Back in my Day: Winter Games

For most of us, when we were young we dreamt of winning trophy after trophy and medal after medal. Some, like myself, wanted to go all the way and bring home a gold medal for our country. Sadly, it requires a lifelong commitment and is usually pretty costly. You'll need the best trainers available as well as access to the best gear. I pretty much say squash that. I'll take the cheaper route and try win a gold medal in Winter Games for the Commodore 64. Be warned though, playing Winter Games almost requires as much dedication as the actual thing. If you aren't ready to dedicate your body and mind, then watching the Winter Olympics might be the easiest way out. Grab your skates and lets go.

Released in 1986 by Epyx, Winter Games was ported to large number of systems. For those who owned an Atari, Apple, or Commodore 64, they were all qualified for a chance at the gold. Winter Games consisted of eight different events such as Ski Jumping, Figure Skating, and the Bobsled. All eight events ranged from difficult to extremely difficult. The intro for the game is quite fancy, as you get to watch someone light the torch and set the games underway. Unfortunately, after the third time this gets a bit old. Remember, the Commodore 64 took a while to load, so anything you could cut out was great; if only this scene was.

(Just like the real thing!)

Upon starting, you'll be able to choose which country you want to represent. The screen makes up 9 different flags, allowing you to select from 8 countries or the representation of Epyx. As a tiny tot, I didn't really know any other country except for the good ol' U.S.A. The graphic for the flag of Mexico seemed a bit jacked up at the time, as I didn't know what the hell that black mess was suppose to be in the middle. The Epyx flagged looked as if a man had an old lady tucked under his arm while he was thinking. Therefore, my vote almost always went for Japan, because that's where ninjas come from.

(See what I mean about the Epyx flag? There is something tucked under his arm.)

As stated, all of these events were insanely difficult. Most of them were graded by how well you did, while a couple of the racing events were scored by time. I never quite understood how the rating system worked as there was no true form of how to play the game. Joysticks back in the day consisted of basically the stick and one button. During an event of style, you basically jerked the stick around while mashing the button and prayed that you could pull off a decent landing. For racing games, you wiggled it back and forth either as fast as you could, or back and forth at a certain time to pull off a skating flow. The only game that I can remember that required any type of strategy was the bobsled. As you flew down a half pipe at amazing speed, you had to try to direct your team in certain directions. I remember it being extremely difficult and I never managed to reach the end.

The worst event out of the entire game was, of course, the figure skating event. There is no possible way to pull off spectacular moves other than jerking the joystick in random directions. From time to time you'll actually manage a trick, but it seemed completely random. The AVGN had a review about this game in the past and he had a really difficult time with this event. The Commodore version seems a bit easier as you don't fall down quite as much, but there are still no clues to let the player know what to do. For the NES version, it seems all you ever do is fall on your ass. If you're able to learn one move on the Commodore 64, feel free to repeat it over and over again. While most of the games end relatively quickly, figure skating seems to last an entire lifetime. You feel as if you've been skating on that circle of ice since the moment you turned on the console. The music doesn't help either, and you just wish you could skip the event altogether. The final straw is that figure skating has no crotch shots whatsoever.

(Worst event ever. It's like 30 minutes of failure.)

For a game from the late 80's, Winter Games was quite horrible. Oddly enough I returned it over and over. It's just one of those games that you want to try and put up with. Epyx put out a Winter Games II as well as a Summer Games series. After Winter Games was released, there was kind of an Olympic trend by other companies who wanted to give the genre a shot. I still own a few of those and some are a bit better than Winter Games. I almost want to say that the NES Power Pad had an Olympic type game which totally wore me out. With the Wii out now, you'd think some sort of Olympic game would have been mastered. So far I've only spotted Winter Sports and it seems that the ratings for that aren't too great either. For those who have access to the once might Commodore 64 and are still pumped from the current Olympics, try your hand at Winter Games. Although a bad game, Winter Games will always remain a part of my childhood. It gave me a chance for the gold, and that's all that matters.

(Thanks to lemon64.com for providing awesome screenshots.)