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Daniel Thomas MacInnes - 08/05/2011 |
Games like Summer Games are why Epyx was legendary. This was probably their best game on the Atari 800 (pity we never got Impossible Mission), and it's a different take on the Track-n-Field sports games. The designers put much more thought into the events than simple joystick waggling.
Diving was always a favorite, pole vaulting a close second. The running and swimming events were more boring, and gymnastics was damn near impossible to figure out - once we learned what to do, it became much more fun.
To my mind, this is still the gold standard in Olympics videogames. |
| I always played the diving portion the most since it was a lot of fun and didn't require any joystick pounding or as much critical timing and coordination as the others. I liked the gymnastics, too. My sister, much to my chagrin, regularly got a perfect "10," back-to-back, so I never could beat that score! Never cared for the skeet shoot. I missed more than I hit. The swimming events were a little tedious.
There was one HIGHLY annoying bug. If you got a "DQ" on the swimming freestyle events, that became a world record and you could not undo or beat that score. Unless of course, you got another DQ! |
| Andreas Koch - 18/08/2007 |
Well,
the cart. version differs from the disk version:
- max. 3 players can play
- no highscore / olympic records save option
There is still the option to play one or all events (but it is still mising to play more than one but less than all events, e.g. to choose several events out of the eight available ones)... And with the cart. version one no more has to be a disk-jockey ("turn disk over")... |
| I liked this game. It was a sports simulation, not a "jostick-killer" as Decathlion was.
Summer Games, Winter Games and World Games where much better than this one, but these titles never appeared on the Atari 800. Shame on you, Epyx!!!
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| 8 events, 18 national anthems and a decent mix of joystick mashing, careful timing and technicalities. Swimming relays were a bit dull, but otherwise a top sports sim. |
| a nice summer olympic game, the events have niceg graphics and a cool gameplay esp. in multiplayer mode, one of the wasted wrists/joysticks game.. |
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Other versions with the same title:
Atari, US Gold.
Excerpts from an interview by Tobias Weihmann with Stephen H. Landrum:
TW: 'What was your role in the development of SummerGames?'
SL: 'I was the lead programmer. I did the intro sequence, the Pole Vault event, the Diving event, and helped Randy Glover with the swimming events. I also did part of the Atari 800 conversion, and helped with the Apple ][ conversion. '
TW: 'Which software did you use to create SummerGames?'
SL: 'It was all written in assembly code. We used a custom assembler running on Apple ][ computers. The animations were mostly done with pencil and paper, and then hand converted into data for the animation sequences. Some background screens were done with Koala paint. Sound and music was again figured out by hand and custom coded.'
TW: 'The credits say: "Scott Nelson, Stephen Landrum, Erin Murphy, Jon Leupp, Stephen Mudry, Randy Glover, Brian McGhie" - Were they the only ones that worked on SummerGames?'
SL: 'Yes, they were the only ones who did actual work on the game.'
TW: 'How did it sell?'
SL: 'It sold very well. Around a million copies of it after being converted to various formats. The reactions were very enthusiastic and positive.' |
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| Electronic Games · February, 1985 |
In Summer Games, up to eight players get the chance to compete in eight key Olympic events in an attempt to attain the highest honor: the coveted gold medal. Each of the events is a game within itself, so we'll discuss the strategy behind each sport separately.
POLE VAULT:
The pole vault may very well be the hardest event. The player must remember four specific joystick... [more]
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