Reviews

Not the most enjoyable olympic style game it has to be said, the game has som of the most awkward controls for this type of game, the high jump requires you to do like three different things at once. The cycling event has also got an awkward control scheme that makes you go blind when you play it and the triple jump and I believe the javelin as well have maximum distances that cannot go any further which while not a major problem as it's simply part of the code but it's still annoying when you get you and two mates and all of you get 79.30m on the javelin.

I'll take Daley Thompson over this anyday, it's a good attempt of being different from the usual button-mashers but the controls are just too different to my liking.

The Epyx classic multi-event sport arcade/simulation game lands on the Spectrum. Is it a successful landing? I'd rather say an adequate one. Graphics and sound are nothing special, and gameplay gets at some times really convoluted. A moderately entertaining effort which is not bad, but inferior to titles released as the same time like Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge.

The sequel to Summer Games and it has the exact same intro, exactly the same one, and with a much more primitive menu too. And from the off I notice the keyboard responses are much delayed compared to the original. I thought it was a problem with my USB keyboard but no issue 2 and issue 3 settings on the emulator, my old USB keyboard with the faulty space key, the keyboard on my laptop and the keyboard on my son's computer were all the same. For this one we have all different events, not one event is repeated, so it's the same intro but very much a different game. Also interesting to note that this was actually never released on its own, it was for the Commodore 64 but on the Spectrum it appeared originally on the Gold, Silver, Bronze compilation along with Summer Games and Winter Games which was released two years earlier on its own, and while Summer Games got a Kixx re-release, Summer Games II to my knowledge never did. The only events I was able to get on with were the Rowing and Javelin, every other event was a struggle, especially Equestrian. Much preferring the first one and now I can see why it was never released separately.

1988 US Gold (UK)
by Einstein, Steve Hawkes

The same as Summer Games, this time released only on compilation, but featuring very different events. The presentation is the same, both graphically and sound wise, but the events fall sort of quality, some are too complicated to be any fun. Still a nice sports simulator.