I was an Atari kid. But, around the time the Nintendo came out I was looking to upgrade. One evening was gaming night for my local Scout troop. One member brought in their commodore. I spent the evening watching Ghostbusters, and waiting for my turn to play Winter Games. I was hooked. Instead of a Nintendo, I talked my mom into buying a used Commodore with about 150 misc. game floppies. I spent years discovering new treasures.
I always get the series mixed up with Accolade's Challenge series. Great video, I especially liked the clips at the end showing how it can go all wrong. 😂
The thing I remember most from Summer Games is the smoothness of the white doves(?) flying after the person lights the big bon fire with the torch at the beginning. The flying doves were just really impressive.
WOW, it's probably been 30+ years since I last thought of any of these games, and probably 40+ years since I last actually played one. LOL These games truly were "EPIC", and way ahead of there time, with some of the best sports level controls of all time. Thanks for the great vid, as it took me right back to the early 80's and my Apple II computer to memories I had long since forgotten.
I had C64 as a kid. Think I got it in 88 or 89 and I was always amazed at the smooth animation of the characters in Summer Games. Not bad for coming out of 1984.
That was the first thing that drew me to the game was the animation. Like I mentioned in the video it was the first game to feature a dedicated graphic artist.
oh my god I just burst into spontaneous laughter remembering my buddy and I playing Winter Games in the late 80s and our figure skaters dance routines just consisted of them sliding on their butts the whole time..
Great stuff! Have not played those in like 30 years, but I could still remember lots of the controls as I was watching the different events! Game play was top notch, simple yet diverse, and super tight controls!
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I remember somehow managing setting a close to perfect score in the Figure Skating part of Winter Games on my schoolmate's C64, and due to how it saved high scores, he was stuck with seeing it for years. He later told me how it irritated him to no end, as it was impossible for either of us to understand how that part of the game actually worked. Ah, great times. Getting myself a 1541 so I could finally get rid of the old cassette player was the height of my youth. Saved for it for a looong time. Anyhow... thanks for bringing back all these memories. It was a real treat.
I played Daley Thompson’s Decathalon and Konami’s Hypersports but the Epic games were head and shoulders ahead for the animation of characters and making the game feel like a real Olympics with ceremonies. I liked them all but Winter was amazing and they really stretched the C64s capability. I’d totally forgot about World Games but had played it. Thank you for an absolute storming documentary and bringing back some very fond memories.
Thanks for the very nice comments. I was always a fan of track and field style games especially hyper sports. This series of games were excellent and they just kept getting better as the series progressed. My favorites were winter games and California games. Like I mentioned in the video, the reason the graphics and animation were so good was because of the graphic artist they hired. Prior to that most games were designed by one person who did everything including the graphics and sounds.
Loved this series. I liked the Summer Games games best personally, but that might have more to do with everything else that was happening in the world at the time. 1984/85 is where I can start remembering a lot of things that happened in my life as a kid instead of just snatches of memory. Things like bringing dried veg and cans of other food for the starving in Africa and Band Aid was in the charts. Christmas 84 was great from a kids perspective and 2 gifts were Summer games 1 and Ghostbusters. Loved them both. I recall Daley Thompson's Decathlon that was released in 84 for C64 being a real joystick killer, give that one a go if you haven't, you may not have played it as Daley Thompson was an athlete from the UK. It could have been released under a different name in North America.
I don't think it was released over here Because I Only heard of it from reading European Gaming magazines growing up. Thanks for sharing your memories :-)
Great games. I played all of them on my 64. I loved California Games on my Lynx. I'm surprised you didn't mention the joystick Epyx game out with that was designed especially for those speed-stick events.
Epyx was a favorite of mine growing up. I loved all their games, including their Olympic-style sports titles (i.e. Summer Games, Winter Games, World Games, etc).
I like your channel ! I find it very original to handle the video games history with those kind of mini very well-done documentaries. Merci pour ce travail !
12:31 The C64 might have died out early in the USA, but over in Europe, it was still the go to system for gaming on a budget and didn't die out until 1992. Hardly anyone bothered with the NES in Britain. Epyx were fantastic developers for the C64. Impossible Mission and California Games being my 2 personal favourites from the publisher.
I played almost all of them. My favourite was the first California Games. I do remember playing two player for some of the games on the school PCs (complete with monochrome hercules graphics)
Yes the first California games was one of my favorite as well. I didn't care for California games 2 because the events just didn't look very fun. We didn't have those PCs when I was in school. We had one room that had one Commodore 64 and that was it.
I remember playing a "Games" title for the NES, it had the Cliff Diving, Weight Lifting, after you learn the timing you can do well, barrel jumping, Bull Riding, and Sumo.
I remember a version of Winter Games on the Apple Macintosh, it was black and white if I remember correctly. My friend had the original mac with the monitor/floppy drive all in one
PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries it was mid 80’s, I was in awe just because they had this super nice Apple computer but was black and white. Yes it was fun to play on macintosh but I preferred to play on Commodore 64
Well, no wonder California Games was a Lynx launch title... From what I remember, the Lynx was Epyx's pet project, but they couldn't quite manage it so Atari ended up releasing it. Not really my kinda game, but still fascinating nonetheless.
