Winter Olympics (video game)

Winter Olympics, released in the United States as Winter Olympic Games, is the official video game of the XVII Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.[1] All versions were published by U.S. Gold. It was released in North America in 1993 for the Amiga, Sega Genesis, and IBM PC compatibles. Ports to the Game Gear, Sega Genesis, Master System, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System followed. The game includes 10 winter sporting events. Players can represent countries from all over the world.

Winter Olympics
Developer(s)Abstract Images
Unexpected Development
Tiertex Design Studios
Publisher(s)U.S. Gold
Platform(s)Amiga, Genesis, Game Boy, Super NES, Game Gear, MS-DOS, Master System
ReleaseAmiga
Genesis
MS-DOS
Game Boy
  • NA: January 1994
  • EU: 1994
SNES
  • NA: February 1994
  • EU: February 24, 1994
Game Gear
Master System
Genre(s)Sports
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Gameplay

The player can train freely and compete in both full or mini (events selected by the player) Olympics. During competition, there are both medals and points tables. While in Olympic Gold points were awarded according to the medals table, in Winter Olympics they were given according to the best results, like decathlon. Doing so, it was perfectly possible to someone win the gold medal in short track, and get few more points than other skaters (even not finalists) that got better qualifying times. This scoring method also meant that someone who won gold medals in six or seven events might fall outside the top 10 if disqualified on the remaining three.

Events
  1. Downhill
  2. Giant Slalom
  3. Super G
  4. Slalom
  5. Bobsled
  6. Luge
  7. Freestyle moguls (console versions only)
  8. Ski jumping
  9. Biathlon
  10. Short track

Playable nations
  1.  Australia
  2.  Austria
  3.  Brazil
  4.  Canada
  5.  Finland
  6.  France
  7.  Germany
  8.  Great Britain
  9.  Italy
  10.  Japan
  11.  Norway
  12.  Russia
  13.  Spain
  14.  Sweden
  15.  Switzerland
  16.  United States

Development

Major differences between versions stemmed from U.S. Gold's choice to use two companies developing different versions of the game separately. Additionally, Tiertex Design Studios wrote original code for each platform instead of porting. Amongst major differences, freestyle moguls are different on the 16-bit versions, and overall the Super NES version is much more unforgiving than the Genesis version, while the Master System version allows better control on alpine skiing events.

References
  1. Joachim Froholt (1 February 2014). "Lillehammer fikk et skuffende OL-spill" (in Norwegian). Game. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
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