Remember the old Epyx sports compilation series—Winter Games, Summer, California, etc.? If you said “yes,” then congratulations! You’re at least as old as the average Gamezebo writer, and we’ve got a treat for you. If you don’t remember them, they …
Remember the old Epyx sports compilation series—Winter Games, Summer, California, etc.? If you said “yes,” then congratulations! You’re at least as old as the average Gamezebo writer, and we’ve got a treat for you.
If you don’t remember them, they were an assortment of themed events gathered into a single game which could be played as a marathon series or individually. California Games presented challenges like surfing and footbag (before Hacky Sack became the proprietary eponym), Summer Games held events like pole vault and swimming, and Winter Games featured sports like alpine skiing and luge.
Although these combo-sports games never completely left the market—with Mario and Sonic taking up the mantle of official Olympic titles every two years—their golden era was the early-to-mid-‘80s, when Epyx’s Games, Konami’s Track & Field, and The Activision Decathlon gave players access to nearly every sport imaginable in virtual format. In honor of that beautiful period in multi-sports gaming history, developer The Bitfather has created Retro Winter Sports 1986, a modern homage to the Winter Games of our youth.
Like all of the sports compilations it’s inspired by, Retro Winter Games 1986 features numerous different events, ranging from the ski jump and bobsled to curling and slalom. Players will be able to tackle all of the events in tournament mode, or pick their favorites to practice individually or against up to seven other players. There will be twelve different countries to choose from to show your virtual national pride and plenty of leaderboards and achievements to conquer. And coming from the team that made Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic, we’re sure that the retro graphics and charm of the era will be on point as well–especially with the tagline “Let’s compete like it’s 1980-something!”
Your 30-year wait to relive the glory days of sports tournaments on the Amiga (and C64, and NES, and a dozen others) is nearly over: Retro Winter Games 1986 is scheduled to launch by the end of this year, sometime in December.
