Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I’ve covered so far, be sure to check out the 13 previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.
First-person shooters. Roleplaying games. Action adventures. Even though they’ve evolved significantly alongside the gaming hardware they run on, some of today’s most-popular genres are multiple decades old and are likely here to stay for good. It’s hard to imagine people not playing a Call of Duty game in 2030, just as it’s unlikely that fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken will just be over and done with in the foreseeable future.
But some some genres have definitely diminished over the years to the point of almost disappearing entirely. Real-time strategy games – like StarCraft – at one time filled entire sports arenas of people eager to watch esports competitions. I haven’t heard anyone mention the “brain training” genre in years. Some bygone genres come complete with physical relics – literal skeletons in our closets: plastic guitars, fake drumkits, or even turntable controllers One of you – yes, I’m talking to you – even still has that Tony Hawk skateboarding controller in his attic.
As a kid, I couldn’t have imagined that The Games would ever end. When we didn’t know what else to do, a “quick game” of Epyx’s Summer Games or Winter Games would inevitably fill an entire afternoon. As you may be able to guess just from their titles, Epyx’s sports games simulated events you would find at the Olympic Games or in Track & Field competitions, with different control styles depending on the style of each event.
If you don’t want any additional hardware in your home, Pixel Games UK licensed the rights for some of Epyx’s games and put out a 2022 Summer Games compilation on Steam — but there’s a catch: it collects only the inferior ports (from Atari 2600 to ZX Spectrum), not the classic C64 edition or the decent Atari 8-bit conversion. The famed Atari Lynx version of California Games saw a re-release this year via The Epyx Collection: Handheld on Nintendo Switch, courtesy of the same publisher. The lack of an IOC license is actually an advantage for game preservation as it’s much easier for the games to get reissued without changes, so we’re bound to also see the C64 originals in more places in the future.
The idea behind Summer Games lives on. I’m hopeful that someday, someone will pick up the torch and assemble an ensemble of talented game designers to create the most realistic take on the world’s most enduring athletic competition. Until then, you may just have to travel back to 1984 to relieve the genre’s glory days. Or watch the real Olympics on TV.
Peer Schneider leads game guides and tools strategy across IGN, Map Genie, RockPaperShotGun, VG247, and Eurogamer. When Epyx didn’t work on a version of Winter Games for Atari computers, he started work on making his own. He got as far as creating all the background graphics and player animation for the biathlon event.
