Athens 2004 is the Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. This is a bit like being the Official Neon Orange Cheese Powder Covered Deep Fried Extruded Corn Snack of the Olympic Games. Really, nothing says "Faster, Higher, Stronger" quite like slouching immobile on the basement sofa, controller in hand.

Maybe this is a little unfair. The Big Mac has been the Official Hamburger of the Olympic Games for as long as any of us can remember, and certainly nobody sees any irony in that. In the 21st century, if you have a big public spectacle that draws large adoring crowds, you must have an accompanying video game, unless you are the Pope or Kim Jong-il.

You might expect Athens 2004 to be an outstanding game. It is set in the sunny Mediterranean, in beautiful new stadiums, all of which were completed on time and on budget. It contains a roster of beautiful, fit athletes, representing 64 countries from around the world. All of them are dressed in attractive, form-fitting costumes.

Here is where things first begin to go off the rails. Yes, all the athletes from every single country, male and female alike, are all dressed in form-fitting Spandex. Even those from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Some talented graphic artist obviously spent a lot of time designing navel-baring women's track-and-field outfits for those two countries. They are attractive, it is true. But their appearance in this game is beyond jarring. What, oh what, were the production executives thinking? Here are some possibilities.

(a) "Hey! Let's see if we can't get the forces of reactionary Islam REALLY mad at us!"
(b) "The Saudi flag has a lot of green on it. OK, we'll make her tank top green."
(c) "Durrrrr...."

All this is a bit of a diversion, true. But it illustrates a larger point, which is this:

Athens 2004 entirely avoids any depiction of real-life athletes and real life personalities. As anyone who has ever watched and loved an Olympics broadcast can tell you, a monster chunk of the thrill comes from the back stories. We watch parents and partners cheering on the sidelines, we see autocratic coaches berating their charges until they break down in tears, we watch courageous people sucking up the pain and completing the floor routine. We watch people.

This game has none of that. It offers us fit animatronic puppets with flags on their shirts. They come in a suitably broad range of skin tones, but are otherwise indistinguishable from each other.

Yes, it would be hard to work through the tangle of lawyers and licences required to put real Olympic athletes in a video game. It would be worth it. One day people will stop complaining that doing hard things is hard, and will instead do the hard work of doing hard things. Then everybody will buy their products and send them fan mail.

Now, the game play itself. In the long tradition of Olympic and track-and-field video games, which dates back to the Apple II or even earlier, players have traditionally needed to master only two simple tasks: hammering repeatedly on a button, and furiously wiggling a joystick back and forth. The traditionalists among you will be glad to see that continued here. The rest of you will mutter under your breath that this is a dumb and unsubtle way to play games, and you will also mutter that your thumbs hurt.

In Athens 2004 you run fast by punching the "X" and "O" buttons as fast as you can. In Athens 2004 you have to run fast a lot. You may want to put an ice pack in the freezer first.

The good news is that you can also play the game with a dance floor mat accessory. This amounts to a furious, high-impact aerobic exercise in running in place, which is briefly fun to watch if you are having a party, but which will probably give your guests shin splints. Better to take your party outside and run a three-legged race of your own. Or a crabwalk race. Crabwalk races are the best.