Producer: US Gold/Epyx
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Choice

Now's your chance to be a sporting superhero by taking part in eight international events, representing one of 18 countries. You decide how many events to participate in, and results are checked against the world record by selecting the appropriate option. The eight events are...

1. Russian Weightlifting - Competition is in two classes, the 'snatch' and 'clean and jerk.' Three lifts are made in each, followed by a judges assessment. The lifter who raises the greatest weight wins the contest.

2. German Barrel Jumping - A pre-selected number of barrels stretches across an ice rink. Competitors skate towards them, using their timing and skill to clear them with a mighty leap. Whoever clears the most is the winner.

3. Mexican Cliff Diving - Here you choose the height from which to dive from the cliffs of Acapulco. The wind speed affecting each dive is shown by an arrow's length at the top of the screen, and points are scored for style and height.

4. French Slalom Skiing - A series of flags run down a snow covered hillside. Good reflexes, agility and precision are used to ski through these in the quickest time possible. A five second penalty is added for hitting a gate, whilst a fail results in disqualification.

5. Canadian Log Rolling - Here you have to stay balanced on a floating log which is being rotated in either direction by the feet of a lumberjack. Three attempts are allowed to complete the event, the last lumberjack to stay on the log is the winner.

6. American Bull Riding - Holding on by a piece of rope, you must stay on the back of a spinning bull for eight seconds. Points are scored for style, with the length of your rope and the unpleasantness of your chosen bull taken into account.

7. Scottish Caber Tossing - Here a small tree-trunk is lifted and thrown. The caber must flip over after it has been thrown, and the furthest throw wins.

8. Japanese Sumo Wrestling - Taking the part of an obese oriental matman, you attempt to force your opponent out of a tiny ring. The contest's length and the reaction time of combatants determines the score.

The Grand Champion of these World Games is chosen on the basis of five points for each gold medal received, three points for silver and a single point for bronze.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor
Use of colour: adequate for the job
Graphics: uneven in quality from event to event
Sound: meagre spot FX
Skill levels: vary between events
Screens: eight events

I'm not as impressed with this as I was with its predecessor - especially because of the ridiculous wait between events. The graphics and animation are quite good, and colour clashes have been kept to a minimum. The backgrounds seem very similar though, they look as if they were thrown together at the last minute. As far as playability goes, it's great fun! Especially if you get some friends into compete against, which makes the joy of winning even more.
GARETH.

I've waited along time for some sort of follow-up to Winter games, as we never saw any of the Summer Games on the Spectrum -s o this is it... The graphics are very nice, but I felt it was a little bit annoying having to load the events in one by one, especially as they were able to load half of them at the same time on the predecessor. This is one of the better sports sims available, and I reckon that for the price, the amount of playability and lastability you gat are matched just about right. Worth looking at.
MIKE

I'm sorry to say that World Games is not as good as Winter Games. The graphics don't look as realistic and there's not a tune to be heard anywhere. It seems like an eternity waiting for each game to load, and when it does it isn't really worth the wait. The controls make you feel as if you are using a computer and not actually playing a sport. Perhaps the next one in the series will bring back some realism to the games.
PAUL

FAX BOX
Game: World Games
Publisher: US Gold
Price: £8.99
Keys: Definable
Joystick: Most

What can match the international flavour of US Gold's latest festival of fun and frolic, World Games? Marcus Berkmann spins the globe and gets his fingers stuck.

We are the world, we are the children, as those great modern philosophers Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson once wrote. This spirit of global oneness (hey man!) is what World Games is all about. After Summer Games and Winter Games, Epyx's latest sports sim collection (through US Gold) travels the globe in search of the wildest and wackiest athletic contests imaginable. From the Soviet Union (Weightlifting) to the United States (Bull Riding), you'll hop the oceans to compete in eight events with nary a hint of jet lag. No hotel bills, either. And you may even wind up as world champion in an event or two.

As you'd expect, the game's a multi-loader, and the initial menu gives you a number of options. Being impatient, I always tend to go for the 'Compete in all events' choice, but it's worth putting in a little effort on the practice mode in some of the events. Alternatively, you can compete in just the one event - especially useful for showing off to gullible friends. In fact, you can play with up to three other people, but personally I like to have a little quiet practice before I start clustering the competitors - I mean, you wouldn't want to lose, would you?