When playing Winter Games' Biathlon against a friend, I actually got a blister on my hand from rubbing the joystick so hard! Oh, the memories of that patch in the palm of my hand at school...
I still remember the noise the wico joysticks make when you are 'wacking' the stick back and forth when doing the running events (you get the picture 🤣😂🤣), especially with your friends..
summer winter and world games were very popular, epypx did a good job, its a shame the multi event sports games were pretty much dead by the mid 90s always found is weird that these sort of games died, they are so simple andand yet so much fun and can have a layer of deapth to them to, then again i guess it was a sign of the times, the scrolling beat em up text adventures and other genres saw there peaks and eventually throughs, kinda weird looking back now how many genres have died
I think a lot of it had to do with the 1984 Olympics being in Los Angeles. Track and field came out at just the right time to take advantage of this. I think the genre just ran its course because there's only so many different ways you could present an event and then waggled the joystick as fast as you can. I did like international track and field on the PS one because that brought 3D graphics into it. But then a couple of sequels later they stop making the game.
Hi pat just found this video of yours i have to say the only game i had was winter sports for the zx spectrum oh boy was i rubbish at it but i still loved it the bobslay was the 1 i allways wanted to play but never could cheers great video regards ricky
Little bit of cartoon Trivia: For Season 2 of "Captain N: The Game Master," Kevin and the N-Team are having fun in the "California Games" game world, but Dr. Wily decides to up the ante by bringing in people from Kevin's real-life world into there. Kevin challenges Wily to a game of football with both Kevin's classmates and N-team teammates making up one side.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I´am dead serious and you are providing so much insight on topics I thought I already knew inside out combined with visuals and a narrative that´s a joy to listen to and watch! Please keep it up! =)
Gotta love that suicidal cliff diving mini game,.......she made the triple let's see the landing aaaand thump ohhh rock face......that where the Batman sound should have been
Woo I remember playing these games back in the 80s. I even had a pair of EPYX joysticks, cause I wore out too many regular joysticks playing these over and over. Great times and sore hands back then.
The c64 was still pretty big well up until the early 90s here in the UK. In fact aside from the gameboy, Nintendo never really made any inroads here until the SNES came out (the crash only effected the US and Canada). In fact the Master System was far more successful here than the NES was.
I LOVED this. Super informative and well-researched. I had no idea about the planned nudity in California Games! It seems like a fairly common thing for programmers in this era. I was trying to find another source on this fact and came up with nothing. Do you know where you found out about this?
Oh yea! Temple of Apahia! That was a classic, I was ... maybe 6 or so when I first played it ... and it had a ... troublesome copy protection ... the loot you got was in code, like a symbol, and to know what the loot was you had to refer to an included card in the box to see if it was valuable, worth while, or the ultimate in treasure. Of course ... I think my dad did buy this one, but, there were also photocopied version of this copy protection card we had. Yea, you see, I really did not know computer games were even sold in stores until we got the NES in the 80's. My father would bring me and my brother to ... ahem ... video game copy protection "cracking" gatherings ... which I was told by him a few months ago the FBI had a $10000 bounty to catch this group. Funny enough, the same govern,etc that was looking for this group also employed 98% of the "gentlemen" who were attending ... since they were all of the US armed forces. LOL is that the ironic of irony or the iron of the iron men? I dunno what the hell that last bit I typed is supposed to mean. Just ... ignore this entire post ...
LOL!! Holy moly I had heard about these gatherings growing up but never knew anybody that actually attended one. Not sure if they were big here in the states or not. Thanks for the info though that is quite a tale :-) Glad you like my video
Ah, the old days when you had to leave the house to swap cracked games! Grabbing a magnet link or ten and filling a four terabyte SSD isn't quite the same.
Great video. I'm glad you discussed a whole series. If I dare suggest something.. How about LucasArt games? Might have to break it up into eras with Maniac Mansion/ Zakk McKrakken and the Alien Mindbenders / Loom / Indiana Jones and Maniac Mansion 2 ... then do another episode on all the Monkey Island games (best series ever), then another episode of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max and whatever else there was until its untimely demise. Those puzzle games were the best!
For sure- just to give more great series ideas for the future. Thats why I was suggesting chapters. Or you could just do one on Manaic Mansion and the start of LucasArts - and another one on Monkey Island - the greatest games ever made. :) Cheers!
Another favorite (not by Epyx but EA) was Caveman Ughlympics for the C64. Anyways, Epyx was one of the kings of the Commodore back in the 80's. A very top quality company. However, all their games were cracked by Eagle Soft Inc. (which had some of my favorite cracktros). Great video. Brings back so many memories.
You have to wonder how much piracy affected the Commodore 64. I guess it was just as bad on the Amiga and other micros at the time But seeing that Eagle soft intro will forever be burned into my brain :-)
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I think piracy actually helped Commodore sells but hurt the software developers. I lived in an area where you couldn't buy C64 games anywhere (I lived in a small town away from everywhere) so the only way you could get games was either through a magazine (which you'd be lucky to receive anything) or from the local college kids. Over the years, and this is no joke, I ended up with damn near 600+ floppies filled with games, tools and production software. I think I had more games than I had audio cassettes.
