Review by Raphie on 02 Sep 2013 (Rating: 1)
With the 2014 Winter Olympics a mere months away, well I say months since we're in September now, which will look good if you're reading this in November, I decided to look at a more obscure Winter Olympic game...as in nobody's reviewed it yet...one "playthrough" of this game and you'll see why that was the case.
In this game you compete in five winter events and you have to reach the qualification criteria of the current event to advance to the next event, as failing to do so will...well you still advance but at the cost of one life and should you lose all three then bye bye it's game over. So what are the five events and how do they play? Let's have a look if you're not bored...oh you are bored already...well tough!
Speed Skating - Use keys 1 & 2 alternately to slowly and rhythmically build up your speed. You must skate as fast as possible to reach the qualifying time of 22 seconds. Except skating fast is nearly impossible as you can never seem to get into a proper rhythm, for if you start slowly your speed doesn't go up...and should you start too fast, your speed doesn't go up...so you need to do it at the right speed to move at a steady pace, which I can never seem to do, the best I’ve done is about 34 seconds, I can get the bar up slightly and even full jip, but I can never consistently maintain it, for if I try to go a little bit faster the speed plummets! So essentially our skater only know one speed...and they’re looking 22 seconds?
Ski Jump - Hit the Q key when the moving power meter is at maximum. As the skier lands on the bottom of the ramp, hit the A key to jump. Early or late jumps will result in a fall. Qualifying distance is 200m. This one seems more straightforward...expect that the bar moves so fast you are liable to muck up quite easily, plus you can get the power right but muck up the jump itself as you jumped too early, like I do 99% of the time, but saying that this is one of the more decent events in the game, in that it isn't overly-complicated.
Skiing - Use keys 1 & 2 alternately to slowly and rhythmically build up your speed...we've read this before haven't we? You must ski as fast as possible to reach the qualifying time...22 seconds...yes it's exactly the same as Speed Skating and thus it’s not exactly Skiing, more like taking one of the hills in the Biathlon event, as this suffers from exactly the same problem as Speed Skating, going "slow" to rhythmically build up your speed doesn't work, going too fast, as in button-bashing, doesn't work, and therefore more than likely 22 seconds will be a hard task.
Bob-Sled, which would be Bobsleigh... Use the keys Q, A, O and P to steer the Bob-Sled. The course must be completed without crashing to qualify. Probably the easiest event in the game as this just works like a maze game, simply move Bob around the maze and finish, easy! However this eliminates a number of factor in actual bobsleigh, 1. it’s fast, and 2. you need to steadily control Bob as he makes the corners to avoid crashing, this is completely missing and is therefore completely unrealistic. It’s also the most tedious event as Bob moves so slow around the course, well there was no time limit so I guess he was entitled to take his time...yes I know Bob's a thing and not a person but I'm an idiot, so there!
Biathlon - To advance to the targets, press the Q key each time the meter is at maximum. Using key P, shoot out all the targets within the qualifying time to complete the first round of events. So basically you can only “move” if press the button when the meter is full, even if you are a fraction out he won’t move..well he’s moving but the distance will remain the same...and this my friends is Biathlon. And when you do reach the targets they are pretty easy to hit. This is far less tedious than Winter Games’ Biathlon but it’s still quite tedious, especially when you have to hit Q like 20 times to “move” one distance.
So there you have it, the one thing that can be said about this game is it’s quite rubbish and unpredictable, one moment it seems like the most difficult Sports game in existence and then turns into the easiest! Even the RZX walkthrough for the game was recorded with "rollback", a device used on emulators to "roll back" to a previous spot if you're stuck or make a mistake...this alone shows the complete random nuisance this game can be.
And the graphics aren’t great, badly outdated for 1987 standards while the sound is at a mere minimum during the events, which in turn makes these events quite tedious to play.
Oh and it's essentially the winter version of Olympiad 86 which I gave a really lousy and lazy review last year, maybe I'll review it again as it's even worse believe it or not!
So in conclusion, I reckon this is one of the poorest Winter Sports game on any platform. The speed events are just far too awkward while the other events are too tedious, thus it makes this pretty impossible to enjoy. Well thankfully I'll not have to play this for another four years...alright make that 40!
