I like the gameplay on the biathlon - the fact that your timing in skiing impacts your pulse, which impacts how fast the target in the shooting section moves. A good gameplay simulation on how "skiing more efficiently means you're steadier in shooting" in real life.
Also about the biathlon - you actually only ever need to push two directions while skiing: down when going downhill, right everywhere else. And the right taps have no real delay when going uphill, so with fast enough tapping you can actually maintain most of your speed even then.
I only know Winter Games for DOS, from 1991. Fancy 3d-ish graphics in every event, emphatic grunting sounds when athletes kick off from the start. Really shows the progress of computing from 1988 to 1991.
Very nice! I remember playing Winter Games on my parents Amstrad 464 from tape. IIRC you would load each competition separately from the tape, which made loading times even more egrigious. Therefore I played those I liked (and were not broken - tapes used to break all the time). I played Biathlon the most, I think. Getting the timing right was always a challenge for me back then. By the way, one of the best games I had on the Amstrad was Konami's Ping Pong. What makes this game stand out are its really well done controls. I still marvel at the precision you can get to in this game.
"You're an athlete at the 1988 Winter Games at Calgary, Alberta, Canada. You're about to move across snow and ice with as much speed, strength, endurance and grace as you can muster in the blustery cold. This is the winter portion of the world's foremost amateur sports competition. You'll match your skills against the top athletes from a hundred countries. Be proud. Today you stand among the elite few whose courage and stamina will be tested by these Winter Games. Listen. A fanfare of trumpets sounds as the WINTER GAMES flag is slowly raised. Thousands of white doves are released, symbolically to fly to the countries of the world with the message of peace-and the news that the Winter Games have begun. This is ik-your chance to go for the Gold!" C64 - the manual
"Hot dogging" is slang for show-boating which is slang for showing off, hence it's "hot dog" because you do tricks. The Atari version has worse graphics but it includes a luge game in addition to the bobsled.
Also as a little fun fact: Australia is featured in this game, but not in Winter Challenge. And the national anthem in this game is Waltzing Matilda, as our national anthem wasn't established until later in the 80s. But it's not like Australians cared anyway, because we don't even like our current anthem! We were even thinking of changing it one stage.
Summer Games 1 and 2 were much better. But, they also had very weird joystick mechanics that made my wrist sore, especially the cycling. For Summer Games, they reused the smoothly animated sprites from the Impossible Mission guy in the opening ceremony... gotta love that.
Comment unrelated to the video: Sometime last year I found out there's actually Mario fangames for MS-DOS. One is by Wiering Software and is called Mario and Luigi. Another I just discovered is Super Mario World DX. Both can be gotten from the Internet archive and I believe other sites as well. Not sure if those are your jam but they might be interesting to cover one of these days.
I'm not sure if it was just the crack that was distributed around my parts, or a legit bug in the game, but in the 1 minute figure skating, if you did nothing but tumble on your butt for the entire time (and a large enough number of times), you got a perfect 6.0 score. Also, as a kid, my friends and I never figured out the real scoring scheme for either of those events, so we just skipped them altogether, as well as the biathlon. Ain't nobody waiting for their turn to play for several minutes.
did you ever play Deluxe Ski Jump (2000) dos? ski jump games were like this genre of shareware almost for a brief moment in finland, along with frozen like fishing games.
@@Pixelmusement that skijumping game was really popular in finland among what you'd call normies, like playing at school etc. then again ski jump was like a national sport to follow on tv. it's still pretty popular. the frozen lake fishing game being popular i have harder time to explain since kids usually don't want to go do that IRL. it's kinda boring. you drill a hole and sit and wait.
The best Epyx "(XYZ) Games" title was California Games by far, in terms of how distinct each minigame is from one another, as well as its fun factor overall. The sales reflect that too.
On the Olympic torch thing - yes. At the close of ceremonies of one Olympics, they light the hand-held torch from the large flame, then it is carried over the next couple years to the location of the next Olympics, to light the flame at the next one. (They claim it is never extinguished in transit. Sure, yeah, I believe that, I swear.)
Supposedly they keep a stock of backup torches that got lit from the same flame-bloodline. So if the official torch is re-lit from these backups, it is still the same fire.
I mean, I understand the principle/lore with the torch, but scientifically it really doesn't matter since the fire itself isn't being transferred, you're just using the fire of one thing to ignite another thing. If you use a blue gas flame to light a piece of wood on fire that wood will burn orange, not blue. :P
I like the gameplay on the biathlon - the fact that your timing in skiing impacts your pulse, which impacts how fast the target in the shooting section moves. A good gameplay simulation on how "skiing more efficiently means you're steadier in shooting" in real life.
Also about the biathlon - you actually only ever need to push two directions while skiing: down when going downhill, right everywhere else. And the right taps have no real delay when going uphill, so with fast enough tapping you can actually maintain most of your speed even then.
yeah it's pretty good design that portrays what's the point of biathlon quite nicely.
