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Title World Games
Publisher Epyx/US Gold
Game Type Sport
Players 1-8
Compatibility A500-A2000
HD Installable No
Submission Seppo Typpö (groucho@pp.inet.fi) Profiled Reviewer

Review
After having carved their name into gaming history with Summer Games I and
II, and Winter Games, Epyx decided to extend their expertise away from
traditional sports events. They collected eight exotic events from various
parts of the world, waved their magic sports game creation wand and hey
presto - the latest addition into their 'Games' family was born.

World Games has the following events - weight lifting, cliff diving,
barrel jumping, bull riding, log rolling, slalom skiing, the caber toss
and sumo wrestling. The games range from ordinary Olympic stuff like
weight lifting to the rather strange caber toss where the aim of the game
is to throw huge wooden telephone pole as far as possible. Each event is
presented with an information screen and a short tune from the country
which hosts that particular game.

The game has all the standard Epyx sports games features - options to
compete in a single event, a selected subset of events or the whole 'World
Games' with one to eight human players participating in the action.
Converted from the Commodore C64 version by Westwood (who later created
games like Dune II) the Amiga version retains all the playability of the
original but also inherits the somewhat cruddy gfx and sound effects.

Each event is controlled with joystick. Unlike many arcade sports games
World Games relies more on dexterity and timing that brute joystick
waggling force. This means each event offers some extra challenge as the
right moves and timing must be learnt if the player wants to succeed in
each event. Luckily the game offers a practice mode which allows the
player to hone their skills before entering the actual games.

Apart from a new set of events, World Games offers very little that is new
to seasoned Epyx sports games players. Epyx tried very hard not to break
their successful formula and this 'stagnation in design' is sometimes
glaringly visible in some of the events in the game.

For novice players World Games offers an interesting peek into Epyx sports
sims allthough I'd recommend the somewhat easier Summer Games series over
this for their first Epyx game. World Games is a slightly flawed
masterpiece which once again excels in the fabulous multi-player mode.

Planning for another episode in Epyx "Games" series began in the middle of December 1985, after the production of Winter Games. World Games was picked from a pool of ideas that included Sci-fi Games, Ancient Greek Games and Medieval Games. Among the disciplines discussed (and dismissed) were surfing, BMX biking, wood logging and pistol duels.

The German national discipline was supposed to be soccer, or more precisely: penalty kicks. However, Epyx deemed this too difficult to implement, and chose Barrel Jumping instead. Allegedly, they got the idea from an American book which extensively described it as a German national sport. For the record: barrel jumping is unknown in Germany.

Near the end of production, some Epyx members went to a Scottish Week in a nearby city. When they witnessed the caber tossing contest there, they were shocked to see that the object of the discipline is not to throw the log as far as possible, as depicted in World Games, but to throw the log so that it lands on one end, stands straight, and then falls directly away from the thrower. This was not changed in the game since "nobody in the US understands this discipline anyway".

Epyx did the design and graphics for World Games, but not the sound and programming. Jeff Webb, a freelance composer, contributed the music. Programming was outsourced to an external team in Chicago, K-Byte. There, eight programmers focused on the eight disciplines; the routines for the menus and the score boards were taken from Summer Games 2. Programming took from March to September 1986. World Games was released in the US in early October.

Epyx had to produce a European C64 version of World Games. Two disciplines, Cliff Diving and Slalom, caused European C64s to crash. The problem: European C64s are built with a different graphics chip than US machines, adapted to the PAL TV standard rather than the American NTSC. The European version of World Games was released two weeks after the US version.

Source: Happy Computer magazine #4/87