Since the Raspberry Pi Foundation merged with Code Club, the newly enlarged Education Team has been working hard to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

Among the other work we’ve been doing, we’ve created a set of Scratch projects to celebrate the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

The initial inspiration for these projects were the games that we used to love as children, commonly referred to as ‘button mashers’. There was little skill required in these games: all you needed was the ability to smash two keys as fast as humanly possible. Examples of this genre include such classics as Geoff Capes Strongman and Daley Thompson’s Decathlon.

With the 2016 Olympics fast approaching, we began to reminisce about these old sports-themed games, and realised what fun today’s kids are missing out on. With that, the Scratch Olympics were born!

There are two resources available on the resources section of this site, the first of which is the Olympic Weightlifter project. With graphics conceived by Sam Alder and produced by Alex Carter, the project helps you create a button-masher masterpiece, producing your very own 1980s-style keyboard-killer that’s guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of parents all over the world. Physical buttons are an optional extra for the faint of heart.

The second game in the series is Olympics Hurdles, where you will make a hurdling game which requires the player to hit the keyboard rapidly to make the hurdler run, and use expert timing to make them jump over the hurdles at the right time.

You’ll also find three new projects over on the Code Club projects website. The first of these is Synchronised Swimming, where you’ll learn how to code a synchronised swimming routine for Scratch the cat, by using loops and creating clones.

There’s also an Archery project, where you must overcome an archer’s shaky arm to shoot arrows as close to the bullseye as you can, and Sprint!, which uses a 3D perspective to make the player feel as though they’re running towards a finish line. This project can even be coded to work with a homemade running mat! These two projects are only available to registered Code Clubs, and require an ID and PIN to access.

Creating new Olympics projects is just one of the ways in which the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Code Club are working together to create awesome new resources, and there’s much more to come!