Published by Activision in 1985, Tour de France is one of the rare times in gaming history where cycling has proven to be a hit with gamers.
Tag Archives: Sports
Track & Field, Game Boy
Konami‘s 1992 conversion of the smash arcade hit Track & Field features more events than the original. In fact, it’s something of a mashup of Track & Field and its famous follow-up Hyper Sports.
Discs of Tron, Arcade
The second video game based on Disney‘s famous 1982 movie, Tron, released into arcades in 1983 by Bally Midway. The first one is here.
Mario Tennis: Power Tour, Game Boy Advance
This 2005 tennis game is one of my favourite sports games of all time.
Mario Tennis: Power Tour was developed by Camelot for Nintendo and is known as Mario Power Tennis in Europe and Australia, but I’m sticking to the original title.
Pong, Arcade
Atari‘s Pong is a legendary black and white ‘bat and ball’ game from 1972, and was one of the earliest video game successes.
It’s basically a two-player table tennis simulation, with two ‘bats’ on either side of the screen, moving vertically to return a bouncing ball. If you fail to return the ball your opponent scores a point, and the first to eleven points wins.
FIFA Street 2, XBox
I do enjoy a game of FIFA Street 2 on my XBox from time to time. It doesn’t have all the pompous dramatics of a regular FIFA game, although it does have the players.
Hyper Sports, ZX Spectrum
This British conversion of Konami‘s Hyper Sports arcade game is a smash hit ZX Spectrum game – arguably one of the best Spectrum arcade conversions of all time.
Swimming, skeet shooting, vaulting, archery, triple jump, and weightlifting all feature – just like in the arcade game. Don’t be too put off at the prospect of a lot of joystick waggling. Thankfully Hyper Sports is more than just a button-basher. There’s also some skill and timing involved too.
Beautifully programmed by the late Jonathan Smith, Hyper Sports was initially published by Imagine Software in 1985.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Sports
Hyper Sports, Arcade
Hyper Sports is the iconic 1984 sequel to Konami‘s arcade hit Track & Field.
It once again features multi event sports challenges for one or more players, this time featuring swimming, clay pigeon shooting, vaulting, archery, triple jump, and weightlifting. And maybe pole-vaulting, although I didn’t see it in the version I played.
Jolly music, exuberant player sprites, and bad translation characterise Hyper Sports, but the arcade original is still a really solid challenge for those who like sport-themed button-bashers.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Sports
Summer Games, Atari 800
Epyx‘s classic multi-event sports sim, Summer Games, first came out on the Commodore 64, and this Atari 8-bit conversion came later.
Epyx did a sterling job of porting it to the Atari and Summer Games is arguably one of the best games on the system.
The events include: pole vault, platform diving, 100m dash, gymnastics, freestyle swimming, skeet shooting and 4 x 400m relay.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Games_(video_game)
Winter Olympiad 88, ZX Spectrum
Winter Olympiad 88 for the ZX Spectrum was programmed by Derek Brewster, with graphics by Philip Scott. It is a multi-event winter sports game, no doubt created to cash in on the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.
Tynesoft published Winter Olympiad for a variety of systems and this Speccy version is not too bad. Events include Downhill, Biathlon, Ski Jumping, Bobsleigh and Slalom. Each event loads independently, one after the other, although the loading the very quick.
Up to nine players can participate in the events – all competing to win as many gold and silver medals as possible.
More: Winter Olympiad 88 on World of Spectrum
