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"Me find this best olympic game ever!"

It's been awhile, hasn't it?

In its official 10-year life span, the Commodore 64 had many, many, many companies come and go. However, of those many, few lasted and managed to crank out hits all throughout its life, and even fewer lived on to flourish in the life after Commodore. Among those very few that remained when the smoke cleared, and perhaps the most prestigious of all the companies ever to start and reign on the home computer is none other than EA, Electronic Arts. You may know them for pumping out a good portion of this very month's best-selling games, creating one of the best-selling series' of all time, John Madden Football, Making a gargantuan merge with Squaresoft- Square EA (EA Square in Japan) and rocking your Genesis in the early 90's with such mainstream and cult hits as NHLPA Hockey, General Chaos and Sword of Sodan.

Before any of those glory days in the 16, 32/64 or 128-bit eras, however, was a fairly modest run on the C64 (which they were on even during the NES' biggest glory days) that included development and publication of games with small but loyal followings like the RPG Wasteland, the enhanced chess game Archon and the game you came to read about to begin with before being sidetracked by my rambling: Caveman Ugh-lympics, a game published some time in the middle of EA's C64 run in 1988. Published by EA, developed by Dynamix.

I don't even remember where we got this game, as it was probably just another in a 50+ pile of Commodore games purchased from a random flea market. What I do remember was that although it didn't get nearly as much playtime or loaded nearly as much your typical Last Ninja or G.I. Joe, when we played, it, dammit, we played it. It was one of the few games that we all played (though one far less and more suckierly than the rest of us) and we had to so in outbursts on lazy weekends or weekdays when our parents were gone we were supposed to be doing homework since it took so damned long.

So, you probably wonder just what Neanderthals did back in B.C. to entertain themselves for all those years when they had no videogames, no stereos, no computers and not even medieval activities like chess and sword fighting/practicing, don't you? Despite what one's lead to think, it wasn't all just about looking like total putz's humping lemurs and clubbing women on the heads to drag them into caves while people elsewhere were already building pyramids. Oh no, the ancient civilization (or at least six people in them) was more advanced than you think. Among who knows what else, bi-bi-annually, they held a very special competition at the name of the ''Ugh-lympics'', that went on even before the simple invention of the wheel.

As you may have guessed, the Ugh-lympics are a lot like what we call the Olympics nowadays, heck, even the events are quite similar to what we have today. The only large difference lies in how the Neanderthals had to work exclusively with what little was around them instead of simply building and creating the entire environment and everything they want for it like those of the worldwide and earlier Panhellenic Olympians. This no doubt created problems too, as many of the natural event conditions and obstacles could spawn very disastrous and unpredictable results.

These events were held by six very dedicated individuals at the names of Caruda, Gronk, Glunk, Thag, Ugha and Vincent. They were so dedicated that they continually held these games, despite being both the only participants AND the only spectators (but who knows- maybe they had stone cameras back then or something). They were determined to put one hell of a six-man/woman (that's the last I'll be gender-conscious just for one character in the entire game :P) show just for the love of the games! With these six competitors comes six events, and with these six events comes six categories (okay, you're right, so it's actually 8, but break the flow like that again and that will come with six cans of WHOOP-ASS!).

SPELUNKLING

GAMEPLEY: 9
DESINE: 9

(NOTE: if you plan to try out the game, don't read about every event, because it's more fun to see them for yourselves)

I'll go over the events here (and switch places with presentation and gameplay while merging it with design) in this special case. After all, why go over things twice when you can be informed and enlightened here? :P

Kicking things off is the Matetoss. On it, your caveman picks up his mate (obviously) then proceeds to gradually swing her around in circles, getting slightly higher and faster every revolution. Next thing you know, you'll be rotating 1080 degrees per second going more and more until she either slips from your grasp or you get too tired to hold her any longer. Upon release, she flies forward for as long as about 15 seconds then lands or bounces a few times on impact. The more ''foots'' away you toss her, the better. This event is all about rhythm; swinging your mate to the perfect cadence of the sound and character movements. If you're off-key for even a split-second on the faster swinging, your grasp slips.

Next up is Dinoracing. You don't race the dino's on it; you race on them like horses, even with the rope around their mouths. Your goal is simply to make it to the finish line before the your opponent does. In the meantime, you have to jump over any rock piles and whatnot dispersed about the stage while lest your dino fall down all while still keeping good speed. Speaking of speed, once you get enough momentum, you can club your dino sending it in an outburst of speed that makes it pretty much ignore any obstacles while in that outburst. However, if you overdo it, the walnut-brained creature gets confused and commences to stumble and run around in circles. So this event focuses on move management, as in knowing when to go crazy and when to tone things down.

