(Hi all. I'm going to go ahead and wear my fail on my sleeve with this one.
Retro goggles being 10/40 at best, I wrote this article overlooking one key factor:
Summer Games has no AI. At all. Save for the judges. Who are are cheap bastards.
I built alot of this one on top of the idea that competition was tough in this game
and I was right . . . ish. The only true competition was my own abilities
Rather than revise and save face, I'm going to go ahead and let his stand as a
monument to fond memories: Rarely Accurate, Always Amazing.
-Tubatic, keepin' it real)



My gaming, as I remember it, started a few years before the NES came out. I think its very easy to remember the NES days fondly, because that was around the time that I really started to come into my own as a gamer. Carts were easy. You stuck'em in, you pressed start, and you were playing. PC, or rather Commodore 64 gaming, took a decent bit of effort. Though I eventually learned the magical sequence ending in " ,8,1", my gaming was in large part linked to me bugging my dad to setup a game for me to play.

We had tons of games under a single directory, though I never really understood consciously what directory had what, and where exactly I could find my favorite games, I would always manage to stumble onto some cool game to play. Being about 5 or 6, I honestly didn't know much. But, along with a few other games, I have fond and vivid memories of Summer Games.

(Even if the menus were impossible to read without rupturing an eye.)


Games you play in the Summer

Summer Games was just that. A collection of summer Olympic games. You would choose your country (USA!) and then compete through repeated rounds to get the best score possible, and win the gold. Simple, fun and addictive, before I had a concept of what that word even meant.

Gameplay was easy. Button mashing, pressing directions to pull of timed moves and perfect angles. They had to be learned, but once learned, it was just a good time perfecting your game.

I would sit there for what felt like hours in my little kid mind, competing in diving, javelin throw, pole vault and different types of foot races (with and without hurdles). The end goal, to simply get more medals than the computer controlled countries. I think a lot of my perceptions of video game challenges were formed here.



That damn russian judge!

Because the Russian judge CLEARLY had a bias. It wasn't fair. Seriously. Aside from being virtual kinsmen, they're both computer controlled. How do I compete with that?! I could do a great perfect, slicing the water dive, and I'd still endup with less than a 10 from the Russian judge. Un-freaking fair!

We also had Summer Games II. This unsurprisingly was more of the same. And it was good. Maybe this was where I learned not to have venom for the incremental sequel. If they're both great, what's the big deal?

I also picked up my thrill for the event/tournament. There was a leaderboard after each event, keeping watch of which country had what medals. It was exciting racing those countries, not only in each event, but also in this bigger, meta game. I appreciated that as a kid. It was fun to compete, get better, and achieve.



Love was such an easy game to play

Eventually, computers were upgraded, and files were lost. Keyboards and literally floppy disks gave way to Hypercards and Apple logos with rainbow colors. I'd miss Summer Games about as much as any kid misses an old toy when a shiny new one gets put in front of him. After awhile, I didn't look back.


The torch ceremony in Summer Games II. Yes, that's a guy with a jetpack.

Maybe that's where I can trace it all back to. Right out of college, I would play season on top of season of Madden, locking myself into seasonal combat with a somewhat respectable computer opponent (who I KNOW is cheating me). It was fun avoidance from getting things going in the real world, building wins on top of wins and trying to out record the computerized horde working toward MY Super Bowl glory. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was regressing back to those days in front of my dad's Commodore 64, playin' Summer Games without a care in the world.