Winter Games took the formula of Summer Games, the opening ceremony, the choice of nation, the anthems and the medals, and moved it to the ice and snow. It arrived in time for Christmas 1985, and the British magazines liked it even more than its summer predecessors. ZZAP!64 found some of “the best graphics yet seen on the 64” in it, and CRASH gave U.S. Gold’s Spectrum version 93%.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Epyx, with the programming done by an outside team, Action Graphics.
- Released: 1985, for the Commodore 64.
- UK publisher: U.S. Gold. Its Spectrum version was written by Sentient Software.
- Players: up to eight, each representing a country.
- Events: seven.
Why winter
Epyx had considered a winter theme for the sequel to Summer Games, but Summer Games II was due in the spring of 1985, and Epyx’s marketing staff wanted a winter game on sale in August or September, for the autumn and Christmas. So the winter game came second. In March 1985 Your Commodore reported the plan: Winter Games in September, with bobsleigh, ice skating, a grand slalom “and even barrel jumping whatever that is”. The slalom and the barrel jumping did not make it.
Craig Nelson, who had managed Summer Games, said Winter Games was the most unusual project of the series so far: Epyx designed it but Action Graphics wrote the code. There were fewer events, each designed so that it could be moved to other computers more easily. Epyx had just hired Matt Householder to manage its projects, and his first job was to finish this one. He flew out to work with Action Graphics for several weeks, then kept up the calls by phone. “Our phone bills must have been enormous,” he said, and the game missed its shipping date by only a couple of weeks.
The events
| Event | What you do |
|---|---|
| Hot dog aerials | Perform up to two stunts in a short jump, chosen from six joystick moves, and land cleanly |
| Speed skating | A head-to-head race down a 250-metre straight, skating in rhythm with the skater’s legs |
| Figure skating | Seven compulsory moves in one minute, scored out of six |
| Free skating | The same moves, three times over, in two minutes |
| Ski jump | Correct the jumper’s posture in the air, shown in a small window, for distance and style |
| Biathlon | Ski a cross-country course with a .22 rifle and hit five targets at each of four ranges; each miss adds five seconds |
| Bobsled | Steer through the bends, using a plan of the course and a view down the track |
Some of Epyx’s advertisements listed six events and left out speed skating. The versions ZZAP!64 and CRASH reviewed had all seven.
Reception
ZZAP!64 reviewed the Commodore 64 version in November 1985 and made it a Sizzler. One reviewer called it “the best sports simulation since Summer Games II” and thought the graphics even better than that game’s, singling out the animation in the hot dog event. A second called the bobsleigh “brilliant” and pointed out how much memory each event needed: the biathlon alone had four bitmapped screens. The third enjoyed it “immensely” but was disappointed that it looked so like its predecessors, and thought that if Epyx made more games of the kind it “ought to buck their ideas up a bit”.
U.S. Gold’s Spectrum version, programmed by Sentient Software, came out at £7.95 with the seven events in two loads. CRASH gave it 93% in March 1986, calling it “one of the best on the Spectrum”, and one reviewer thought it “the best sports game to date, with the possible exception of Hyper Sports”. The opening ceremony described in the instructions was missing, because the programmers “couldn’t quite fit it in”, and an errata slip in the box apologised. Another CRASH reviewer worried that shoppers would confuse it with Electric Dreams’ similarly named Winter Sports.
Other versions
Winter Games spread to most of the machines of the time. U.S. Gold announced an Amstrad CPC version alongside the Spectrum one, and American dealers were selling an Atari ST version by April 1986. In 1989 it was among the Atari 7800 games on sale in America, and British dealers were including it in an Amiga 500 bundle. Acclaim released a version for the Nintendo Entertainment System with four events.
Later accounts record that the Commodore 64 original was one of the games built into the C64 Direct-to-TV joystick in 2004, and that it was sold on the Wii’s Virtual Console in Europe in 2009.
Sources
- Your Commodore, March 1985: news of Summer Games II and Winter Games.
- John Jermaine, “Epyx and the Quest for Olympic Gold”, Commodore Magazine, July 1988, pp. 96–97: Craig Nelson and Matt Householder on the choice of a winter theme, Action Graphics and finishing the game.
- ZZAP!64, issue 7, November 1985, pp. 104–105: Commodore 64 review, a Sizzler (the seven events and how they play).
- ZZAP!64, issue 9, January 1986: U.S. Gold advertisement for Winter Games (six events listed; Commodore 64, Spectrum, and Amstrad “coming soon”).
- CRASH, issue 26, March 1986, pp. 132–133: Spectrum review (Epyx/US Gold, £7.95, Author: Sentient Software/US Gold; Overall 93%).
- COMPUTE!, April 1986: dealer advertisement listing Winter Games for the Atari 520ST.
- ACE, issue 21, June 1989: Atari 7800 titles available in the United States.
- Amiga Computing, April 1989: Amiga 500 pack including Winter Games.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly, issue 1, January 1989: Acclaim advertisement for Winter Games on the NES, with four events.
- Wikipedia, “Winter Games” (web, secondary): the C64 Direct-to-TV and the Virtual Console releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Games