Epyx : The Games & Street Sports Series Documentary

[@8_Bit]

I'm a huge fan of the Games series, and watching this makes me realize I ignored The Games: Summer and Winter editions completely. The footage of both was completely new to me, and the Summer Edition looks especially impressive. It's really weird that I've never tried them! Nice work on the documentary as always, thanks.

[@chaoslab]

You and BastichB are awesome.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah totally worth playing especially Summer .. Winter looks nice but is a bit of a pain controls wise but still worth checking out .

[@RacerX-]

I didn't play those either as I stuck with the previous versions but I apparently missed out as they look pretty cool. I am not sure why I didn't play them as I do remember them. I will have to try them out.

[@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343]

I remember being wowed when The Games series were released. I always wanted more events. Event expansion sets would have been great, like the scenery disks for Flight Simulator II or the car/course disks for Test Drive II. C64 was aging by then but some cool stuff was still coming out for it. C128 was too often ignored though.

[@DualGenStudios]

@@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343 I had the same feeling as a kid. I wanted more events. Now I'm creating a similar game fullfilling my dream. It's Medal winners 24. Take a look at it, please.

[@bikesnmore]

Ahhh great memories of being 10 years old and playing the hell out of the Street Sports series and California Games on the 64 on a tiny little TV in Aus back in the late 80s.

[@BastichB64K]

Such epic games 🕹️👍

[@suucat]

To me Epyx is the most iconic game studio ever for the Commodore 64, all the games they made are excellent. Some of my best memories of my teen years was playing all these awesome games with my friends, every weekend i brought my C64 to a friends house (our usual spot for gathering)... man i miss those times...

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah their c64 stuff was always quality

[@dennyhaynes3]

Another stunningly edited, produced video packed full of information on the great team and games Epyx produced. Fantastic era in C64 sport simulations and many happy memories playing the games. Out of them all Winter games will always be my favourite, love the graphics and SFX on this one.

[@BastichB64K]

Cant argue with Winter been your #1 , second for me only to Cali games

[@curiousottman]

I feel the reason the later Games weren’t well received and received lower score in reviews was that in 88 the bar had been raised by 16 bit machines such as the Amiga and Atari ST lines. Absolutely the 88 titles were incredible for the c64. But compared to Amiga titles they were lacking. As always, lovely video. Very informative.

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers , thats definitely a possibility and also makes the reviewers at the time seem a bit shallow🤔

[@OperationPhantom]

Bastich, you've done it again! Great look back at some of the finest c64 game(serie)s ever! Epyx were really pushing the boundaries here.

[@BastichB64K]

Thank you sir , I loved Epyx ! So many great games that pushed the c64 to the limit

[@BadAssBradders]

Great point about the Indian tourist board, I spat out my coffee, hahaha. And you're right "You Spin Me Right Round..." Was on the radio literally every single f*ing second of the bloody day! Another great video buddy, keep em coming. I'd love a dedicated video to Space Rouge!

[@BastichB64K]

Thanks dude much appreciated . Space Rogue is near and dear to my heart , i'll eventually do a dedicated vid im sure

[@IsaacKuo]

I'm not familiar with Puzzle Panic 1:58 but that cover art immediately makes my brain go "woo-OO-ooooo" (Doctor Who theme)

[@BastichB64K]

😂👍

[@patsfan4life]

Street Sports Baseball was actually a very creative and fun baseball sim….. very imaginative and well done, showing characteristics that made the c64 so unique

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah i think its the best baseball game on the system

[@darrenlonghurst4433]

Hey B Man!!! Thanks again for an absolutely Awesome Documentary!! Your great honest reviewing and gameplay capture Not to mention your childhood memories really make for a great overall feeling. I spent many hours playing Epyx games over my childhood. California Games was my all time favorite! Amazing work mate!! Documentary's like this is why I love your channel so much!! YOU ROCK!!! 😁

[@BastichB64K]

No probs dudes , it was fun to make 👍

[@lostplateau]

Started releasing some of these on Steam in recent months. This is the best video online about them honestly.

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers thx , I got a complete documentary also about Epyx themselves if you interested

[@airfixer9461]

Great video B, I liked the sports games from Epyx too...many joysticks didn't survive the battles I had with my friends on the c64 over these games ...... what a great time it was ;-)

[@BastichB64K]

Yes many joysticks died during these games 😂😂

[@thelordofinfinity3901]

I love that you appreciated Summer edition too, that was one of my favourites back in the day. On the Amiga version the hurdles was improved to 400m with 3D graphics. I practiced Winter Edition a lot to try to squeeze some joy out of it as I felt that maybe I just needed to be better. Winter Games was an epic week of my childhood as we filled the back room of my parents' house for 7/8 player games every night!

[@BastichB64K]

Summer edition is very underated and as for Winter Games what a classic , i also used to have big multiplayer party's with that game .

[@jovmilos]

It would be pretty nice if someone would do Apshai Documentary. That's a series of great games that I completely missed on C64

[@BastichB64K]

Definitely an interesting topic and games to cover 🤔

[@andysiau6576]

Great overview of the Games series by Epyx. Thanks for making a great video!

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers thx

[@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343]

Cool feature of Summer Games II was the ability to include all Summer Games I events, if you had the first release. This expanded the scale of the multiplayer event. We'd often be able to round up enough friends to go 8 players at times.

[@chaoslab]

Always a good day when there is a new BastichB video posted. Epyx sure used that impossible mission running animation a but, it is so smooth after all.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah that animation was great 👍 still so smooth

[@MegaasAlexandros]

Admire your hard work and frequent uploads, ild think it takes up all of your spare time!! Keep up the great work.

