Apparently, you don't always get back what you give.

Despite intense mental preparation, the problems cropped up from the start. When the game asked me to use the Xbox 360 shoulder buttons to leap from a platform, and then offered no way to map the trigger buttons to the keyboard--despite only "recommending" a gamepad on the box--I knew I was in trouble.

On the field, the controls are still largely a matter of repetitive button taps or timed releases. Most of the time, the events that deviate from those traditional schemes are the worst. Skeet shooting is an on-rails bore, and judo is a joke.

Beijing 2008 is often painful in surprising ways. Cycling requires an unending rotation of the analog sticks--less a test of skill than one of tolerance. During the javelin toss, a craving for some kind of stimulation overwhelmed me, and I found myself hoping for an errant toss to impale an official--illustrating just how easily violent video games surpass the alternative.

Things went from sadistic to sad when, as I was wearing my thumbs down to nubs, I noticed that nobody was even standing behind the polygonal television cameras on the side of the track.

Not even the fake TV audience wants to watch such a boring spectacle.

Olympic Boycott
In the end, it is probably unfair to single out developer Eurocom for Beijing 2008. After so many failures, the Olympic sim genre as a whole is far overdue for a reevaluation.

After all, a large amount of Olympic events are inherently repetitive, particularly when it comes to summer games. Swimming and track races are athletic tests of stamina and strength, and most of those events are simply variations on the length of the race. Eurocom can't add any green shells to keep things interesting, or open worlds to explore--all they have to work with are a track, and some runners.

And while events like ping pong and judo allow some leeway to spice up the gameplay, development is inevitably spread thin across the Olympic spectrum. At best, Eurocom can only hope for each event to be a sub-standard version of another full-featured sports game. Delivering a dozen mildly fun games out of a possible 40 must seem a victory, like the Canadians placing 6th in Greco-Roman wrestling.

The Wii controls of a game like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games at the very least added something new to the mix, in the same way that the Power Pad did before it. But a Wii version of Beijing 2008 is inexplicably absent, and even then, Mario & Sonic's controls often presented their own special Olympic challenges.

Adding to the problem is the limited time window for Olympic relevancy; the Games only take place once every four years, and most of the events are not popular outside of that window. Interest in the games varies year to year, but even under the best circumstances, when the television coverage ends, the game sales are likely to follow.

Publishers may believe that no matter the quality, Olympic video games won't sell beyond the life of the event itself. It may simply not be worth the financial risk to fund a serious attempt at producing a quality Olympic video game.

But at this rate, we'll never know.