I only know Winter Games for DOS, from 1991. Fancy 3d-ish graphics in every event, emphatic grunting sounds when athletes kick off from the start. Really shows the progress of computing from 1988 to 1991.
Who could forget that theme for Hot Dog Ariels:
Duh duh dah duh, da dah doh, da duh dah duoow doh, duh dah dow duh duooh dow duoooow...
Very nice! I remember playing Winter Games on my parents Amstrad 464 from tape. IIRC you would load each competition separately from the tape, which made loading times even more egrigious. Therefore I played those I liked (and were not broken - tapes used to break all the time). I played Biathlon the most, I think. Getting the timing right was always a challenge for me back then.
By the way, one of the best games I had on the Amstrad was Konami's Ping Pong. What makes this game stand out are its really well done controls. I still marvel at the precision you can get to in this game.
"You're an athlete at the 1988 Winter Games at Calgary, Alberta,
Canada. You're about to move across snow and ice with as much
speed, strength, endurance and grace as you can muster in the
blustery cold.
This is the winter portion of the world's foremost amateur sports
competition. You'll match your skills against the top athletes from a
hundred countries.
Be proud. Today you stand among the elite few whose courage and
stamina will be tested by these Winter Games. Listen. A fanfare of
trumpets sounds as the WINTER GAMES flag is slowly raised.
Thousands of white doves are released, symbolically to fly to the
countries of the world with the message of peace-and the news that
the Winter Games have begun. This is ik-your chance to go for the
Gold!"
C64 - the manual
"Hot dogging" is slang for show-boating which is slang for showing off, hence it's "hot dog" because you do tricks.
The Atari version has worse graphics but it includes a luge game in addition to the bobsled.
Also as a little fun fact: Australia is featured in this game, but not in Winter Challenge. And the national anthem in this game is Waltzing Matilda, as our national anthem wasn't established until later in the 80s. But it's not like Australians cared anyway, because we don't even like our current anthem! We were even thinking of changing it one stage.
Summer Games 1 and 2 were much better. But, they also had very weird joystick mechanics that made my wrist sore, especially the cycling. For Summer Games, they reused the smoothly animated sprites from the Impossible Mission guy in the opening ceremony... gotta love that.
The Games - Winter Edition is the superior winter game of I remember correctly.
Comment unrelated to the video:
Sometime last year I found out there's actually Mario fangames for MS-DOS. One is by Wiering Software and is called Mario and Luigi. Another I just discovered is Super Mario World DX. Both can be gotten from the Internet archive and I believe other sites as well.
Not sure if those are your jam but they might be interesting to cover one of these days.
I'm not sure if it was just the crack that was distributed around my parts, or a legit bug in the game, but in the 1 minute figure skating, if you did nothing but tumble on your butt for the entire time (and a large enough number of times), you got a perfect 6.0 score.
Also, as a kid, my friends and I never figured out the real scoring scheme for either of those events, so we just skipped them altogether, as well as the biathlon. Ain't nobody waiting for their turn to play for several minutes.
Apparently, the judges are fond of "so bad, it's good" type of performance. I am personally very fond of spectacular mishaps in professional sports.
Never did get these games much myself. The bobsledding seemed pleasant enough.
You know, as ubiquitous as these olympics games used to be, you don't really see them around much anymore.
The only thing I can think of is the Mario & Sonic at the *insert host country* Summer/Winter Olympics
Oh, the NES and (particularly) Famicom Disk System port of this one is notoriously poor.
did you ever play Deluxe Ski Jump (2000) dos? ski jump games were like this genre of shareware almost for a brief moment in finland, along with frozen like fishing games.
Nope. I don't think I've ever played any skiing games at all... I mean... apart from SkiFree because Windows 3.1 :B
@@Pixelmusement that skijumping game was really popular in finland among what you'd call normies, like playing at school etc. then again ski jump was like a national sport to follow on tv. it's still pretty popular.
the frozen lake fishing game being popular i have harder time to explain since kids usually don't want to go do that IRL. it's kinda boring. you drill a hole and sit and wait.
The best Epyx "(XYZ) Games" title was California Games by far, in terms of how distinct each minigame is from one another, as well as its fun factor overall. The sales reflect that too.
On the Olympic torch thing - yes. At the close of ceremonies of one Olympics, they light the hand-held torch from the large flame, then it is carried over the next couple years to the location of the next Olympics, to light the flame at the next one. (They claim it is never extinguished in transit. Sure, yeah, I believe that, I swear.)
Supposedly they keep a stock of backup torches that got lit from the same flame-bloodline. So if the official torch is re-lit from these backups, it is still the same fire.
I mean, I understand the principle/lore with the torch, but scientifically it really doesn't matter since the fire itself isn't being transferred, you're just using the fire of one thing to ignite another thing. If you use a blue gas flame to light a piece of wood on fire that wood will burn orange, not blue. :P
If Bond did this poorly in _For Your Eyes Only,_ the bad guys would have won. 😛