@@ikeyasector Holy moly. There were a couple of places to buy 64 software at such as Kmart and Toys "R" Us but that was basically it. You could also return opened software at the time which I got to know the management and Toys "R" Us really well because I like to try the games out and then return them 🙂
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries All we had was a Wal-Mart and they didn't carry anything C64 related. They sold C64s and 1541s at Sears a few towns over but the only games they had (which I bought) was Conan, Links, Solo Flight. I did order Ultima III and IV from their catalogue to pick up at their store. Mostly because I had the pirated copies and loved playing it but didn't know what to do without the books and manuals. But they mostly carried things like word processors and such. Crazy enough, there were allot of people in my area that owned a Commodore 64 and only five I can think of that owned an Apple II or IBM PC (or compatible). My home town use to have a population of like 8,000 (or less) back in the 80's.
Don’t forget the Atari Lynx-Epyx’s hardware that Atari bought, from them-with the best version of _California Games,_ and one of the three best *original* pack-in games, ever (along with Donkey Kong (ColecoVision) and Super Mario Bros. (NES). Epyx had more than a passing relationship with Atari, with California Games...
We had both here in the states. I loved winter games probably my favorite in the whole series. Championship wrestling was an excellent game especially the sound
I actually get vertigo in games jumping down from high places. And today I found out even 8bit game causes the same feeling. I really felt that hit on the rocks
I vividly recall playing California Games at friends house. I probably played the others but not to any real length as they didn't stand out in my head. I was never particularly good at it, but I had some fun nonetheless. Sports games have always been a kryptonite for despite typically being able master most games. I played track and field far more than The "Games" series. Particularly the PS version of Track and Field as my middle brother and one of my friends murdered controllers on that.(The square and circle buttons were clearly lower on the controller than the rest.) They'd shatter records like it was the all drug olympics like the SNL skit heh. They'd hit the buttons with such intensity they'd clear the highest height on pole vault and high jump. Once they did the game would allow them to raise the bar to where was floating. I was happy if I didn't come in last place as I never was going be first when we played with 4 players.
LOL at the all drug Olympics reference On Saturday Night Live I really liked the PS one version as well. I used to play that a lot with my nephew it was so much fun.
Those were really cool games. I remember playing all of these and having a great time. The first Summer Games was probably the worst game for the joysticks on the C64. Funny to see how the characters, and the way they jup, look like the one in Impossible Mission, another great Epyx game. Just the name Epyx ment quality back in the day.
They were definitely joystick killers. I think the reason they look so similar to impossible mission is because they hired a graphic artist to design all the graphics for the games.
My god. I remember my older brother and I spending the ENTIRE summer playing Summer games back in the day. We would come to the other bragging about beating a record, and would strive the rest of the day, or week even, trying to beat it. I would only play this or let people play it in it's original form. I want them to suffer as we did. Get that mid hand blister. When Winter games came out, it was on for us all over again, ESPECIALLY with Figure skating. OMG we tried really hard to get good scores, and it seemed like the timer lasted forever, but the background music was too good. BTW, my brother always chose USA and I always chose USSR, due to the cold war at the time.
Okay...seriously...this was 1984?! These games may look primitive today; However, this game looks a full generation ahead of where it was. Especially in the animation department. We wouldn't see animation like that until Prince of Persia and Aladdin for the Genesis/Snes! This damn thing had three layers of parallax scrolling....that's literally unheard of back then. The 16-bit consoles Genesis and Snes were capped out a three moving backwards unless they used clever tricks. This was a little before my time as I started with the Nes in 1985 and Master System in 1986.
Like I said in the video, they were one of the first companies to hire a graphic artist which would explain why he animation was so good. And with each new release everything just kept getting better and better.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries Yes, I was actually agreeing with you. What blew my mind (still does) is how absolutely stunning the games are for the limited hardware. Can you imagine what they could have done on a...I don't know a Neo Geo?
"Barrel jumping from Germany"... yeah, I remembered that back then seeing it in WORLD GAMES... and neither then nor today anybody knows this kind of sport in Germany. No idea what made them make think we even know that sports.
And then, she transitions into a "reverse splat fall off low bar"...magnificent splat, a 1.6. No, wait...a 0.4. The uneven parallel bars was impossible for me to understand growing up. I just waggled the joystick randomly and hoped for something great with a perfect dismount. Where was the hammer throw fault for Summer Games in Seoul where you release too early?
"The Commodore 64 had a lot of quality software in its lifetime, but there was one company that was head and shoulders above the rest..." Microprose?! =) "Epyx Software..." ... Oh. =/ "Summer Games sold over 200,000 copies!" And one of them was mine. =) "My absolute favorite game in the series is up next and that is Winter Games." Great game, but I think I liked the surfing in "California Games" the most out of all of them.
Epyx software were probably the most consistantly good developers of the C64 stateside - Impossible mission was one of the best on the system - but for my money good as they were there's no way they were head and shoulders above the rest.
