In a 1987 interview with the Konami Development Staff published in the "TV Game: denshi yuugi taizen" book, they stated that after deciding to make a game based on track and field sports, they would spend each morning eating breakfast at a local college's track and field meeting to watch them compete and get a feel for how the events all work. They also researched and studied video footage from the Tokyo Olympics and other events featuring Olympic athletes. One of the developers adored the Finnish javelin thrower Tiina Lillak so much that he was able to successfully convince the team to include the event in the game.

In a 1987 interview with the Konami Development Staff published in the "TV Game: denshi yuugi taizen" book, they stated that they were influenced by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics held in 1983, and said to each other "yeah! let’s make a sports game like this!" as there was no track and field style athletic event game at the time. The team also wanted to see if they could make a game that wasn't Human vs. CPU, but rather Human vs. Human, instead.

In a 1987 interview with the Konami Development Staff published in the "TV Game: denshi yuugi taizen" book, they stated that the score points limit is up to 9,999,990 points.

In a 1987 interview with the Konami Development Staff published in the book "TV Game: denshi yuugi taizen", they stated that the voice for the announcer was originally in Japanese, but it was later considered weird and a bit lackluster, so they switched it over to an English voice midway through development.

The game's intro music on the NES is an 8 bit rendition of the song "Chariots of Fire" by Vangelis.