Review: World Games
The United Nations of sports simulations
Sometimes, you shouldn’t go back. Just as it’s painfully clear to older eyes that 1980s TV shows such as Knight Rider and Transformers were, in fact, rubbish, it’s a jolt when a much-revered old-time game stinks like a sewer in the cold, harsh light of the modern day. Sadly, that’s (almost) the case with World Games, an Epyx ‘classic’ originally released in 1986 for the Commodore 64 that’s recently stumbled on to Virtual Console.
Clearly running out of traditional sporting events after a slew of Olympic-inspired efforts, Epyx began culling sports from the bizarre end of the spectrum for World Games. Instead of running, jumping and swimming, there’s sumo wrestling, caber tossing and barrel jumping. Although variety is the spice of life, half of the eight events taste like soot, due to poor implementation (the barely playable slalom skiing), sluggish controls (log rolling, sumo wrestling), or just by virtue of being dull and unoriginal, even at the time (weightlifting).
It’s not all bad news—the game is peppered with cute animations and the barrel jumping, cliff diving and bull riding events offer some basic fun (and, fact fans, the bull-riding event is actually very easy if you can, say, hold a joystick and read instructions), although as standalone events for the single player, they’re still limited and throwaway. And so unless you have a copious number of friends and cans of beer to hand, World Games is unlikely to hold your interest for long.
World Games is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish), or for a fraction of that via eBay, if you fancy a copy of the original.
WeightWatchers meetings got interesting when everyone had to dress only in underwear.
I always liked the bull riding and the caber toss (if only for the synthesized bagpipes and the animation of the ahem, err, tosser). But as a package it was the weakest of the Games series before Winter Edition/Summer Edition came along…
Mm. And I think, these days, games such as this need to have events that work in a standalone fashion, or have a level of frenetic arcade-like playability. That’s why Hypersports can still be fun, and why I still rate California Games. The former is button-mashing, and (some of) the latter’s events are fun in their own right. Going back to World Games now, though, and it all seems very lightweight by comparison.