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Another Olympic Games has come and gone, and thankfully the real event wasn't quite as forgettable as the officially licensed video game.

In fact you'd be forgiven if you couldn't remember the last time an actually decent athletic type sporting game was produced. What's odd is that in the early days, before the concept of licensing such things as the Olympics, football, golf or any sporting event you care to thing of, these things were pretty good.

Maybe it's the fact that because expectations were simpler in those days, conceptually basic but well executed sporting titles shone like gold medals.

Here's a walkthrough of three of the major winners from the early days of video games.

Bronze Medal - Track & Field - Konami, 1983

Even though it pilfered the official games' title in the rest of the world (outside the US, it was known as Hyper Olympics) these being the early 1980s no-one had really considered monetizing the real thing, even though this was a huge arcade title ported to almost every home platform going. But it's the full cabinet treatment that most people of an age will recall so fondly. And those people are easy to spot, just look for the scarred knuckles repeated plays would cause. Track & Field was based around six events, ranging from the 100m Dash to the High Jump. Most of the events consisted of hammering three buttons; two for running, and one for the action, whether it be leaping a hurdle, releasing a hammer throw or leaping over a high jump pole. In the instance where a secondary event occured like the hammer toss, the action would stop very temporarily as an angle counter quickly ascended, requiring a quick hit of the action button as close to 45 degrees as possible to continue play.

Track and Field paved the way for athletic games to come with it's control method. And it's also the cause of so many knuckles losing their protective skin. Players soon realized that quicker times could be achieved by quickly rapping their knuckles across the two run buttons, rather than trying to tap them with their digits. Once skin was removed, techniques moved onto covering a bloody hand with a sweater sleeve. And once too many holes had inevitably been worn into the sleeves of the world's youth (and too many scoldings from angry mothers) came the most effective and sensible method of wrapping your hand in a rolled up sheet of paper, acting like some kind of guard between skin and plastic. Prolonged sessions would require a steady supply of new guards, as they'd inevitably disintegrate with each event played.

Silver Medal - Summer Games I & II, Winter Games - Epyx, 1984 / 5 / 6

I'm treating the two Summer Games collectively, even though they released separately in subsequent years, as they are both presented in exactly the same format but simply have different sporting events each. Borrowing heavily on Epyx's brilliantly smooth but often used human sprite animation from earlier title Impossible Mission, the Summer Games series allowed up to eight (but with a maximum of two consecutive) players to compete through the standard kind of events the Olympic games are most famous for; sprint, diving, swimming and onto more imaginatively represented challenges such as fencing, cycling and even an equestrian level. The Summer Games series would quickly establish Epyx's phenomenal knack for presentation, allowing each player to pick a country to compete for (and on winning a medal, that country's anthem would be splendidly recited) and "world records" set by players would be saved for beating on future attempts.

Winter Games continued the 'olympic' theme, but obviously shifted focus to snow based events rather than those of the track and field. Presented in exactly the same manner as it's warmer brethren, Epyx's imagination and execution improved greater still, with faithful renditions of events like the bobsled, biathlon and even figure skating.

Control was limited to home computing's single fire button and eight way directional joysticks, many of which would've no doubt been destroyed by frantic 'waggling', with Track and Field's left and right button bashing being adopted to a left and right movement of the stick.

Gold Medal - World Games / California Games - Epyx, 1986 / 7

Epyx were carving a niche, and were improving with every release. World Games was their most imaginative yet, but the Olympic theme was presumably becoming tired. So in addition to the more common and renowned events here such as slalom skiing, World Games introduced more novelty games like the scottish caber toss, canadian log roll or japanese sumo wrestling. Epyx were really squeezing the primary platform of the Commodore 64, with bigger animations that had more character than the flat, faceless sprites of earlier titles, but the gameplay was as rock solid as ever.

And the final release in what would be revealed to be just the first round of 'Games' titles, California Games would prove to be the biggest hit of them all. Every day events such as the Half Pipe, BMX, surfing and the frisbee really captured the imaginations of late 80s kids eager to experience the kind of sun bleached fun west coasters have seemingly all year round.

Epyx did continue with sports themes after California Games, with titles as unimaginative as The Games: Summer Edition and, yes you've guessed it The Games: Winter Edition - but due to an almost entire staff change at the software house, neither game really ought to be mentioned in the same breath as the truly inspirational output of the original team.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

Another Olympic Games has come and go

September 19, 2008

By Andy Barratt - G4 Canada