World Games is well up to Epyx's previous standards, and makes me realise how long it is since we've had one of these games compendiums to juggle with. Each event has been well designed, both in gameplay and graphics, and you'll be relieved to hear that there's not too much of the old waggle waggle - most of the time you need brainpower as well! So pack your liniment, collect your passport and call Aeroflot, 'cos the first stop's Russia - and you're pumping iron!

WEIGHTLIFTING - RUSSIA

Home of those vast blubbery men called Zbigniew Lardslabflabinsky, who always come first in the megaheavyweight class at the Olympics. But you know what the say - the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and this is your chance to grab weightlifting gold - even if you were a finalist for Mr Puniverse! There are two rounds, the "snatch" and "clean and jerk", and in competition you'll need to complete the first to move on to the second. The snatch is all a matter of timing - grasping, lifting, snatching and standing all within a couple of seconds. And don't leave him lifting the bar too long, or he'll crash through the floor? The Clean and Jerk is even trickier - lift it clean or you'll look a jerk.

BARREL JUMPING - GERMANY

A brisk flight over the Urals, and we're in the land of lederhosen, monocles and "Tomorrow Belongs To Me". Here we try the 300-year-old sport of barrel jumping, in which Teutonic Torvills and Deans attempt to clear a number of barrels on their ice-skates. Not the easiest sport in real life, I'd guess, but World Games gives you the chance to trounce those klose-kropped Kurts and Karls. It's a joystick waggler, of course, and by no means a piece of Apfeltorte. Press fire to jump, and pull back to land, if of course you actually manage to get over the barrels. If you foul up, expect to get wet. Just the sort of game to break the ice at parties. Vorsprung durch Technik, mein Fuhrer!

LOG ROLLING - CANADA

Are there any famous Canadians? (Besides Captain Kirk, of course.) Never mind. Our next stop is a Canadian lumber camp, where lumberjacks have been rolling logs since 1840, and pressing wild flowers for even longer. You compete against another player or the computer, and the idea is to dislodge your opponent from the log by spinning it back and forth. You need to establish a rhythm with the lumberjack's legs (Nawty! Ed) if you're to have any chance of success. When, inevitably, you fall in, you certainly pay the penalty - a shark starts circling you and soon you don't have a leg to stand on. Try changing the log's direction suddenly and then rolling it in the direction that'll make him fall off.

BULL RIDING - UNITED STATES

Hey, Mary Lou-Beth-Jim-Bob, this time we don't have to flah (translation: fly) thousands of mahls 'cos we're right here on the do'step fo' this one. Iss jus' down from Canada fo' the Bull Ridin' - a favourite sport here in Dallas. This Bull Ridin' nonsense's real hard to git the hang of. You got to control the bull when the critter's buckin', when he's spinnin' an' when he's runnin' an' haltin'. Not only that, you must try and anticipate the bull's moves and respond accordingly. Here's one round of World Game, where practice isn't just useful, it's vital. Fortunately the practice mode lets another player control the bull, giving you the opportunity to get used to his churlish and bad tempered ways.

CLIFF DIVING - MEXICO

?Que? A we're off again, to Mehhhhico (stand back, or buy an umbrella) to watch Cliff Diving in Acapulco. Sounds like a fifties Hollywood film star, dunnit (...starring Tab Hunter, Rip Torn and Cliff Diving), but no, it's one of the more glam and unusual sports in World Games. Unlike barrel jumping, it's easy to got going without being repeatedly killed, but perfecting your art is a mysterious process requiring years of practice and some nifty stickwork. Avoid being dashed against the rocks by arching your back for as long as possible, then surface quickly to escape that watery grave. Cliff himself is an elegant individual, although I'm not sure I recognise Acapulco from the last time I was there (ahem).

SLALOM SKIING - FRANCE

Bonjour, mon petit piece de broccoli! Avez-vous un ski-pass? 'Cos si vous avez un pass de ski, vous pouvez groover around les slopes comma tous les autre smug gits avec les outfits trendies at les tans out of les bouteilles. Naturellement, it'll cost you, Jean. Instead, pourquoi non try le World Games, do US Or? C'est tree inexpensive, mais it est mildly reminiscent de Horace Va Ski-ing, n'est-ce pas? Oui, vieux haricot. Mais les graphiques sont superieurs, et le gamoplay, c'est plus challenging (ie difficile). Si sous pouvez get around tous les obstacles, vous etas un meilleur homme qua moi, Gunga Din. Avez vous un go - c'est can corkeur.