They were certainly more consistant than most developers. Phaps I'm not giving them enough credit because whilst they did a great job on them I didn't find multi event games that inspiring. As I said thou impossible mission was a standout classic and come to think of it, they did pitstop II which was very good. Bur if you talk of an 8 bit developer being head and shoulders above the rest my immediate thought is Hewson (Craftgold)
seriously why hasn't the epyx games series been remastered?, i played quite a few olympic sports style games since,, and non of which came even remotely close to the originality playability and sheer fun the original it was and still is imho one of the best games ever and one of the hallmark games to really show that local multiplayer games worked....instead sports games (not sims)..they all seemed to follow oceans' decathlon style of play, and no compant seemed to pick up on the magic of the epyx games series particularly SG2 Wo,G Wi.G and CG
Doesn't California Games also play Wipeout during the surfing game? I enjoyed all the Games series on the C64, but I think World Games was my favorite just due to the variety of events. I used to be pretty good at weight lifting, barrel jumping, caber tossing and cliff diving. I sucked at bull riding, log rolling and sumo wrestling. I think I did OK at skiing. I liked some of the events in California games, but I wasn't very good at most of them. California Games II sucks though. It's like it was designed by a completely different company.
It plays a knockoff version of wipeout It's hard for me to pick which one is my favorite because they were all pretty good. World games would definitely be towards the top. The reason the second California games wasn't as good was because the company was putting a lot of energy into developing the handheld that will go on to become the Atari lynx.
That's a poor excuse. Changing the colors should have been pretty easy to do. They ported the VGA menu image to the Amiga so they knew enough to be able to do that. I know that just changing the palette colors would result in some weird coloration since EGA only uses 16 colors, but the Amiga has 32 colors in 320x200, so they could have just recolored anything that looked weird. I don't have the knowledge to do it, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't fairly trivial for a hacker to recolor the graphics.
I was an Atari kid. But, around the time the Nintendo came out I was looking to upgrade. One evening was gaming night for my local Scout troop. One member brought in their commodore. I spent the evening watching Ghostbusters, and waiting for my turn to play Winter Games. I was hooked. Instead of a Nintendo, I talked my mom into buying a used Commodore with about 150 misc. game floppies. I spent years discovering new treasures.
I always get the series mixed up with Accolade's Challenge series. Great video, I especially liked the clips at the end showing how it can go all wrong. 😂
Glad you enjoyed it!
The thing I remember most from Summer Games is the smoothness of the white doves(?) flying after the person lights the big bon fire with the torch at the beginning. The flying doves were just really impressive.
They were, as a matter fact all of the animation in the game was really smooth
WOW, it's probably been 30+ years since I last thought of any of these games, and probably 40+ years since I last actually played one. LOL These games truly were "EPIC", and way ahead of there time, with some of the best sports level controls of all time. Thanks for the great vid, as it took me right back to the early 80's and my Apple II computer to memories I had long since forgotten.
Absolutely, glad you enjoyed the video. Thank you so much
I had C64 as a kid. Think I got it in 88 or 89 and I was always amazed at the smooth animation of the characters in Summer Games. Not bad for coming out of 1984.
That was the first thing that drew me to the game was the animation. Like I mentioned in the video it was the first game to feature a dedicated graphic artist.
oh my god I just burst into spontaneous laughter remembering my buddy and I playing Winter Games in the late 80s and our figure skaters dance routines just consisted of them sliding on their butts the whole time..
LOL
We would all laugh at the hot dog game. It was fun to see how many times we could flip! Lol
Great stuff! Have not played those in like 30 years, but I could still remember lots of the controls as I was watching the different events! Game play was top notch, simple yet diverse, and super tight controls!
Straight in the feels. I miss the old bread basket.
Oh yes, the old breadbasket :-)
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I remember somehow managing setting a close to perfect score in the Figure Skating part of Winter Games on my schoolmate's C64, and due to how it saved high scores, he was stuck with seeing it for years. He later told me how it irritated him to no end, as it was impossible for either of us to understand how that part of the game actually worked.
Ah, great times. Getting myself a 1541 so I could finally get rid of the old cassette player was the height of my youth. Saved for it for a looong time.
Anyhow... thanks for bringing back all these memories. It was a real treat.
I played Daley Thompson’s Decathalon and Konami’s Hypersports but the Epic games were head and shoulders ahead for the animation of characters and making the game feel like a real Olympics with ceremonies. I liked them all but Winter was amazing and they really stretched the C64s capability. I’d totally forgot about World Games but had played it. Thank you for an absolute storming documentary and bringing back some very fond memories.
Thanks for the very nice comments. I was always a fan of track and field style games especially hyper sports. This series of games were excellent and they just kept getting better as the series progressed. My favorites were winter games and California games. Like I mentioned in the video, the reason the graphics and animation were so good was because of the graphic artist they hired. Prior to that most games were designed by one person who did everything including the graphics and sounds.
Loved this series. I liked the Summer Games games best personally, but that might have more to do with everything else that was happening in the world at the time. 1984/85 is where I can start remembering a lot of things that happened in my life as a kid instead of just snatches of memory. Things like bringing dried veg and cans of other food for the starving in Africa and Band Aid was in the charts. Christmas 84 was great from a kids perspective and 2 gifts were Summer games 1 and Ghostbusters. Loved them both. I recall Daley Thompson's Decathlon that was released in 84 for C64 being a real joystick killer, give that one a go if you haven't, you may not have played it as Daley Thompson was an athlete from the UK. It could have been released under a different name in North America.
