Think back to the 80’s…
Konami’s Track and Field performance-enhancing hack using a tennis ball to pummel the buttons faster than any unaided human would find possible.
Often talked about this in the pub with wistful tones, but can’t find any evidence on the web. Do you have an action-shot of someone playing Track and Field with a tennis ball?
Thanks!
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See also: from 2002, Anders Hansson on Track and Field Game Mechanics at Gamasutra (reg. reqd.)
"I wanted to keep the original button mashing control method of earlier track and field games. Some games have, in a misdirected attempt to evolve the genre, abandoned the classical brutal control method in favor for more sophisticated (in a superficial sense) methods. In my opinion the physical quality of the original control method involves the player to a much higher degree and is much closer to the spirit of the sport that it tries to simulate."
Petafloptimism 
I used to collect L’Eggs brand plastic eggs. Can you find those?
Thanks Matt.
Thatt.
Might be the rose-tinted ray-bans of youth but I seem to remember eager 8-bit kids removing two of the keys from the Sinclair/C64 and rolling a marble over the contacts to get insane scores on Daley Thompson’s Decathalon…
When I went to Butlins many moons ago, one of the arcades had the full upright cabinet Track and Field, and I spotted a kid notching up all sorts of insane records by frantically pummeling one run button with the bottom half of one of those plastic chicken eggs (the kind you got from a machine which clucked when you deposited 10p, and gave you a two-tone, two-peice egg with a keyring inside).
I duly made an egg purchase and tried it out on the Track and Field in the Pool Hall down the road in my home town, and broke every record on the board.
However, the owner (who had set all the previous records), reset the machine and placed a sign above it reading “no eggs allowed” and proceeded to re-establish his feeble records.
When I went to Butlins many moons ago, one of the arcades had the full upright cabinet Track and Field, and I spotted a kid notching up all sorts of insane records by frantically pummeling one run button with the bottom half of one of those plastic chicken eggs (the kind you got from a machine which clucked when you deposited 10p, and gave you a two-tone, two-peice egg with a keyring inside).
I duly made an egg purchase and tried it out on the Track and Field in the Pool Hall down the road in my home town, and broke every record on the board.
However, the owner (who had set all the previous records), reset the machine and placed a sign above it reading “no eggs allowed” and proceeded to re-establish his feeble records.
When I went to Butlins many moons ago, one of the arcades had the full upright cabinet Track and Field, and I spotted a kid notching up all sorts of insane records by frantically pummeling one run button with the bottom half of one of those plastic chicken eggs (the kind you got from a machine which clucked when you deposited 10p, and gave you a two-tone, two-peice egg with a keyring inside).
I duly made an egg purchase and tried it out on the Track and Field in the Pool Hall down the road in my home town, and broke every record on the board.
However, the owner (who had set all the previous records), reset the machine and placed a sign above it reading “no eggs allowed” and proceeded to re-establish his feeble records.
Sorry for the triple post – no idea what happened there…
Dude, we used a pencil as a cantalever. Hit one end and the pencil automatically hits other.
The tennis ball hack
Link: Blackbeltjones/work: The tennis ball hack. Never heard of the tennis ball hack. That’s funny. I took my kids to Chuck E. Cheese the other day and my teenage son and I were playing a game where two dinosaurs are