CABER TOSS - SCOTLAND

Och, we do get around in this game, don't we? Don your kilt, speckle yer sporran and prepare to get tossin', 'cos we're in the highlands and the wind's whistling around sour Firth of Forth. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to launch yon caber into the gloaming as far as your hairy arms (bleugh) can chuck it. This is no mean feat. Fail to launch it properly and you'll be jumping up and down, nursing a no doubt fatal foot wound. If you don't get up enough speed before bunging the thing, you'll throw it straight up into the air and it'll pummel you into the ground. The caber has to flip over completely for a legal toss, and you'll probably flip before you get that far.

SUMO WRESTLING - JAPAN

Haaaiiiieee! Thwok! Yes, our final port of call is Japan, and in more ways than one, we've corns full circle - yup, its the fat men again! And this is Lard with a capital L! Sumo wrestlers don't stop at two dinners - life for them is just one long meal. Here you can play against the computer or another player, pushing your opponent to the back of the mat or chucking him over your shoulder - something you'd need more than a cooked breakfast to do in real life. The moves are fairly standard judo aim - loads of tripping and wacky Jap words that sound like people sneezing. The quicker your reactions, the shorter the match and the higher your score. Aiiiieeee! Splat!

Label: US Gold
Author: Epyx
Price: £9.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Bet you thought that Epyx had pretty much done the games market to death with Summer Games and Winter Games didn't you?

Wrong. What we have in World Games is a selection of sports and quasi-sports which either didn't make it into either of the other two editions (tossing the caber) or must have been so great they thought they would do them again (the Slalom Skiing option is unsurprisingly similar to the skiing games in Winter Sports).

Peculiar nature of some of the sports aside, World Games is pretty good in places the programming is excellent, although curiously, in other areas its decidedly flickery around the edges. Maybe different groups of programmers did different sections. Maybe it was one team and they had some days off.

Like Summer and Winter Games, you can play against the computer but it's probably more fun with human opponents. You can either tree the whole thing as a sort of Decathlon and take part in every event in sequence or you can do it bit by bit, practicing each event until you feel ready to take on the world.

Loading the individual sports is, inevitably, utterly tedious and if the sport you want to practice is somewhere in the middle of the tape, well... I hope your tape machine has a counter (Alan Sugar, creator of the 128K+2, please note). That said the hyperload seemed extremely reliable and didn't screw up once.

Event One is Weightlifting, not you may think very exciting when translated to the computer, but no. The animated weightlifter grimaces authentically as he struggles with ever increasing weights. It works as a game because of the judgement required to complete a lift - getting those weights above your head is actually a several stage process picking them up and bringing them to the chest and then going for the lift and keeping them up there until the lights change to tell you you've grimaced long enough.

Barrel Jumping is up next. Now Barrel Jumping may be hot in the Norweigian fjords within its unique blend of Eddie Kid and ice skates but it doesn't cut much ice over here. After the heady delights of the weightlifting I was disappointed, though the skater is nicely animated - particularly when skidding helplessly. The actual game is just like those budget titles where you jump on a motor bike over buses.

Cliff Diving is event three and gosh isn't it wonderful. Or to put it another way, I am simply fantastic at it - well I got a Gold Medal. Cliff Diving features, surprisingly, some of the most impressive graphics of the whole game. The idea is to hurl a bathing-suit clad figure from a rocky promontory and get him to dive smoothly into the see below. The cliff face is beautifully done, as it the central diver figure but cleverest of all is the 'sea' effect which seems to wash a film of blue over the cliff base.

Slalom skiing is boring. Just the usual ski between the flags twist left and right stuff it is so unspeakably unoriginal I can think of nothing for to say except that I wasn't very good at it.

Log Rolling is probably big in Canada where giant Redwoods are felled by mighty men wearing Raccoons on their heads but it never caught on here except in Butlin's holiday camps. The idea is that two bearded men (complete with Raccoons and check shirts) stand on a log and by spinning it alternatively one way and the other, each trying to catch the other guy out and spin him into the shark-infested drink. The danger is that overly fancy footwork may backfire and the wrong log roller ends in the drink. Though I didn't do too well at this one and some of the background graphics were a little naff the actual gnarled log rollers were expressively animated.

