Game Review

Time for the B review! For this let's take a quick look at Winter Games for the IBM PC. As part of Epyx "Games" series, you'll be familiar with the formula if you've played any entry in the series. Based on Olympic events (this time for the winter games, of course), up to eight players can compete for the best score! Players can choose different countries to represent and compete in the whole series of events or just practice one or two. Gameplay characteristics can vary from event to event, and there are a few joystick-waggling races that seemed to become common for sports games of the era. Some of the events take a bit of practice; for instance, you'll want to check the manual for learning how to perform moves in figure skating, and getting the touch for the fast paced bobsled will take a few tries. But overall the whole "games" series formula proved to be a winner for Epyx, and Winter Games didn't dissapoint and is quite fun to play. Winter Games originated on the Commodore 64, and it should be no surprise that is the best version in terms of graphics and sound. The IBM PC version works fine gameplay wise, but unfortunately Epyx didn't take advantage of PC hardware well. The graphics are CGA only, so the colorful 16 color images found in the original are reduced to CGA's famed cyan, magenta, white, and black. The graphics are essentially a direct conversion of the C64 version — that includes the blocky 160x200 resolutions parts of the image. CGA had fewer colors, but the graphics could have been much sharper and more detailed to make up for it. It's unfortunate no effort was made to improve here; while CGA only was common at the time, 16 color EGA and/or Tandy/PCjr would have been possible which would have made for a great addition. Probably they were keeping costs low for the port and dropping support for hardware that wasn't yet commonly owned made financial sense, but still was always a disappointment. Despite the less than ideal graphics, though, the Winter Games gameplay is in tact and is a title I thoroughly enjoyed at the time.