Stumbling through Winter Games

[davidn]

Continuing my one-video-long tradition of playing Olympic-themed games when the real thing is going on in some part of the world outside my basement, here is Winter Games on the Commodore 64, which kjorteo wrote about some centuries ago. Oddly, despite being four years older, this one looks rather better than the PC sequel I had that came out in 1988. Does it play any better? I'll find out, but the answer may not surprise you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bfJWdXoxXI&hd=1

Comments

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Okay, this was amusing, right from the start. A bluescreen that we WANT to see. :D

Was this a European thing, or was Z$ usually the first String input that you would use, or is that a quirk of yours? I was always given A$ as the example and so I would always work forwards.

I always loved the loading screens -- especially because it MEANT it was loading. I could never tell if a game was actually loading (on disc, at least) because I had a few games where the loading would crash the system, but the disc drive just kept on chugging away...

The soundtrack suddenly reminded me that I have played this one before...

Now I'm curious if you ever played Caveman Games, because the opening "lighting ceremony" was parodied there...

Oh wow, white on light blue.

"Our country reeks of trees..." I wonder what the Epyx National Anthem is.

That is a LOT of loading for what it essentially choosing a few options! Tape Loading is way too slow...

Why did all the games on the Commodore use Control Port 2 as Player 1? That never made any sense to me. Was it easier to program for the second port or something?

I wish there was better controls than just Left-Right-Left-Right. I realize that's emulating legs, but that's just so boring.

I love that figure skating is "falling over, the game".

"To the appreciation of a nearby sea monster!" Ahh, C64 had a wonderful sound system, but just was horrid with voices, despite many botched attempts.

The second figure skating music was actually pretty energetic!

You were SO BORED that you were playing Christmas tunes. Wow. XD

I was pretty good at the Bobsled myself, but I do recall the sled tipping over just as much. :P

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Heh, the examples we were always given involved G$, and I was too young to get the 'g-string' pun... :P

D.F.

[davidn]

Wow, who wrote your BASIC books - Julian Clary? :)

[davidn]

I can't imagine the choice of variable name being a European thing, but these things have surprised me before. I vaguely remember that in the books I used to read, Z$ was typically used as the input variable, I for loops, and I can't remember any of the rest. (Mostly single-character variable names and no concept of scope - how was this ever considered an easy language!)

Notably, this video was approximately twice as long before I cut out the loading times. I couldn't believe that it took three separate loading times to even reach the first event!

I was curious about the genius behind using joystick port 2 as the first port as well - I read somewhere that it was done that way because port 1 was wired to double up for certain keyboard presses, for some equally opaque reason.

I really wanted to try the Bobsled again, but I would have had to go through the entire sodding game again to retry it! Even with emulator fast-forward, that was more than I was prepared to do at the time, even though I was disappointed in my unimpressive performance. But in the real Olympics, you have to wait four years before you try it again!