Then we have Firemaking, where you must beat your opponent to the punch at making fire the only way a caveman can: rubbing two sticks together. Doing that, you'll eventually see coals and sparks in which you must take deep breaths and blow on it a few times to get a large fire started. Think it's simple as that? Fat chance, because your opponent is sitting right next to you on this event and if he fears you're too much closer to setting the fire than he is, he can club you in the head (unless you duck in time) or divert your attention by pointing you to birds while your little fire dies down and his heats up. Usually the only way to prevent this is by fighting fire with fire (excuse the pun) and resorting to the same dirty tactics yourself. This is the most complex event on the game, as it takes good strategy AND button-mashing (a combination you don't see everyday) with a pinch of timing.

Fourth is one of everybody's favorites: Clubbing, the most straightforward event of them all. The concept is simple: you and an opponent stand on the small peak of a mountain, you're both given clubs and you collective goal is to either knock your opponent out cold or force him off of the cliff to plummet to the very bottom, both through a number of methods. There's a high club (the longest and strongest), a mid-club (self-explanatory) and a low club (the weakest and shortest, but it makes your opponent hop while holding his leg, ergo possibly falling off the cliff). Fighting with those works like paper/rock/scissors. When a meteor flies by the sky (hey, that rhymed! rotflololmao), you can use the classic-caveman ''Look over there!'' technique and your opponent will often do so then end up seeing stars instead of comets. So this event mainly covers precision.

The Saber Race, is pretty similar to the Dinoracing; just without dinos. Like on the other, you try to outrun each other but on foot while still hopping rocks and pools, only with more incentive to run like hell: a bloodthirsty saber-toothed tiger coming for YO' ASSES! Even though logic dictates that it should favor chewing up a fat oaf like Thag over a skinny twig like Vincent, the tiger doesn't discriminate in the least. Knowing this, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive which at times includes climbing trees and even shoving your opponent backwards and closer if not directly to the clutches of the beast to keep it busy for a few more seconds. This one's pure, cutthroat action.

Our final event is the Dinovault, where you get a good sprint then pole vault over a T-rex as I'm sure you've already guessed (unless you thought the dinosaur was jumping...stupid). As usual, that's not all you have to worry about, because if there's a cliff between you and the T-rex, and if you land in the wrong place, you'll fall off of the cliff, and if you land in the VERY wrong place (or the T-rex has a successful snap at you), you'll be utterly devoured. Either way, your opponent takes a crack after you. Needless to say, this one stresses timing and momentum. Though still fun, I actually think it's the weakest event on the game, but the concept makes it a perfect climax.

The number of rounds of each event depends on the number of players (1-6). The Dino Vault has three leaps per player that alternate, Clubbing goes 2/3 for two players, 4/7 for four players and so on (which part was I talking about? The paragraph itself or just Clubbing? You'll never know, bwahaha!).

Though some control fairly sloppily (mainly the two events where you have to run on foot) these six events paired still provide the total package of gameplay: timing, aim, button-mashing, vigilance- you name it.

PRESENTASHIN: 9

The premise is assanine, yet brilliant. Simplistic, yet complex. Taking the common Olympics concept and putting a Stone Age spin on it sounds cheesy, but is executed very well and cleverly. Even past the novel incorporation of the caveman precise, there's plenty of humor in it, though mostly slapstick. There's little plot (besides the basic Ugh-lympics gathering and the goofy character bios on the character select screen), but plenty of silent dialogue. For example, on the Firemaking event, right before clubbing your
opponent you give a mischievous look in his direction, and after he's clubbed, birds fly around him until he swipes them away. When someone slips off of the cliff in the Clubbing event, there's a Wile E. Cyote-esque ''bye bye'' when he's in the air for a few seconds before taking the fall. So while the presentation is great, it only adds twists to something old rather than creating something entirely new.

I see that the major forms of media will never realize (or at least never want to realize) that humans and dinosaurs never lived at the same time.

GRAFICS: 7

The first thing most players were likely to say upon playing this in 1988 was ''Man! Look at the sprite size!'', not quite akin to what they said in 1990 while playing Strider, but the sprites are still quite large. It's almost amazing that this game could handle split-screen with both the caveman and the dinosuars racing. It's not all perfect, though. The animations are middle-of-the-road; amazing that such large sprites can move fine simultaneously but somewhat crude-looking in the framerate at times. The backgrounds are average too, looking like Stone Age/dinosaur drawings from an 8-year-old with someone polishing them up a bit after they were drawn. The scrolling is also sloppy, but no more so (maybe even less) than EA's efforts in the few years after that, like Road Rash.

SOUND (a caveman couldn't even misspell that): 7+

Nothing sounds very realistic, but as I've said, this is a cartoon-type game so it doesn't have to. The Matetoss is the sound's money moment, as it gives a ''swish'' every spin and a long soaring sound every second the mate is flying to conclude with a bopping sound for each bounce. Rubbing the sticks together on Firemaking also sounds great, and most everything else on the game is inspired. Sure many of the sounds are bleeps and bloops, but in some cases that actually adds to the prehistoric feel- and I want everything about the environment on this game to be prehistoric except for the gameplay, but the other version didn't know when to stop. I'll get back to the disgrace part later.

