After three years of Olympic events, Epyx went to the beach. California Games kept the familiar menu, the choice of up to eight players and the world records of its predecessors, but its six events were surfing, half-pipe skateboarding, BMX, roller skating, the foot bag and the frisbee, and each player competed for a sponsor instead of a country. On the Commodore 64 it won ZZAP!64’s Gold Medal. On the Spectrum, CRASH called it “the poorest Epyx release yet”. Two years later it was the game in the box with Atari’s new handheld, the Lynx.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Epyx. Project manager Matt Householder.
- Released: 1987, for the Commodore 64.
- UK publisher: U.S. Gold.
- Events: half-pipe skateboarding, foot bag, surfing, roller skating, BMX and flying disk.
- Sponsors: nine, including Casio and Kawasaki.
- Place in the series: fifth, after Summer Games, Summer Games II, Winter Games and World Games.
From “Rad Sports” to California
Householder said the idea came from him and his wife, Candi. Living near San Francisco, they were used to seeing cyclists and skateboarders doing stunts in Golden Gate Park and surfers at Santa Cruz, and one weekend she suggested that Epyx make a game about them. On 25 March 1986 he wrote a proposal for “Rad Sports”: two skateboarding events, two BMX events, surfing, windsurfing, hang gliding and parachuting. It also suggested promoting the companies that made the equipment, an idea Epyx’s marketing department took up.
It took almost a year to settle the design. Some of the team worried that nobody would know what “Rad” meant, and Bob Botch, Epyx’s vice-president of marketing, who had already named World Games, suggested California Games. Householder explained the choice: when people want to have fun, “California and the west coast come to mind”. The name helped fix the events. Programming began in January 1987 and finished in early July.
Two of the events had to be renamed. Paul Vernon, one of Epyx’s artists and a Hacky Sack enthusiast, suggested that game, but the name was a trademark, so it became the “foot bag”; the Frisbee became the “flying disk”. Chuck Somerville had been riding half-pipes since the early 1970s. Both acted as models for the artists, and Epyx held a “California Games clinic”, disguised as a company cookout, where staff in California costumes skated, threw frisbees and kicked a foot bag while a BMX rider and a skateboarder performed for the cameras. When someone discovered that the skateboarder could fly off the top of the screen, the team liked the bug so much that they left it in.
The events
| Event | What you do |
|---|---|
| Half-pipe | Pump up and down the ramp and time aerial turns, hand plants and kick turns, within 1 minute 15 seconds or four wipe-outs |
| Foot bag | Keep the bag in the air for 75 seconds with head, knees and feet, with extra points for stunts |
| Surfing | Ride the wave for a minute and a half, staying near the curl, while beach bums hold up score cards |
| Roller skating | Skate the length of a seafront boardwalk, avoiding cracks, grass and balls |
| BMX | Race a desert course with jumps and bumps, scoring for stunts; three easy falls or one serious one end the run |
| Flying disk | Throw a frisbee to a catcher in a lakeside park, scoring for the kind of catch |
Reception
ZZAP!64 gave the Commodore 64 version a Gold Medal in September 1987. “If you gather up all the superlatives from previous Epyx reviews and add them together,” one reviewer wrote, “you just might go half-way towards describing California Games.” He picked the surfing as his favourite: “fun to play, relaxing to watch and flawless in its implementation”.
The Spectrum version, published by U.S. Gold at £8.99, got a very different welcome. CRASH gave it 36% in February 1988 and called it “the poorest Epyx release yet”. One reviewer wondered whether “the Spectrum simply isn’t up to a game of this complexity, or because the programmers have skimped on this version”; another complained that each event had to be loaded separately “and when you get there it just doesn’t seem to have been worth it”. The disappointment lingered: reviewing Out Run in the same issue, a CRASH reviewer asked, “Why are US Gold doing this to me? First California Games turns out to be a massive disappointment…”
Other versions
By November 1988 British dealers were selling it for the Atari 2600. ACE reviewed the Sega Master System cartridge in June 1989, at £24.95, and thought it “smarter than all the other computer versions with the possible exception of the Amiga”, though it had lost the original’s multi-player option. Milton Bradley announced a version for the Nintendo Entertainment System the same year.
The most important was the Atari Lynx version. Epyx designed the handheld that Atari launched in 1989, and ACE reported from its first showing that the machine would come with California Games. That Christmas British mail-order dealers were selling the Lynx at £199.90 with the game. Not everyone was won over: reviewing Tetris for the Game Boy that November, ACE granted that the Lynx had “software like California Games”, but said it would trade all of it for Tetris.
A sequel, California Games II, moved to new events: hang-gliding, snowboarding, jet surfing and skateboarding down a drain. When the Australian Commodore and Amiga Review reviewed the Amiga version in November 1992, it found the formula “a little tired”.
Sources
- John Jermaine, “Epyx and the Quest for Olympic Gold”, Commodore Magazine, July 1988, pp. 52 and 98–99: interviews with Robert Lindsey and Matt Householder (Householder as project manager, the “Rad Sports” proposal, the name, the events, the foot bag and flying disk, the clinic, the half-pipe bug, the development dates).
- ZZAP!64, issue 29, September 1987, pp. 18–20: Commodore 64 review, a Gold Medal (six events, up to eight players, nine sponsors including Casio and Kawasaki).
- CRASH, issue 49, February 1988, p. 27: Spectrum review (US Gold, £8.99; Overall 36%). The same issue, p. 22: Out Run review.
- Atari User, November 1988: dealer list including California Games for the Atari 2600.
- ACE, issue 21, June 1989: Sega Master System review (£24.95 cartridge).
- Electronic Gaming Monthly, issue 1, January 1989: Milton Bradley’s California Games for the NES.
- ACE, issue 23, August 1989, p. 26: the Atari handheld and California Games. ACE, issue 26, November 1989: Tetris review.
- Computer & Video Games, issue 97, December 1989: mail-order advertisement for the Lynx at £199.90 with California Games.
- Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, vol. 9 no. 11, November 1992: California Games II review.