Bull Riding is a whacky sport from the American West. You get to sit on the back of a bucking bull (do bulls buck?) and you use the joystick to counter the bull's movements and thereby stay on. Graphics are fairish and I was hopeless at it.

Tossing the Caber is Scotist. That's not a misprint, just as somethings are sexist, caber tossing is Scotist in the way it begins with a kilted Scot making a complete fool of himself by waggling his arms and legs in the air. Obviously real Scots people are not nearly so stupid. In any event tossing the caber is roughly the World Games equivalent of throwing the javelin, except that it's a lot bigger of course, and heavier. And thicker. And you can't run very fast. Anyway it's just like javelin throwing in that you run stop wait for the angle of throw to be right and then watch that caber zoom through the air.

Finally, and certainly the piece de resistance is Sumo Wrestling. Two giant men sit in a circle and squat at each other. The sprites are pretty good, nicely animated and large (very large actually). You play the game with a combination of joystick with/without Fire button commands just like Exploding Fist except that instead of elegant spins and speedy kicks you get lumbering bear hugs, and slow inevitable lunges.

That's World Games then. More hits than misses and a couple of real gems. If you have the other two and don't mind the silly nature of some of the games included I think you'll want World Games as well.

U.S.GOLD GO AROUND THE WORLD IN SEARRCH OF BIZARRE SPORTING EVENTS.

US Gold
£9.99

Just when you thought it was safe to pick up a joystick eight new sporting events appear to challenge you in a round the world compilation.

Russia is the first stop and a chance to challenge the champions of the iron game at their own sport. Two different weight lifting events are ready to test your skills, the snatch and the clean and jerk. Up and down joystick movements need to be timed well to complete the lifting movements to ensure that you don't collapse in a heap and get the white lights from the judges.

In competition the key is deciding when to increase the weights (shown on screen as the dumbbells get bigger) to knock out your opponents without straining yourself.

After a quick flight to Germany it's time to take part in a 300 year old sport, barrel jumping. The contestants have three attempts to leap the highest number barrels lined up on the ice rink.

Synchronised joystick waggling is the hint for this event to get as much speed as possible so you clear the barrels in time for a good landing. Get it wrong and you'll hurt more than your pride.

Flying all the way to Mexico just to hurl yourself off a cliff may sound over the top but it's because cliff diving is the next event in these global games.

Six ledges test your nerve and your skill as you plummet into the depths of the sea below. If you mistime your leap you could impale yourself on the rocks below. To impress the judges in your three attempts and take the gold you need to dice with danger and dive with style.

The next event is another downhill plummet only this time it's a slalom down the ski slopes of France.

A course fraught with peril and studded with gates to be negotiated really tests your skill. Miss too many gates and the penalty times will put you out of contention but if you hit a gate head on or the side of the course you'll be wiped out!

Next stop is Canada and a round of river log rolling in which you must walk the log so that you're opponent takes the plunge. You must time your joystick moves to keep in step while unbalancing your opponent. Whoever loses his balance first becomes dinner for the sharks. Best of three decides the contest.

Further north in America Ferdinand, Elmer, Bob and Tornado await your arrival. They're bulls that you have to ride in a rodeo. The bulls will try to buck, spin and stop to try and unseat you. You have to counter its moves to stay on as long as you can.

No global games would be complete without a trip to the heather of Scotland and a chance to toss the caber.

Timed left and right joystick movements will start your run (after a quick jig to the bagpipes) and then you must toss the caber so the log flips over one complete turn and doesn't land on your head or your foot! This is probably the hardest event to master and the most painful to watch.

The final stop in our eight event and 24,000 mile trip is the battle of the blubber as two sumo wrestlers battle to shove each other out of the ring.

As the two 400 pound warriors size each other up you have a chance to revise the moves to push, slap and grab your opponent. If executed correctly you could manage a spectacular throw and another gold medal.

World Games is the latest in the series of conversions of Epyx games that featured Summer Games II and Winter Games. This Spectrum version has been coded by Irish programmers, Choice (who were responsible for the superb Hardball) and have added quality to the graphics and animation that was missing from the others. If you're a joystick athlete you can't afford to miss this one.