Producer: Tynesoft
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Derek Brewster

Next month, the Canadian city of Calgary hosts the 15th Winter Olympic Games. The competitor's environment is a world of snow and ice, in which danger and rivalry race hand in hand.

In Winter Olympiad 88, written by former CRASH adventure reviewer Derek Brewster, up to nine players can test their nerve and skill to compete in some of the star events of this international extravaganza.

The five events are downhill skiing, the biathlon, the bob run, the ski jump and the ski slalom. Different combinations of actual play and practice in events may be selected.

In downhill skiing, a trip down the sheer face of a mountain on skis must be completed as quickly as possible. Your speed is controllable, and you must steer yourself to avoid rocky outcrops and lines of trees and take corners. You'll have to jump right over other hazards to complete the course and stand a chance of a medal.

The biathlon has competitors pumping their legs backward and forward in a speedy cross-country ski walk. But the physical exhaustion generated by this activity must be balanced against the requirements of the shooting range, where the skier calms his nerves and steadies his arm to fire at six targets. A miss costs valuable time.

On the specially-built ice chute, you can clamber into a bob sled and head towards a distant finish line. A speedy start is the essence of success, for without that initial momentum the craft cannot hurtle quickly through the bends of the track. To enhance your time, what little steering you have must be smooth, to take you through the top of the bends where maximum velocity is achieved.

Go too high, however, and the bob can be sent 1ff the track, and your chance of a medal goes with it.

You take to the air in the ski jump after making a death-defying descent down the elevated jump. Maximum points are awarded by the judges for distance and style: good style is keeping your skis snugly together while you're gliding through the air.

Once this event of nerve has been completed the ski slalom gets under way. With new strips of waxed wood strapped to your boots you can begin. Wend your way through a succession of poles to reach the finish in the fastest time and you're a winner. Remember, though, to keep red slalom flags to the right of you and blue flags to the left.

Ocean's Olympic innovation ...................................page 8

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair (though our copy reset back to keys after the first event!)
Graphics: some jerky animation but some beautiful backgrounds
Sound: a poor attempt at title tunes: simple collision effects

Winter Olympiad 88 is one of the best sports compilations I've seen since Epyx's Smashed Winter Games (reviewed in Issue 26). It's very well-presented, with a great opening sequence and a rather good tune. And the actual gameplay has a realistic feel - for instance, the slalom skier's whole body moves appropriately to each different manoeuvre, especially when cornering. The backdrops are nicely detailed, mostly featuring snow-capped mountain ranges and large pine forests. Not many winter-sports games come up to the standard of Winter Olympiad 88.
NATHAN [64%]

After Epyx's Winter Games, this is a great letdown. Graphically the two games are pretty similar, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty gameplay Winter Games beats Winter Olympiad 88 on every event. True, there's a nice opening sequence here, but when you have to go through loading every event separately (Winter Games needed only two loads, incidentally) things get tedious. And as if the dodgy animation, suspect collision-detection and simplistic sound weren't enough, you have to pray that the game won't crash - it's riddled with bugs. The Winter Olympics theme has great potential, but it's wasted on such a mediocre (perhaps rushed) product.
PAUL [34%]

Micro Value
£2.99

Put on your goggles, spend £100 on a pair of skis and set off to a snowy climate in Winter Olympiad. I've had enough of snow lately - you can't step out of the door at CRASH without falling on your bum! - but playing this was much safer.

Five winter sports events are packed into this game: Downhill, biathlon, bob sled, ski jump and slalom. All are portrayed with well drawn and animated snowy graphics and test your fingers to the full. Yes folks, this is one of those games where waggling left and right on the joystick or prodding at the keys builds up your players speed.

Winter Olympiad's presentation is excellent. It's a pity the gameplay doesn't follow suit. I couldn't stand the controls for very long. You prod away and it seems like nothing happens until you're about to explode with rage, then the skier starts moving!

The events have all been seen before in other winter sports simulations, and have been programmed at lot better before, too. The annoying controls put me off Winter Olympiad. A reasonable game but nothing to shout about.

Tynesoft
£7.95
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

If you've always fancied yourself in a skin-tight ski suit racing down the slopes, but can't afford the airfare, this may well be the answer to all your dreams. Winter Olympiad is Tynesoft's attempt to jump onto next year's Winter Olympics bandwagon, so why not clamber aboard and join us?

First of all, though, let's get one thing straight. Where originality's concerned, this game scores zilch. It's almost identical to the ageing Winter Olympics and Winter Games. The same multi-load technique and very similar events. The only thing that sets it apart is the introduction by David Vine. Great!

To kick off, howzabout a bit of downhill skiing? This is probably the best event on the tape. It's in a sort of 3D Deathchase style, with trees rushing towards you and things to jump over.

Next is the biathlon, in which you must race to the end of the course and shoot a number of targets, and the bobsled, which isn't quite up to the standard of DI's simulation. Then there's the ski-jump, which is just like any other ski-jump you've ever seen.

Last on the list is the slalom, which uses some quite effective diagonal scrolling and is actually pretty good fun. Then it's all over, and time to go down to the pub to get piste.

There's certainly nothing wrong with either the graphics or the programming on this one. It's been padded out with some unusual special FX at the beginning, and presentation throughout is well up to scratch. The trouble is that it's all been done many times before. It started with Horace Goes Skiing and they've been coming out regularly ever since.

If you haven't already got hundreds of winter sports games, this one's no worse than any of the others.