Hey Matt,

I just wanted to let you know how much I have been enjoying Matt Chat these past few weeks. I missed some of your earler Matt chats so I need to go back and watch them still. I am looking forward to that.

Summer Games was an old favorite of mine. I think I preferred Summer Games 2 and Winter Games though. I also really got a kick out of the Caveman Ughlympics back in the day. The "Clubbing" event where you had an 'intimidation" phase prior to bashing each other with clubs used to always make me laugh. Nowadays we have games like "Mario and Sonic at the Olypic games" on the Wii which carry on the tradition of these great games.

Thanks for making Matt Chat and reviewing classic games. It sure brings back some memories. Keep up the excellent work!

Here is one for example:

I hope you're kidding.

Rob, you are brilliant. Plain and simple. I didn't even think about that.

I'm not sure if you can make a link in one of those annotations or not. I will try it and see!!

Less than 24 hours after you posted the video, there's already over 100 views of this episode. Not too shabby!

This episode might be the tipping point where it all seems to have come together: excellent commentary, cool intro titles, excellent cutaways, and even an "insert" graphic. It seems, dare I say it, "professional."

It seems that your commentaries have gotten even better with the microphone in front of you. Are you more comfortable with that arrangement?

As for Summer Games, it was appealing because it was a subject matter everyone is familiar with and could relate to, as opposed to invading aliens or hopping on mushrooms for power-ups. Yet, most of the mini-games, while hard, were less about reflexes and more about timing, making the game approachable to most non-joystick-jockeys. Yet it was still a videogame, so the joystick jockeys could have fun too. The animation was, for its time, excellent.

I always wanted to play Winter Games, but it wasn't available for the Atari 8-bit. It looked really good!

I did mess with the (I think) Amiga version of "California Games," but it really didn't appeal to me. To me, it was less "California Games" and more "SLACKER Games." To play a swimmer, runner, or pole vaulter was to play a real athlete, but California Games gave you "hacky sack," a pastime for losers who weren't skilled enough to do something cool, like play videogames. Since playing real "hackey sack" was essentially goofing off, it felt redundant to goof off playing a videogame about goofing off.

Great video! And all this talk about the Epyx 500xj joystick makes me want to dig mine out. Actually, I think I have two of them! Great joystick.

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Well, the other factor of course is that Epyx was the original "developer" of the L y n x when it was still the "Handy", so that's why a lot of the early software for it was from them (Electrocop, Blue Lightning, etc.). They just didn't have enough money to bring it to market themselves, so it ended up with Atari. Sadly, that was not a great place to end up for obvious reasons, but it is what it is. It was and is a great handheld, with tons of power.

They're all rather similar, yes, though of course Epyx's games were as popular as they were for a reason - they were tuned well and felt "just right". I had for instance HES Games at the same time I had Summer Games on the C-64 and I played Summer Games far more. Of course HES Games had some unique events that it would take later "Games" games to cover, and I did play a lot of archery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hes_Games).

I should maybe do a video on Microsoft's Decathlon, Apple II version, as a companion to what you did and cross promote your Summer Games coverage as the first breakthrough hit olympics-style game. Busy, busy day today and tonight, though.

Here's some screenshots: http://www.mobygames.com/game/microsoft-decathlon/screenshots

It's obviously a "rawer" type of visuals and more clinical approach to simulating olympic events. Since it came out in 1981, I wonder if it's the earliest olympic-style game with recognizable graphics? I can't really recall anything earlier save for Pong-style ball and paddle games that called themselves "olympics", a la Atari's late 1970's "Video Olympics" (http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=585) and arcade antecedents.

Books!
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.