''California Games'' is a 1987

sports video game A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize actually playing the sport (s ...

originally released by

Epyx Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher active in the late 1970s and 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before rena ...

for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

, and ported to other home computers and

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally placed i ...

s. Branching from their '' Summer Games'' and ''

Winter Games ''Winter Games'' is a sports video game developed by Epyx (and released in Europe by U.S. Gold), based on sports featured in the Winter Olympic Games. A snow-and-ice themed follow-up to the highly successful '' Summer Games'', ''Winter Games'' ...

'' series, this game consists of a collection of outdoor sports purportedly popular in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The game was successful and spawned a sequel.

Gameplay

The events available vary slightly depending on the platform, but include all of the following: *

Half-pipe A half-pipe is a structure used in gravity extreme sports such as snowboarding, skateboarding, skiing, freestyle BMX, skating, and scooter riding. Overview The structure resembles a cross-section of a swimming pool, essentially two concave ramp ...

Footbag A footbag is a small, round bag usually filled with plastic pellets or sand, which is kicked into the air as part of a competitive game or as a display of dexterity. "Hacky Sack" is the name of a brand of footbag popular in the 1970s (currently o ...

Surfing Surfing is a surface water sport in which an individual, a surfer (or two in tandem surfing), uses a board to ride on the forward section, or face, of a moving wave of water, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore. Waves suitabl ...

(Starring Rippin' Rick) *

Roller skating Roller skating is the act of traveling on surfaces with roller skates. It is a recreational activity, a sport, and a form of transportation. Roller rinks and skate parks are built for roller skating, though it also takes place on streets, sid ...

* BMX *

Flying disc A frisbee (pronounced ), also called a flying disc or simply a disc, is a gliding toy or sporting item that is generally made of injection-molded plastic and roughly in diameter with a pronounced lip. It is used recreationally and competitive ...

Development

Several members of the development team moved on to other projects. Chuck Sommerville, the designer of the half-pipe game in ''California Games'', later developed the game '' Chip's Challenge'', while

Ken Nicholson Ken Nicholson is a video game developer. Career Nicholson is a video game developer and Windows graphics pioneer. He was the founder of GamePC Consortium and inventor of the technology used by Microsoft as the basis for Windows' DirectX graph ...

, the designer of the

footbag A footbag is a small, round bag usually filled with plastic pellets or sand, which is kicked into the air as part of a competitive game or as a display of dexterity. "Hacky Sack" is the name of a brand of footbag popular in the 1970s (currently o ...

game, was the inventor of the technology used in Microsoft's

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

. Kevin Norman, the designer of the BMX game, went on to found the educational science software company Norman & Globus, makers of the ''ElectroWiz'' series of products. The sound design for the original version of ''California Games'' was done by Chris Grigg, member of the band

Negativland Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label (Seeland Records) is named after another Neu! track. The core ...

Ports

Originally written for the

and

, it was eventually

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

, Apple IIGS,

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sin ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...

, MSX and

Master System The is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was originally a remodeled export version of the Sega Mark III, the third iteration of the SG-1000 series of consoles, which was released in Japan in 1985 and ...

. The

Atari Lynx The Atari Lynx is a hybrid 8/16-bit fourth generation handheld game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handheld game console with a color liquid-crystal disp ...

version was the

pack-in game This list includes terms used in video games and the video game industry, as well as slang used by players. 0–9 A ...

for the system when it was launched in 1989. An Atari XE version was planned and contracted out by Atari Corp. to Epyx in 1988 but no code was delivered by the publication deadline.

Reception

''California Games'' was a commercial blockbuster. With more than 300,000 copies sold in the first nine months, it was the most-successful Epyx game, outselling each of the four previous and two subsequent titles in the company's "Games" series. CEO

David Shannon Morse David Shannon Morse (April 15, 1943 – November 2, 2007) was the cofounder of Amiga. In 1982, he left Tonka Toys (where he was Vice-President of Marketing) and became the Chief Executive Officer at Hi Toro, Inc., which he co-founded and which l ...

stated that it was the first Epyx game to appeal equally to boys and girls during

playtesting A playtest is the process by which a game designer tests a new game for bugs and design flaws before releasing it to market. Playtests can be run "open", "closed", "beta", or otherwise, and are very common with board games, collectible card games, ...

. The game topped 500,000 units sold by 1989, at which time ''

Video Games & Computer Entertainment ''VideoGames & Computer Entertainment'' (abbreviated as ''VG&CE'') was an American magazine dedicated to covering video games on computers, home consoles and arcades. It was published by LFP, Inc. from the late 1980s until the mid-1990s. Offe ...

'' reported that sales were "still mounting". ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' recommended the game, calling it fun. ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...

'' called ''California Games'' "both inventive and charming". In a capsule review for ''

STart Start can refer to multiple topics: *Takeoff, the phase of flight where an aircraft transitions from moving along the ground to flying through the air * Starting lineup in sports *Standing start, and rolling start, in an auto race Acronyms *St ...

'',

Clayton Walnum Clayton Walnum is a programmer who has written multiple books about programming in C#, DirectX and C++. Clayton Walnum started programming computers in 1982, when he traded an IBM Selectric typewriter to buy an Atari 400 computer with 16K of RA ...

said ''California Games'' "isn't a bad package, especially since it comes free with the Lynx." He found the BMX and surfing events great fun but deemed the skateboarding event frustrating and said the foot-bag event is pleasant but quickly wears thin. In 1996, '' Next Generation'' listed the "Games" series collectively as number 89 on its "Top 100 Games of All Time". The magazine stated that though the games had great graphics for their time, their most defining qualities were their competitive multiplayer modes and "level of control that has yet to be equaled". In 2004, the Atari Lynx version of ''California Games'' was inducted into

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

's list of the greatest games of all time.

Legacy

The game was followed in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

by '' California Games II'', but the sequel failed to match the original's success. A ''California Games'' television series was considered in the late 1980s as part of the ''Super Mario Bros. Power Hour'', a one-hour animation block of Nintendo focused video game adaptations. Concept art was produced for the project by DIC Animation City. Only the Mario and Zelda segments for the block were ultimately produced, airing in 1989 as part of ''

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!'' is an American live-action/animated television series airing from September 4 to November 30, 1989, on syndication. The series is based on the video games ''Super Mario Bros.'' and '' Super Mario Bros. 2'' by ...

''. The game was released for

mobile phones A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

in the Java format, and current rights holders System 3 CEO Mark Cale has stated that the game will be available in future as both a retail product and an online product for the

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

and

Nintendo DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...

. The Commodore 64 version was released for the Wii's

Virtual Console A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Unix ...

service in Europe on April 11, 2008, and in North America on July 6, 2009.

References

External links

''California Games'' package and manual scans
at c64sets.com *
''California Games''
for the Amiga at the Hall of Light (HOL)

for the Atari 2600 at Atari Mania

for the Atari ST at Atari Mania

for the Lynx at Atari Age {{Authority control 1987 video games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Appaloosa Interactive games Apple II games Apple IIGS games Atari 2600 games Atari Lynx games Atari ST games Commodore 64 games Cycling video games DOS games Epyx games Master System games Mobile games MSX games Multiplayer and single-player video games Multiple-sport video games Nintendo Entertainment System games Pack-in video games Sega Genesis games Skateboarding video games Surfing video games U.S. Gold games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Alex Rudis Video games scored by David Wise Video games set in California Video games with oblique graphics Water sports video games Westwood Studios games ZX Spectrum games Virtual Console games for Wii