Your Sinclair


California Games

Author: Rich Pelley
Publisher: Kixx
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K/+2/+3

 
Published in Your Sinclair #60

California Games

Good Lord. Dunc spent an entire page reviewing this chestnut back in '87, and concluded with a rather ambivalent "Crikey" - which isn't really much help, so looks like I'd better tell you what happens. It's a multi-event affair, set in (surprise surprise) California - with all the 'radical' new sports to try your hand at.

And quite a selection there are too (you can practice them in any order you like, by the way) although unfortunately most of them are a bit crap.

The best is certainly the half-pipe skateboarding. You waggle back and forth gently to gain speed going up this spooky ramp thingy, and then jerk in various directions to do various assorted 'stunts'. It's quite hard, but great fun once you've got the 'hang' of it. Surfing is good too - just move left and right and into waves to 'air' (ie jump) - really satisfying. And that's about it as far as the good ones go. The footbag is okay (just move left and right to keep the little bean bag in the air) but the rest are pretty diabolical.

There s rollerskating (a slow waggler), BMXing (just a bit crap really) and 'The Flying Disk' (ie frisbee, but you're not allowed to say that because it's a TM). Utterly impossible. And there you go. Quite a selection - nice graphics all-round but it certainly suffers from only two or three events being any good. (And each event is multiload too. Bleeuurrgh.)

Rich Pelley

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