I don't think it was released over here Because I Only heard of it from reading European Gaming magazines growing up. Thanks for sharing your memories :-)
Another excellent documentary. I enjoy the format a lot because it is simplistic and informative at the same time. Nice work
Thank you so much, glad to have you on board
No worries. I look forward to more
Great games. I played all of them on my 64. I loved California Games on my Lynx. I'm surprised you didn't mention the joystick Epyx game out with that was designed especially for those speed-stick events.
I thought about including the joystick but didn't think it was relevant to the games. Was it really designed forThis series? I didn't know that
8:00 Is Santa Cruz skateboards not worth mentioning it? :)
Love your vids as usual. Keep up the good work. Would love to see your take on skate or die.
Thank you, skate or die would be a good one to cover. I will keep that in mind
Gateway to Apshai on the C64 was one of my first loves :)
Mamba Snakes are the worst!
I was scared of the vampires. And the death sound. And when you would go into an uncharted part and the enemy alert noise startled me.
Epyx was a favorite of mine growing up. I loved all their games, including their Olympic-style sports titles (i.e. Summer Games, Winter Games, World Games, etc).
They made a lot of great games including impossible mission, championship wrestling and a lot of others I can't think of right now :-)
I like your channel ! I find it very original to handle the video games history with those kind of mini very well-done documentaries. Merci pour ce travail !
Thank you very much, glad you enjoy my content so much.
12:31 The C64 might have died out early in the USA, but over in Europe, it was still the go to system for gaming on a budget and didn't die out until 1992. Hardly anyone bothered with the NES in Britain. Epyx were fantastic developers for the C64. Impossible Mission and California Games being my 2 personal favourites from the publisher.
I grew up with the Commodore 64 and they were my favorite developer.
Yup, in fact the Master System was far more successful in Europe than the NES was
What a great video. Thank you! This is probably my favourite of all your work.
Great video. My personal favorites were winter and world games on the Atari ST. Fantastic work Pat, as always!
Thank you very much. It's hard for me to pick a favorite out of the entire series but I loved winter and world games.
I had these games for Apple II! Thanks for the memories!
Great video PQC!
Congrats!!! ;-)
I remember "California Games" for DOS-VGA.
It was the absolute hit, back on it's day!
Thank you so much, California games was excellent back in the day.
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I LOVED these games and had more or less forgot about them completely! hah, Winter Games was my favorite too!
There is something about winter games that I can't quite put my finger on. It was either the ski jump or the hot dog that was my favorite
I played almost all of them. My favourite was the first California Games. I do remember playing two player for some of the games on the school PCs (complete with monochrome hercules graphics)
Yes the first California games was one of my favorite as well. I didn't care for California games 2 because the events just didn't look very fun. We didn't have those PCs when I was in school. We had one room that had one Commodore 64 and that was it.
I remember playing a "Games" title for the NES, it had the Cliff Diving, Weight Lifting, after you learn the timing you can do well, barrel jumping, Bull Riding, and Sumo.
That would be world games
"Figure skating" and "Free skating" - collectively known as "Gracefully falling on my ass".
Then they added log rolling, in World Games, just in case players missed that pain...
“Oww.. My ass!!!” - Homer Simpson
I hated both figure skating events. Bored me silly (I was also crap at them).
I remember a version of Winter Games on the Apple Macintosh, it was black and white if I remember correctly. My friend had the original mac with the monitor/floppy drive all in one
I don't recall the Mac version, was it fun to play?
PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries it was mid 80’s, I was in awe just because they had this super nice Apple computer but was black and white. Yes it was fun to play on macintosh but I preferred to play on Commodore 64
PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries
www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/winter-games-apple-macintosh-128k-1852435576
Well, no wonder California Games was a Lynx launch title...
From what I remember, the Lynx was Epyx's pet project, but they couldn't quite manage it so Atari ended up releasing it.
Not really my kinda game, but still fascinating nonetheless.
The details are a bit foggy when I can recall Atari managed to wrangle the lYNX from them due to some legal shenanigans.
Glad you enjoyed it
When playing Winter Games' Biathlon against a friend, I actually got a blister on my hand from rubbing the joystick so hard! Oh, the memories of that patch in the palm of my hand at school...
LOL, thanks for Sharing
I still remember the noise the wico joysticks make when you are 'wacking' the stick back and forth when doing the running events (you get the picture 🤣😂🤣), especially with your friends..
summer winter and world games were very popular, epypx did a good job, its a shame the multi event sports games were pretty much dead by the mid 90s always found is weird that these sort of games died, they are so simple andand yet so much fun and can have a layer of deapth to them to, then again i guess it was a sign of the times, the scrolling beat em up text adventures and other genres saw there peaks and eventually throughs, kinda weird looking back now how many genres have died
I think a lot of it had to do with the 1984 Olympics being in Los Angeles. Track and field came out at just the right time to take advantage of this. I think the genre just ran its course because there's only so many different ways you could present an event and then waggled the joystick as fast as you can. I did like international track and field on the PS one because that brought 3D graphics into it. But then a couple of sequels later they stop making the game.
Hi pat just found this video of yours i have to say the only game i had was winter sports for the zx spectrum oh boy was i rubbish at it but i still loved it the bobslay was the 1 i allways wanted to play but never could cheers great video regards ricky
Thanks Ricky, it seems any conversion of the game turned out pretty well for each system. My favorite was the long jump and the hotdog
Little bit of cartoon Trivia: For Season 2 of "Captain N: The Game Master," Kevin and the N-Team are having fun in the "California Games" game world, but Dr. Wily decides to up the ante by bringing in people from Kevin's real-life world into there. Kevin challenges Wily to a game of football with both Kevin's classmates and N-team teammates making up one side.
