Description
California Games was the original "Extreme Games" -- what today's generation might call "X-Games in the sun". Compete in events such as skateboarding, footbag, surfing, roller skating, flying disc (frisbee) and BMX. Some events are ranked by judges (Surfing), which gives you a score to help you improve your routine.
The Lynx version of the game omits the flying disc and roller skating events, but adds a 2-player gaming mode via comlynx.
Alternate Titles
- "Jogos de Verão" -- Sega Master System's Brazilian Title
- "Calgames" -- Informal title
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Trivia
The Atari 2600 version of "California Games," released in the later years of Atari's dominance in the Home Video Game market, was one of a handful of games that used 16K of memory! The Atari 2600 had been designed to only run cartridges of 2K and 4K in size. Games that were written to exceed that 4K memory limitation required the "bank swapping" technique in order to access 8K, 12K, and even 16K game cartridges.
Memory was still expensive in the 1980's, yet the public wanted more and more advanced games, especially since it had been several years now since the release of the many popular 8-bit home computer systems that had been flooding the market and reducing in cost. And with the Nintendo Entertainment System having just been released, the Atari 2600 was beginning to look very dated. In order to satisfy the public’s craving for games requiring increasing amounts of memory, creating a bigger game for the Atari 2600 was the only way to do it.
In order to handle the expansiveness of their games,
Epyx released all three of their Olympic-based games with multiple ROM chips equaling the necessary 16K. Using bank-swapping, the various ROM chips could be accessed and swapped as needed. And all of it was embedded within a standard-sized Atari 2600 Cartridge!