MUSICK: 5

The only tunes on the game is a spoof of the official Olympics torch-carrying song at the beginning and ending, and ''theme songs'' for every caveman on the character select screen much akin to that of a pro wrestler's. Most of it's goofy and primitive like it's supposed to be to follow suit with the everything else. The music plays a very minor part in the game, but what's there gets the job done; the job no one was hired for anyway.

CHALLENJE: 7+/?

The AI is somewhere in between. It rarely ever makes mistakes, but it doesn't give perfect and/or super-fast performances either. But who wants to screw around with the computer on an Olympics game anyway? Using it for practice is the only real purpose. As for playing human players, a caveman could tell you that that depends on his or her skill. There's no telling what event you'll be best at and when you shouldn't even bother picking up the controller. For example, in my fam, I did best at Dinoracing and sucked at the Matetoss, while one of my brothers was a Firemaking master but poor at the Saber Race, and we all have our share of collars at Clubbing.

That's not to be saying that it's all in the hands of the player; because every character has a special expertise for two events each, except for Gronk, who's (allegedly) good at all events and Vincent who supposedly can't do anything right. For example, Glunk specializes in Clubbing, in which he can take a better beating than most others, and Saber Racing, in which he can run at a slightly faster pace than most. Hope you're so lucky as to like different characters than your opponent(s) (like us), because there's no clone culling here. You'll probably have to end up stealing each other's characters. So even though the specialties can give you a head start (or definite edge) in events, you have to be a pretty diverse player to be able to master every one of them.

LONGLIVEITY: 7

The game has six events that are all nearly equal in terms of entertainment, is 1-6 players (on two controllers, two at a time), and has a perfect balance of two take-turns events, two fighting events and two split-screen racing events. The events are fun and fairly fast for families and friends to frequently **** their foes ferociously with fluctuating failures. Sounds like nothing could go wrong, doesn't it? That's where you're wrong, because like I said in the graphics section, this game is holding a hell of a lot for a C64 game, and because of that, not only does the game have excessive loading times, but they had to hold the game on three disks! Being two events each, you have to switch to side two on every first event then endure a little lag while after every second event, you have to switch disks then endure a LOT of lag!

Luckily, there's a practice mode where you can simply play one event the whole session- as long as you want with very little loading. Still, any event alone gets old after the first 20-or-so minutes, and you don't get the full experience unless you play the game from start to finish, in which I go back to horrid loading times. A no-win situation, eh? That's why it's best to play it just the way we did: in outbursts once every couple of months or so. Just wait for a rare day when you're ready willing and able to take out a few hours of a day to spend them on this nonsense.

OVERVEIW

BOOYAHKAH!

*The concept is ingenious
*Diverse events that demand eclectic expertise
*Multiplayer and truly good multiplayer at that
*Large sprites
*Amusing antics
*imaginative sounds

UGH!

*Nearly unbearable loading times
*Crude animation and scrolling
*Due to all of the crazy controller motions you're forced to do every event can knock your friggin' FINGERS off if you play them for too long

ME NEED HELP!

Always pay attention to your enemy, and set your standards on just being better than him rather than truly being good (warning: do not follow this advice for real life too, unless it's to somebody like me.)

ME FAVORITE PART!

Clubbing. This event alone can be a party sometimes.

WHAT YOU SAY?

Two years later this game was (sort of) released on the NES as Caveman Games. That port did nothing but harm to this game. First off and worst off, every event (especially the Matetoss) is HELL on the NES pad (and the controls were made less responsive overall on top of that). Next, they throw off the entire flow of the game switching the events around (clubbing's a very awkward start, for example) and the graphics and sound are made a lot worse. In short, it's a horrible port- like trying to play Streets of Rage on Master System or Street Fighter II on Commodore (well, maybe not that bad). It's a shame that most, especially today, get introduced to it by NES, in which they won't WANT to know what it was like at first.

On another note, I always wondered: on that version, on the MATEtoss, why's the mate Caruda tosses a female? It's either just more sloppy programming, or a question better left unanswered.

SO JUST HOW ADVANCED WERE STONE AGE OLYMPICS?

Very. Unfortunately, they may have been too advanced for their own good, as it often took these cavemen FAR too long to prepare for those events. That's probably why they had no audience. But for the participants when they were at it, there was nothing better. There wasn't a home competition with 4 or more participants better until one million, one-thousand and ninety-three years later on NBA Jam.


Reviewer's Score: 8/10 | Originally Posted: 06/14/02, Updated 06/14/02