Summer Games

Summer Games is a sports game published in 1984 for the Commodore C64, compete in the player in various Olympic disciplines. It was developed by Randy Glover at the company Epyx and distributed by the publisher U.S. Gold. The game was ported to numerous systems.

Development

Summer Games was an evolution of a game of development studios Starpath, which had recently been merged with Epyx. Developed by Scott Nelson for the Supercharger extension of the Atari 2600 Decathlon game Sweat! had been discontinued after the merger for the time being. As now approached the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and Epyx was under pressure to produce a hit, the idea of the game is reached again. Instead of the decathlon Olympic disciplines were now to choose from.

Under the direction of the programmer Stephen Landrum was the play of Randy Glover, Jon Leupp, Brian McGhie, Stephen Murdry, and Scott Nelson developed in less than six months. The code was written in assembler of low-level programming language, including a custom assembler was used on an Apple II. For the graphical representation of the game Epyx brought Erin Murphy for the first time a graphic designer in the development team.

Game mechanics

Up to eight players can participate for various nations in the following competitions:

• Pole vault
• Diving
• 4 × 100 m relay race
• 100M dash
• Gymnastics
• 4 × 100 m freestyle relay
• 100 m freestyle swimming
• Clay Pigeon Shooting

Since then Epyx had no license from the International Olympic Committee, the event in the game was simply called the " Epyx Games".

After choosing a nation, players have the option either to compete in all disciplines in succession to occur only in selected disciplines, or to practice a single discipline. The high scores are stored separately in all disciplines, which the player will be motivated, ability to continuously train in the various disciplines in order to surpass the high score.

To control the game, a joystick is used. This must be used in different ways: in some disciplines, the player must move it with the most uniform possible movements back and forth, in other disciplines, it depends on the time- exact sequence of complex movements or continuous, rapid actuation of the fire button (also button mashing called ) to. The fast right-left movements of the joystick, which were necessary mainly for running sports, made ​​for an above-average wear of the joystick.

Summer Games was approximately 100,000 copies sold to the seller for Epyx. Along with the various ports to other platforms, the number increased according to statements by Stephen Landrum even to about one million copies sold.

Successor

At the Summer Games already appeared in 1985, the Sequel Summer Games II, which was also written by Randy Glover. The playful implementation of the Olympic Games was continued later with the titles Winter Games, World Games, California Games and California Games II.

1988 followed with The Games: Summer Edition and The Games: Winter Edition graphically revised editions of the Games.

Currently, Ironstone, Magnussoft system and 3 have the license to use the name Epyx. This currently appear for different platforms games again whose name and design leans to the original.