"Land, You Lousy, Sequined Wench! Land!"

Epyx released the title Winter Games on several different systems in the mid to late eighties, including Commodore 64 and both the Atari 2600 and 7800. By all accounts, these versions all had seven or eight different events which you could play individually or in succession.

For some reason, the NES version only has four. Perhaps Epyx was hasty in preparing the port, perhaps the cartridge didn't offer as much space as a Commodore 64 double-sided disk, perhaps they improved the graphics and sound of the game so much that they didn't have room for all the events (judging from old screenshots, this seems the most likely scenario), or perhaps the luge didn't meet the criteria for the Nintendo Seal of Quality. We may never know.

What we do know is that the NES version of Epyx's Winter Games franchise consists of four different winter sports, each of which can be played with one or two players, three of them alternating, and one simultaneous. It includes flags and national anthems of a variety of exciting countries, including USA, GBR (although the Union Jack has accidentally reversed colors), and USR (only three letters per country! Silly Communists!). It sports decent AI for one of the events, and it features the ability to enter names in order to record high scores.

Hot Dog Aerials, the first event, is perhaps my favorite. By pressing the control pad in different directions while your skier jumps, you can get him to do all manner of crazy flips, including forward flips and backward flips, and a wide array of crazy stunts, such as crossing his skis or uncrossing his skis. Spectacular. Well, it's actually pretty fun, especially with two players alternating, mostly because of the zany sound effects and dramatic crashes that result from all this indiscriminate button pushing.

Speed Skating is another classic old-school button masher. You press left and right in rhythm to take strides, and the idea is to build enough speed with short, strong strides that you can cruise at a very high speed with fewer, more rhythmical strides. This game presents perhaps the most
genuine, enduring challenge of the four, and although the graphics are, to put it kindly, basic, features a very cool split-screen where each player can see his position relative to the other skater, either human or AI, as well as his own progress on the track.

Figure skating is the third event. I have had this game since 1987 (that's fifteen years as of the writing of this review), and I have never been able to get this chick to land a jump. Ever. I can get her to spin, and sometimes I can get her to stop without planting her face in the ice. I can get her to jump easily enough, but she always falls down. Every time, for fifteen years, even after reading the manual a hundred times, she falls down. This is incredibly demoralizing and probably the best reason not to play this game. If you figure out how to get this chick to land on her skates, you know what, don't bother to e-mail me, because, after trying for fifteen years, my shame will be too great to ever bother to see if it works.

Oh, and there's crude, sin-wave Tchaikovsky music in this one. I think it's the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker. Whatever it is, it is great music to fall down by.

The final event is the Bobsled. This features the most sophisticated event interface, including a several different windows in which to view pertinent information: the course map, a map of the position of your bobsled relative to the terrain, and a speedometer. The tough part of this game is figuring out how hard to lean into each turn; the course map offers better guidance than the close-up view, which makes an honest effort but can't really communicate complex 3D lighting effects with 8 bit pixels. Practice makes perfect, and the game is good enough to warrant some practice, but
probably not enough for perfection.

On to the ratings. ''5'' is average.

Graphics - 3 - The graphics in this game are pretty crude, to say the least. It is very hard to derive any sort of pleasure from them, and they often get in the way of gameplay.

Sound/Music - 6 - The sound effects are fun (especially the high-pitched slide whistle that indicates that your skier is doing a flip and the ''shush'' of the static bursts in speed skating and bobsled), and the library of national anthems is pretty impressive. Add to that this is the first NES game I've heard to include music from a Russian ballet, and you've got a pretty solid score for the game.

Play Control - 1 - Simply because of that darned figure skater who can't land, I can't justify any decent rating for play control for this game. Maybe it's just me, but none of my friends could ever get her to land, either. Fifteen years, people! Fifteen years! No landing! No points! 0.0 from every judge! Every time! Ever!

Design - 2 - All the games suffer from some sort of basic design flaw, usually involving a shoddy interface or an idea too ambitious for the technology. The skier is erratic and moves around inexplicably in the air, the speed skater split screen doesn't work as well as it should, the figure skater is, well, a source of trauma, and the bobsled event is too cluttered for any strategy other than memorization to really work. Plus, there's no real cohesion to the game whatsoever. You can play the events in succession, but there's no continuity beyond the opening sequence and national anthems.

Challenge - 3 - The challenge isn't very enduring at all unless you have somebody to play against, and even then, it's pretty easy to exhaust all the ski-jumping moves and optimize your bobsled runs. The only challenging part is the speed skating, and it's alright, but this game is
pretty easy when possible.

Replay - 3 - Darn you, figure skater! Darn you!!!

Theme - 4 - The olympic theme is there, and the national anthems are there, which is cool. There are even tiny bits of text telling you what medal you got. Still, other than the title sequence, it's tough to believe these inept fools, falling over themselves constantly, are really in the Olympics, so, it feels like there's something missing.

Fun - 2 - You'll have to beg your friends to play this one with you more than once or twice, even with the cool skiing and speed skating events. The learning curve is too high and the rewards are too small.

Overall - 3 - Not Very Good - This one's kind of a stinker, but what do you expect from a port that's half of the original? The original, apparently, had slalom, luge, ski jumping (for distance), and biathlon, not to mention functional figure skating (probably). This one has a place in a box somewhere in my house from which it will probably not emerge more than once in the next ten years. You do the math.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/14/02, Updated 10/14/02