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In 1983, the Japanese gaming giant Konami released Track & Field, an arcade game based around several athletics disciplines that was addictive and infuriating in equal measure. Some of its appeal was it being easy to pick up yet difficult to master, thanks in part to just three buttons being responsible in combination with each other for the speed, distance and height—or lack thereof—your character found itself able.

This character competed against either a computer-controlled opponent across the individual events, or another human challenger. All scores found their place on the leaderboard, for which topping it with a combined total across results in each event was the prize most sought after, whether gained at the expense of a friend competing directly against you or a stranger having earlier registered a target to aim for.

These different methods of participation and their types of victory added shades of competitiveness to an otherwise straightforward game. There’s a complex question motivating us to know who can run faster, jump higher or throw further, even when the answer is sought through manipulating a graphical character. In the real world and at the sharp end of people also wondering the same, the Olympic Games has the motto ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’, which translates to ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’.