Stumbling through The Games: Summer Edition

[davidn]

A shockingly long time ago, I talked about a game that I had on the PC called The Games: Winter Edition. I remember enjoying it when I first played it in school, but when I went back to it, it became a worrying indicator that I might be allowing nostalgia to cloud the simple fact that I was actually just amused by any old rubbish.

It wasn't the only backwards-titled sports game around - there was a counterpart to it called The Games: Summer Edition, and this is what rakarr suggested I play in the spirit of the upcoming Olympics in London. (I imagine that the game avoids all mention of the Games' actual title in order to avoid having to pay lots and lots of money for using their name and logo - though I accidentally mention the word throughout the video anyway.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35HBS-kyfOg

As a PC owner, I was always rather jealous of the superior graphics and sound that games always seemed to have on the Amiga - though I now realize how much they paid for that in disk-swapping and loading times. This game takes care of the 'sound' aspect by scoring the game with a series of what sounds like people banging chairs together, though I think that this might be at least half the fault of the emulator/recording setup. As to whether I think the superior graphics of this version make it a better game than the experimental joystick-waggling extravaganza that I owned in the 90s... you can make that judgement for yourself.

The game has eight events, none of which I'm much good at.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

What made you decide to play the Amiga version? (Or was this one only available for Amiga?)

Your accent is suddenly making me wonder how Commodore ever expected to find any success with people saying that there's a game available for "a meagre computer"...

Clive the Flippered Octopus is hereby the mascot of Stumbling Through. :D

"Door answering" XD

(psst, half music is probably half volume ;p)

How have I never heard the Great Britain national anthem, apparently! (And what flag do they NORMALLY show?)

I was like "my, what a lavish depiction of their parking lot...?", but I guess that was their way of leaving room for the little 3D window :P

Unusually generous choice to have the computer stick around and be as incompetent as the player.... (I wonder if it's a limitation of having it all overlayed on prerendered video like that?)

Did you really not notice the stamina meter that you'd filled up?

"The Archery"... sounds like a band or something..

I love the guy munching in the corner of the stands.... he needs to be in every game, just sitting in the foreground, silently judging you as you try to rescue the princess from Bowser...

(um, it's just silently doing nothing when I try to post this comment, so let me try splitting it in two maybe?)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Cute touch having runners in the background of the pole vault screen!

XD! The guy just... kinda.... losing interest and letting his pole drag along the ground and stopping. I would love to see someone get all the way to the olympics and be running down the track and then just suddenly realise how silly it all is and leave the field...

Slow-motion replay of shame, so all your loved ones at home can relive your disgrace!

Oh man, the guy just continuously running straight past the pole, that's almost better than his existential crisis halfway there.... There's only one thing you have to do in this event (two if you count "getting there"), I love that they actually programmed in the ability to just NOT do it for some reason. It's an open-world olympics game!

"Reverse splat"... that had better be an actual technical term.

Was that rings guy supposed to be laughing or crying? Did they program that in just in case a player decides to climb up onto the bars then climb back down?? I have a feeling they realised that most people have no interest in doing this correctly... (I feel like this is reminding me of some game from a computer lab of my childhood, where all the children were immensely more entertained by a character making a funny animation when he bumped into a wall than they were by the entire actual game that they never really bothered to explore....)

The hurdles music sounds oddly like music from On The Ball... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHS00nAgdk4#t=16s

I understand needing to reuse the characters' animations, but they couldn't even give you a palette swap to keep it from looking like the Synchronized Hurdle Team?

"Rock n roll baby"?? Are they... who made this????

Somebody had a lot of fun drawing that shotputters swaying buttocks.

.... oh my god, I was imagining how things could go wrong during the shotput when I was commenting on the "alternate endings" for the pole vault up above, but that is even better than I was imagining XD

..... AND AGAIN! Oh god, they actually had to go to the trouble of getting a recording of a guy going "whoa~!" and everything XD

Where on earth did that jingle for "mid-air shoelace tying" come from XD Is that yours?

I'm not sure I follow what you mean about "proceed" and a moderately overweight programmer?

Huh, the water actually refracts what's underneath! Unusual eye for detail in this one...

Do you actually control your movement in the totally unnecessary secondary angle that they somehow convinced someone to make room for in the budget?

And there's a puddle by the ladder on your second dive! Geez, someone was gunning for a promotion...

Though, their attention to detail couldn't go so far as to put the diving board someplace that doesn't become almost invisible by contrast with the elements on either side of it...

I can't figure out what's funnier - that the game apparently has insanity effects like Eternal Darkness, or that you were so genuinely concerned for your character's safety from sharks in an olympic game :D "Oh no! Where was the last save point? If I lose a life here, I'll... umm....."

Well, that was a good deal more entertaining a game than it had any business being :) Hooray for bored programmers I guess :P

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

That was just fantastic. I enjoyed all the events and I was looking forward to seeing you fail as much as I had, and you didn't let me (or Great Britain) down. I think the rings were the best. Oh, and the... very sad, delusional closing ceremony at the end.

I admit that because the events are short I was hoping for a revisit to most of them like you did with the pole vault, but at 24 minutes I suppose that might have been extending it a bit too much. As I said, though, it was fantastic and hilarious, and thank you for doing it.

... I liked the music, though! Although I admit the sound effects were pretty... uh... unique.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

As it doesn't use the olympic name, it feels like this is a comedic parody of sports games, rather than an actual representation of olympic sports. Why is there a shark in the pool????????

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

That was hilarious. :) Between Clive the electrically-tormented octopus drummer, the pole-vaulter that sprints straight past the bar, and the fact that "splat fall" is apparently now a recognised parallel bars move, I was in stitches. :P (Also, the depressed rings guy who gets a lift up there, realises "ohmygoshIjustcan'ttakeitanymore" and gives up and bursts into tears then and there deserves an honourable mention. :P)

I kind of wanted them to move the really generously-scoring judge on the left hand side in the diving competition next to the really hard-to-please guy in the middle, to see if a fight would break out between them. :P

Next up, James Pond; Aquatic Games? :P

D.F.

[premchaia_pre4]

You did collide with the other cyclist early on! That's what the cartoon-scuffle-like clouds-of-smoke icon seemed to be associated with, at least.

[kjorteo]

That was amazing. It was almost half an hour but thoroughly entertaining throughout and absolutely worth it--well done. :) There are so many things I could say about basically everything, but for now, I'll just say that I anxiously await your review of LucasArts' adventure classic Day of the Flipper.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

A bit late to the game (har har) but a wonderful stumble, nonetheless.

There were a few moments when I was laughing out loud - mainly at the moments when there was the "you screwed up" animations. I'm surprised that the cycling competition felt so "rigid" compared to the hammer throw where you managed to clonk yourself in the head. XD

If you're going to continue with Amiga games, and would like some *nice* music and sound, you've gotta keep an eye out for "Gods". Oh man, I loved that theme music. Sadly the game has no in-game soundtrack...

Though, now, I'm wanting to dig through some of my ancient C64 games. I have games that no-one else I know of ever played (Kennedy Approach and Paradroid come to mind). Or heck, I could play through that Raid over Moscow (http://tamakun.livejournal.com/1059599.html) game that I reviewed a little while ago...