Tuning in to the Olympics is a thrill.
But after a hard day`s night watching boxing, weight lifting, swimming, diving, basketball and gymnastics, I start feeling like a lumpy couch potato in need of exercising my own muscles, testing my own reflexes.
So this week, during personal time-outs from the Barcelona bash, I`ve been plugging in two hot new video games-”Olympic Gold” and ”Street Fighter II”-and personally jumping into the fray. Appropriately, both titles are themed on international sports competition.
”Olympic Gold,” just out from the U.S. Gold company for the Sega Genesis and Game Gear systems (at $55 and $40, respectively), is the officially licensed video game of the 1992 Summer Barcelona Games, and offers challenging home versions of some of the most popular track and field and aquatic events.
Serious to the mission at hand, players first experience dramatic opening ceremonies-heralding all past Summer Olympic meets-and later bid farewell at a special closing event.
Some of the video-ized events are fairly easy. To win at swimming, all it takes is good pacing (don`t forget to glide) with facile tapping of two fire buttons.
Mimicking broadcast-style coverage, the ”Olympic Gold” archery match is shown with picture-in-picture views of the archer and the target.
The first insert picture helps you pull back the bow to the proper tension, while the second helps you sight the target with respect to wind strength and direction. Release the bow and the screen zooms in for a tight shot of the target. Bull`s-eye!
Mastering the hammer throw and 110-meter hurdle is harder. And ouch, it smarts (mentally) and slows you down when you hit one of those barricades.
The pole vaulting and springboard diving have been my downfall-even though the video game offers a training mode and a slow-motion demonstration option that steps through all the articulations needed to achieve a perfect 10 score.
Proclaimed ”game of the month” by the Babbages software chain, more than a half-million copies of ”Olympic Gold” have been ordered by stores worldwide in anticipation of a massive demand.
”Game sales are often sparked by the season,” said Babbages president Gary Kusin. ”Baseball games sell well in the summer, football and basketball in the winter. Four years ago, Epyx had out a couple of Olympic games-summer and winter-that both did quite well, too.”
The more sophisticated, 16-bit ”Olympic Gold” can be played in eight languages and at multiple levels of difficulty.
Computerized judging compares your performance with stored parameters of a perfect-score performance. Adding to the realism, the soundtrack blares the appropriate national anthem whenever a country wins a medal.
My other Olympics alternative is an excellent clone of a blockbuster arcade game that has had kids standing in line to play (usually at 50 cents a pop) for almost a year now, that has been the salvation of the arcade industry, according to the trade magazine RePlay.
Now coming home on Super Nintendo only, Capcom`s ”Street Fighter II”
offers an international competition of kickboxers-fanciful figures dubbed the ”World Warriors.”
Unlike the rash of earlier kung fu-style game exports from the Far East, this one is chock-full of challenge, humor and variety.
Reminiscent of futuristic sci-fi fantasies such as ”Total Recall,” only some of the street fighters display conventional human characteristics like those of Japanese sumo wrestler Edmond Honda or the arrogant American kung fu disciple Ken.
Others are bizarre, otherworldly creatures, best exemplified by the fanciful Brazilian half-man/half-beast, Blanka.
Each competitor hangs out in a different exotic locale, ranging from a steam bath to a military airport to a tropical paradise beach club.
No matter who you choose to be, or to compete against (in single or two-player modes), the game play is fast and furious, full of surreal
surprises.
Blanka, for example, has the might to become an electric force field, while Honda hurls himself straight forward in a bullet-like sumo head butt. The female competitor, Chun Li, looks tame, but beware of her whirlwind kick. Even at the simplest of eight playing levels, you`ll have your hands full, as this 16-megabyte game program takes full advantage of the Super Nintendo controller`s eight-position direction pad and six fire buttons to articulate a wide range of punches, kicks and defensive moves.
In the fall, Capcom will release an arcade-quality Fighter Power Stick designed specifically for use with ”Street Fighter II.”
By all accounts (including reports from Toys ”R” Us, Electronics Boutique and Babbages), ”Street Fighter II” is shaping up as a phenomenon approaching ”Pac-Man.”
Out just a few weeks, it is scoring the highest sales of any video game produced for the Super Nintendo game system, and is selling better than any other video game (of any format) introduced outside the Christmas buying season, even though the title carries a steep $65 to $75 price tag.
By year`s end, Capcom expects to sell 1 million copies in the United States alone.
At present, there are 2 million Super Nintendo systems in U.S. homes. But according to Electronics Boutique vice president and general merchandising manager Jeff Griffith, ”People are now buying Super Nintendo game systems just to play the `Street Fighter` cartridge.
”For some time, Sega Genesis hardware had been outselling Super Nintendo by a ratio of 1 1/2 to 1 at our stores, coast to coast. But since the release of `Street Fighter II,` those numbers have suddenly reversed.”
That`s what you call a gold-medal winner.