LOL, that's awesome. Thanks
Maybe one of the first video games ever played in black and green screen ...it was awesome
I have been there my friend :-)
I wonder who those sad people are that are downvoting? So well made Videos! Thanks!
I wish I knew, I wish I knew what they didn't like about the videos. Oh well, can't please everybody. Thanks for the nice words
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I´am dead serious and you are providing so much insight on topics I thought I already knew inside out combined with visuals and a narrative that´s a joy to listen to and watch! Please keep it up! =)
@@1981patx That's very nice of you to say. Glad you are enjoying my content so much. Thanks again :-)
6:26 Cliff Diving event. Ouch! I don't think he'll be able to try again after that.
This game was so much fun back in the day
There was also Apple II and Apple IIGS versions. The GS version of Winter Games was amazing - great graphics and fabulous music.
It seems like no matter which version you try it was still really good
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I would agree with that. Fabulous games on every system.
I enjoy your vids they're really nastalgic. Could you possibly think about doing the history of paperboy
The Movie Monster Game, and Summer Games was my childhood.
It was mine as well
Gotta love that suicidal cliff diving mini game,.......she made the triple let's see the landing aaaand thump ohhh rock face......that where the Batman sound should have been
LOL good call
Ahh.. thanks for bringing back the good times..
Thank you for watching
Log Rolling... Canada: oof.
LOL
Woo I remember playing these games back in the 80s. I even had a pair of EPYX joysticks, cause I wore out too many regular joysticks playing these over and over. Great times and sore hands back then.
The c64 was still pretty big well up until the early 90s here in the UK. In fact aside from the gameboy, Nintendo never really made any inroads here until the SNES came out (the crash only effected the US and Canada). In fact the Master System was far more successful here than the NES was.
I was amazed to learn that years later. I just assumed Nintendo was big everywhere
The log rolling event has Lumberjack Song as theme. And check out The Games: Summer edition easter egg on youtube...
Will do thanks
Broke my Wico on Summer Games for the C-64. Glued it over and over. Broke it again and again.
LOL, those darn track and field games ruined many a joysticks for me as well
Events include wrist pain and controller breakage. I never know Guybrush took up gymnastics after his successful pirate career.
LOL, no kidding
these games and Decathlon cost me soooo many joysticks ;) but gave a lot of pleasure playing :)
You and me both, I broke so many joysticks on those stupid games :-)
I LOVED this. Super informative and well-researched. I had no idea about the planned nudity in California Games! It seems like a fairly common thing for programmers in this era. I was trying to find another source on this fact and came up with nothing. Do you know where you found out about this?
It was in an interview with one of the developers I read in one of my old computer magazines. Thanks for the nice words
Oh yea! Temple of Apahia! That was a classic, I was ... maybe 6 or so when I first played it ... and it had a ... troublesome copy protection ... the loot you got was in code, like a symbol, and to know what the loot was you had to refer to an included card in the box to see if it was valuable, worth while, or the ultimate in treasure. Of course ... I think my dad did buy this one, but, there were also photocopied version of this copy protection card we had. Yea, you see, I really did not know computer games were even sold in stores until we got the NES in the 80's. My father would bring me and my brother to ... ahem ... video game copy protection "cracking" gatherings ... which I was told by him a few months ago the FBI had a $10000 bounty to catch this group. Funny enough, the same govern,etc that was looking for this group also employed 98% of the "gentlemen" who were attending ... since they were all of the US armed forces. LOL is that the ironic of irony or the iron of the iron men? I dunno what the hell that last bit I typed is supposed to mean. Just ... ignore this entire post ...
LOL!! Holy moly I had heard about these gatherings growing up but never knew anybody that actually attended one. Not sure if they were big here in the states or not.
Thanks for the info though that is quite a tale :-)
Glad you like my video
Ah, the old days when you had to leave the house to swap cracked games! Grabbing a magnet link or ten and filling a four terabyte SSD isn't quite the same.
The combining of Summer Games I and II also worked on the Apple ][ version.
Thanks for the info
I don’t remember watching this, TH-cam says I watched it. I realized I had PatmanQC on an auto play and all these played while I was asleep 😂
LOL :-)
Great video. I'm glad you discussed a whole series.
If I dare suggest something.. How about LucasArt games? Might have to break it up into eras with Maniac Mansion/ Zakk McKrakken and the Alien Mindbenders / Loom / Indiana Jones and Maniac Mansion 2 ... then do another episode on all the Monkey Island games (best series ever), then another episode of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max and whatever else there was until its untimely demise.
Those puzzle games were the best!
Possibly in the future. It would be massive though with every game in the series included. Thanks for the nice words
For sure- just to give more great series ideas for the future. Thats why I was suggesting chapters.
Or you could just do one on Manaic Mansion and the start of LucasArts - and another one on Monkey Island - the greatest games ever made. :)
Cheers!
Who are the 2 models?
