While the UK’s market for computer games grew rapidly from 1983, things were not going the same way with adjacent markets over in America. As former Action Graphics programmer David Thiel explained to C64.com in 2013: “The coin-op crash of 1983 made a lot of experienced games people available in Chicago”. Action Graphics, set up by Bob Ogdon, hired many of them to turn to the machines that were doing a bit better, “first converting Activision 2600 games to ColecoVision and the C64” then “[graduating] to original product”.

Among the Activision conversions Action Graphics worked on was the UK hit Commodore 64 version of The Activision Decathlon, the David Crane game which helped to kick off an entire genre of multi-sport games when released for Atari consoles in 1983. By the time the C64 version made it out in the UK just around the 1984 Olympics, it quickly had strong competition in the form of Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. It also had competition from another American company, Epyx, whose Summer Games was a smaller UK hit around the same time.

  • Summer Games (Epyx, 1984, Commodore 64)
  • Summer Games (Epyx, 1984, Commodore 64)
  • Summer Games II (Epyx, 1985, Commodore 64)
  • Summer Games II (Epyx, 1985, Commodore 64)

Summer Games started life as a work-in-progress decathlon game made by Starpath, a company Epyx acquired. Epyx then branched out with some non-athletics events including diving, gymnastics, swimming and shooting (landing some commonalities with Hyper Sports in the process). They also chose to move away from rapid joystick-waggling/keyboard-mashing for most of their events. Summer Games was successful enough for them to produce a sequel, Summer Games II. Released in August 1985, that didn’t coincide with the Olympics, but reached #2 in the UK charts behind The Way of the Exploding Fist.

At some point early in development for that sequel, Epyx were confident enough in the potential for the series to decide to commission a further game, to be released later in 1985. With their in-house team tied up with making Summer Games II, they turned to Action Graphics, perhaps influenced by that company’s experience with The Activision Decathlon. Action Graphics set to work on Winter Games, to be released as winter approached, even as the next Winter Olympics was three years away. It wouldn’t have an official licence anyway, although the manual did still list the years and locations of each Winter Olympics, locating upcoming host Calgary in the wrong Canadian state in the process.

  • Winter Games (Action Graphics/Epyx, 1985, Commodore 64)

The outsourced Winter Games was a team effort and does not have a neat list of credits like either Summer Games, so it’s not easy to work out exactly who worked on it. David Thiel did music, and describes Winter Games as “another Richard Ditton original”, implying Ditton did much of the programming. Richard Ditton’s wife Elaine Ditton also worked on it. (The two would go on to greater success forming Incredible Technologies, responsible for the long-running Golden Tee Golf arcade series). Chris Oberth was responsible for speed skating, using code Epyx provided from the rowing event in Summer Games II. Action Graphics head Bob Ogdon suggested Winter Games’s “hotdog” skiing stunts event, which didn’t resemble anything that would be an Olympic sport for a few more decades. Epyx’s Matt Householder and Chuck Sommerville joined once they were done with Summer Games II, and the latter worked on the bobsleigh event.

Things were not going well for Action Graphics at this time, something Thiel put down to “high overheads and the predatory attitude of software publishers”, and it would not survive much longer. He and others worked on Winter Games despite the fact they weren’t being paid any more, holding out hope that if it was a success they would get the money back. Eventually, they did. Winter Games became a bigger success than either of the previous games. In the UK, “if the mega buck grabbing compilations don’t grab the Christmas number one spot this must” predicted Mike Pattenden of Commodore User, and while he wasn’t correct, Winter Games did reach #1 in November 1985.

There is not one simple reason why Winter Games was such a success. Some of it was Epyx building a reputation for their sports games over time, making them stand out from competitors. In Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and Hyper Sports you have to play through events in sequence and reach qualifying standards to continue, a coin-op arcade way of thinking about things. In Winter Games you can choose to practice or compete in any of the sports at any time. You also put in your name and what country you compete for, giving it a bit more of a cohesive games feel and giving you a chance to sample its renditions of various national anthems.

That comes into its own when it comes to multiplayer. For speed-skating, two people can compete directly against each other. For that and everything else, up to eight-players can take turns trying to set the highest standards, with a medal table tracking the results across different events. There is nothing like watching someone pull off a seemingly unbeatable score and then putting everything together to take the one chance to beat it. And when events are less satisfying, like Winter Games’ clumsy figure skating, playing it against others makes it matter less, because every player is taking on the same task. As long as there is differentiation, that will do. Your Computer reviewer Meirion Jones (later better known as a journalist on the BBC’s Newsnight) described Winter Games as “great family fun – it should appeal to women more than most programs”.

Picking a whole different season of sports was also a great idea to stand out from the pack. Furthermore, the more complex nature of those sports with their equipment worked better for Epyx’s approach in getting away from joystick-waggling too. This is well demonstrated by biathlon. Which is perhaps no surprise, as it is arguably one of the more video game-y sports out there: a version of some people’s everyday means of getting around, interrupted arbitrarily to shoot a gun for a bit. It’s one event where frantic joystick waggling does come in, for its uphill skiing sections, but the smarter emphasis throughout is on rhythm, and even waggling at joystick-endangering speed puts you at risk of slipping up when you have to switch back for a rhythmic flat section after. 

The shooting bits, meanwhile, are a marvel of miniature precision gameplay. A cursor moves quickly up and down, passing by the target each loop; you have to press down-up to reload between each shot, and then fire. After each shot, you are given long enough to reload before the cursor gets to the next target, but barely. So each time you have to choose whether to take the faster, riskier shot with the potential to gain time but also increased potential for the much larger time penalty for a miss. It’s so elegant.

The Winter Olympics and its palette heavy on white, greys and blues was a nice match for the Commodore 64 as well, and Winter Games provides some lovely looking backgrounds and animations. Your Computer described the figure skating as looking “a little like Exploding Fist on ice”. “Some of the bit-mapped background screens are absolutely superb” said Zzap!64’s Julian Rignall. The only complaint from his colleague Gary Penn was that it was still too similar to Summer Games. He wanted Epyx to go further still into making something a bit different. “They ought to buck up their ideas and go for something a little bit more original and varied in gameplay”. They would go on to successfully meet that challenge.

Gallup combined formats cart for week ending 09 November 1985, Popular Computing Weekly

Top of the charts for week ending 09 November 1985

UK games: Winter Games (Epyx/U.S. Gold, Commodore 64)

UK films: Peter Pan

UK singles: Feargal Sharkey – A Good Heart

UK albums: Sade – Promise

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