Another favorite (not by Epyx but EA) was Caveman Ughlympics for the C64. Anyways, Epyx was one of the kings of the Commodore back in the 80's. A very top quality company. However, all their games were cracked by Eagle Soft Inc. (which had some of my favorite cracktros). Great video. Brings back so many memories.
You have to wonder how much piracy affected the Commodore 64. I guess it was just as bad on the Amiga and other micros at the time But seeing that Eagle soft intro will forever be burned into my brain :-)
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I think piracy actually helped Commodore sells but hurt the software developers. I lived in an area where you couldn't buy C64 games anywhere (I lived in a small town away from everywhere) so the only way you could get games was either through a magazine (which you'd be lucky to receive anything) or from the local college kids. Over the years, and this is no joke, I ended up with damn near 600+ floppies filled with games, tools and production software. I think I had more games than I had audio cassettes.
@@ikeyasector Holy moly. There were a couple of places to buy 64 software at such as Kmart and Toys "R" Us but that was basically it. You could also return opened software at the time which I got to know the management and Toys "R" Us really well because I like to try the games out and then return them 🙂
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries All we had was a Wal-Mart and they didn't carry anything C64 related. They sold C64s and 1541s at Sears a few towns over but the only games they had (which I bought) was Conan, Links, Solo Flight. I did order Ultima III and IV from their catalogue to pick up at their store. Mostly because I had the pirated copies and loved playing it but didn't know what to do without the books and manuals. But they mostly carried things like word processors and such. Crazy enough, there were allot of people in my area that owned a Commodore 64 and only five I can think of that owned an Apple II or IBM PC (or compatible). My home town use to have a population of like 8,000 (or less) back in the 80's.
Don’t forget the Atari Lynx-Epyx’s hardware that Atari bought, from them-with the best version of _California Games,_ and one of the three best *original* pack-in games, ever (along with Donkey Kong (ColecoVision) and Super Mario Bros. (NES).
Epyx had more than a passing relationship with Atari, with California Games...
I thought I talked about the Atari Lynx version in the video?
6:46 I like how the names are Monkey Island references, haha.
My favourites were Winter Games and Championship Wrestling (also an Epyx game) - did you not get this in the US?
We had both here in the states. I loved winter games probably my favorite in the whole series. Championship wrestling was an excellent game especially the sound
Epyx was an American company, so my guess is yes. LOL
Ouch! On the cliff dive you’ve got to “swan” it out more.
Absolutely, thanks
I actually get vertigo in games jumping down from high places. And today I found out even 8bit game causes the same feeling. I really felt that hit on the rocks
I remember playing this on my buddy's Lynx. The best part was trying to hit bird with the hacky sack
LOL, my favorite was always the surfing
1 error. The music for free skating was different than figure stating.
I loved World Games. Epyx also made Impossible Mission, which I could never complete.
Summer and winter games were also released on the Apple 2c
6:45 the bull winks at the player. Savage.
I vividly recall playing California Games at friends house. I probably played the others but not to any real length as they didn't stand out in my head. I was never particularly good at it, but I had some fun nonetheless. Sports games have always been a kryptonite for despite typically being able master most games. I played track and field far more than The "Games" series.
Particularly the PS version of Track and Field as my middle brother and one of my friends murdered controllers on that.(The square and circle buttons were clearly lower on the controller than the rest.) They'd shatter records like it was the all drug olympics like the SNL skit heh. They'd hit the buttons with such intensity they'd clear the highest height on pole vault and high jump. Once they did the game would allow them to raise the bar to where was floating. I was happy if I didn't come in last place as I never was going be first when we played with 4 players.
LOL at the all drug Olympics reference On Saturday Night Live
I really liked the PS one version as well. I used to play that a lot with my nephew it was so much fun.
This Video has Me Remembering The "Wife-Throw-Event" on CAVEMAN Games for NES.
I had the game for the Commodore 64
Cali games was the Lynx's 'killer app'...
It absolutely was, I bought MinE just for stun runner though
I love these games cliff diving was great!
The Sega Master system version of California Games was EPYX!
Those were really cool games. I remember playing all of these and having a great time. The first Summer Games was probably the worst game for the joysticks on the C64. Funny to see how the characters, and the way they jup, look like the one in Impossible Mission, another great Epyx game. Just the name Epyx ment quality back in the day.
They were definitely joystick killers. I think the reason they look so similar to impossible mission is because they hired a graphic artist to design all the graphics for the games.
6:38 The contestant's names are Guybrush and LeChuck...LOL
Good eyeballs :-)
Had Cal games and World games for a Tandy 1000.
The good old Tandy computer :-)
My god. I remember my older brother and I spending the ENTIRE summer playing Summer games back in the day. We would come to the other bragging about beating a record, and would strive the rest of the day, or week even, trying to beat it. I would only play this or let people play it in it's original form. I want them to suffer as we did. Get that mid hand blister. When Winter games came out, it was on for us all over again, ESPECIALLY with Figure skating. OMG we tried really hard to get good scores, and it seemed like the timer lasted forever, but the background music was too good. BTW, my brother always chose USA and I always chose USSR, due to the cold war at the time.
LOL, I used to play winter games I guess my brother all the time trying to be each other's record. Thanks for sharing your memories :-)
Okay...seriously...this was 1984?! These games may look primitive today; However, this game looks a full generation ahead of where it was. Especially in the animation department. We wouldn't see animation like that until Prince of Persia and Aladdin for the Genesis/Snes! This damn thing had three layers of parallax scrolling....that's literally unheard of back then. The 16-bit consoles Genesis and Snes were capped out a three moving backwards unless they used clever tricks. This was a little before my time as I started with the Nes in 1985 and Master System in 1986.
Like I said in the video, they were one of the first companies to hire a graphic artist which would explain why he animation was so good. And with each new release everything just kept getting better and better.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries
Yes, I was actually agreeing with you. What blew my mind (still does) is how absolutely stunning the games are for the limited hardware. Can you imagine what they could have done on a...I don't know a Neo Geo?
@14:50 Rider meet Horse, Horse meet Rider.
1:01 jumpman i played this game one millions minutes
So did I my friend
I miss that company
So do I, talk about quality content
The best game in the spirit of Summer Games is Decathlon. Look it up :)
I had it for my Atari 2600
We played the crap out of Winter Games on our C64!
It was so much fun :-)
I thought they took the character animation from Impossible Mission?
No, same graphic designer though
Someone was a Monkey Island fan, with names like LeChuck and Guybrush.
"Barrel jumping from Germany"... yeah, I remembered that back then seeing it in WORLD GAMES... and neither then nor today anybody knows this kind of sport in Germany. No idea what made them make think we even know that sports.
LOL, that's hilarious. I had no idea
you forgot about Apple II version..
Thank you
👍👍👍A+ my man
Thank you
i never could stand one iceskating jump lol
as seen in the video pat also had troubles 😅
Just noticed the names used in World Games....
And then, she transitions into a "reverse splat fall off low bar"...magnificent splat, a 1.6. No, wait...a 0.4.
The uneven parallel bars was impossible for me to understand growing up. I just waggled the joystick randomly and hoped for something great with a perfect dismount.
Where was the hammer throw fault for Summer Games in Seoul where you release too early?
nice Pink Floyd reference there with ummagumma
Thank you :-)
Gateway to Apshai was the best.
"The Commodore 64 had a lot of quality software in its lifetime, but there was one company that was head and shoulders above the rest..."
Microprose?! =)
"Epyx Software..."
... Oh. =/
"Summer Games sold over 200,000 copies!"
And one of them was mine. =)
"My absolute favorite game in the series is up next and that is Winter Games."
Great game, but I think I liked the surfing in "California Games" the most out of all of them.
California games was great as well but I always preferred winter games
I played a lot of California Games and it never dawned on me that the opening music was Louis Louis. The more you know. :)
Absolutely, it's a classic
His friends were knocking down his door to get into his Commodore 64
LOL
Nothing like a nice game of foot bag
The failures are awesome but when you are playing not as much
LOL, you got that right
Epyx software were probably the most consistantly good developers of the C64 stateside - Impossible mission was one of the best on the system - but for my money good as they were there's no way they were head and shoulders above the rest.
I always thought they were top-notch back in the day
They were certainly more consistant than most developers. Phaps I'm not giving them enough credit because whilst they did a great job on them I didn't find multi event games that inspiring. As I said thou impossible mission was a standout classic and come to think of it, they did pitstop II which was very good.
Bur if you talk of an 8 bit developer being head and shoulders above the rest my immediate thought is Hewson (Craftgold)
seriously why hasn't the epyx games series been remastered?, i played quite a few olympic sports style games since,, and non of which came even remotely close to the originality playability and sheer fun the original it was and still is imho one of the best games ever and one of the hallmark games to really show that local multiplayer games worked....instead sports games (not sims)..they all seemed to follow oceans' decathlon style of play, and no compant seemed to pick up on the magic of the epyx games series particularly SG2 Wo,G Wi.G and CG
Even a compilation with all the games in one place would be fantastic but they haven't even done that.
I played the shit out of California games, but I could never figure out half of them.
Doesn't California Games also play Wipeout during the surfing game?
I enjoyed all the Games series on the C64, but I think World Games was my favorite just due to the variety of events. I used to be pretty good at weight lifting, barrel jumping, caber tossing and cliff diving. I sucked at bull riding, log rolling and sumo wrestling. I think I did OK at skiing.
I liked some of the events in California games, but I wasn't very good at most of them. California Games II sucks though. It's like it was designed by a completely different company.
It plays a knockoff version of wipeout
It's hard for me to pick which one is my favorite because they were all pretty good. World games would definitely be towards the top.
The reason the second California games wasn't as good was because the company was putting a lot of energy into developing the handheld that will go on to become the Atari lynx.
They couldn't even be bothered to change the color palette on the Amiga, they just used the crappy EGA colors.
@@lurkerrekrul I guess their excuse is that was an early Amiga title and they hadn't come to grips with the hardware yet
That's a poor excuse. Changing the colors should have been pretty easy to do. They ported the VGA menu image to the Amiga so they knew enough to be able to do that.
I know that just changing the palette colors would result in some weird coloration since EGA only uses 16 colors, but the Amiga has 32 colors in 320x200, so they could have just recolored anything that looked weird.
I don't have the knowledge to do it, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't fairly trivial for a hacker to recolor the graphics.
WinterGames Events, FigureSkating&FreeSkating was TheWorst.
@5:25 Fail. @12:14 Fail.