[@BastichB64K]

It does 😂👍 thanks for watching

[@janerjaner2455]

awesome games awesome documentary! thx bastich for another nice time to spend watching this!

[@BastichB64K]

My pleasure , thx for watching . I love those old Epyx games

[@mjk3347]

Great doco as always! The Games series, especially California Games, got smashed at my house as a kid, and I loved the baseball and basketball games despite being an Aussie, but it's so sad how each of those series sorta just fizzled out... Thanks for the great trip down memory lane mate!

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah the end of epyx wasn't pretty ... They just ran out of money , check out the first Epyx vid for their full story if you haven't already and thx for watching 👍

[@gedruk]

Hi from the UK mate ! I absolutely love this video and I love your channel its full of really interesting stuff, you obviously do tons of research for the videos to make them so interesting keep up the brilliant work ! Cheers !!

[@BastichB64K]

Thank you much appreciated and yeah a lot of research happens for the vids mixed with my own classic game memories , glad you enjoy them.

[@richardm6332]

Great video. Never played any of the street games but loved both Summer Games and Winter Games. The biathlon was a favourite in our house.

[@BastichB64K]

Biathlon was excellent , i loves the combo of skiing and blasting 👍

[@metalfacemark]

I had forgotten totally about the later winter and summer games but I must have played them as the nostalgia came back when they came on, time to break out the mister and give them a go again !

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah they are pretty underrated games worth a play 🕹️

[@RacerX-]

Fantastic video. I didn't play the street sports titles at all so I will have to check them out. Summer Games and Winter Games were a staple at my house though.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah baseball and basketball are great ... The others no so much 😂

[@tommyhatcher3399]

Epyx were great but the ambition of those Starpath guys was greater. Just remarkable that they followed up Turbocharger with Summer Games. I didn't even know that. I love them because they made the first console RPG with Dragonstomper. All JRPGs did was add anime to the formula. Makes you wonder what Starpath would've done if it wasn't for the crash. Their greatness was short-lived. I'd ask for a documentary but there's not much to say about them. People blame the crash on bad games but I actually blame people like Starpath. It wasn't6 because of bad games, it was because the 2600 was stuck in 1977 while the rest of the gaming world was racing to the future. I mean, the Commodore 64 came out just a few months before the crash. I think how great arcade games looked in 1983 did the most damage. But I don't blame Atari. It was a new market. They were the leaders. They didn't want to shake up an industry they didn't understand yet. A very modern day mindset that failed them back then. There was a crash in the same way there was a Super Nintendo "crash" when the PlayStation came out. Sure they had the 5200 but that was just a repackaged 800, which was the exact same mistake Commodore made with the CD32. Nintendo are only called the saviors because the Colecovision made the worst computer ever made and sank their own company. Meanwhile Intellivision were stuck in 1979 and Atari made a console with no sound. Ha. Yeah, well. Epyx, great company. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah so much history with these old companies , its pretty interesting to research 🕹️👍

[@menhirmike]

I loved World Games! And I just had a random thought while thinking about wacky games: I wonder what an Epyx adaption of Takeshi's Castle would've looked and played like, and I'm sad we will never know.

[@JasonGambacort]

Right you are Vic!

[@BastichB64K]

That would have been epic 😀

[@changofett77]

I've learned many national anthems back then thanks to Epix Summer Games. I remember selecting Japan just to piss off my friends since it was the longest anthem, we stood on top of the seat with one hand on our hearts to listen to them as if we were from that country! Many great memories!

[@DualGenStudios]

I also chose Japan to piss off my brother because of the longest anthem. If you liked this game as a kid, you'll probably like a similar game I'm creating. It's Medal winners 24. Take a look at it, please.

[@RyanDanielG]

Great documentary again! Thanks BB!

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers , thx for checking it out

[@amteamisking]

Well done, another excellent documentary. Keep up the good work.

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers thx

[@mrtoon4197]

i've been playing a lot of winter games these days! marvelous video! keep up the great work ❤🕹

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers thank you 🕹️👍

[@scobouk7666]

What a great video, thankyou, brought back so many memories!

[@BastichB64K]

Thank you for watching 👍👍

[@kman190]

Another great video!

[@BastichB64K]

Cheers 🙏

[@reinhard3209]

Another epic show, thanks a lot Brendan! I liked Summer Games 1 and California Games best.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah cali was my fav followed closely by Winter

[@eobet]

Guess I clicked the link at exactly the right (or wrong) moment, but very nice video! 😄👍

[@BastichB64K]

😂👍 bonus , thanks for watching

[@duxmyman555]

Great video.. brought back so many memories 👍

[@BastichB64K]

Thanks for checking it out 😀

[@TheMaximus60]

The Virgin Epic Games Vs. The CHAD Epyx Computer Software

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

Epyx owned the C64

[@BastichB64K]

They sure did 🕹️👍

[@patsfan4life]

A prolific software house, perhaps rivaled only by the likes of Accolade

[@maxmirni2768]

fantastic as always - seemed to not come up in the recent video "uploads" list like most others, fyi, so some might miss it

[@BastichB64K]

Thx , much appreciated . I'm only posting it wide releasee on wednesday then everyone will be able to see it in recent uploads 👍👍

[@marceltiel7919]

Yai, same concern here....your uploads deserve exposure 😉

[@BastichB64K]

@@marceltiel7919 complain to KZbin 😂👍

[@jasonz7788]

Great work bashB!! Thank you. Do you remember Knight Games onC64?

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah cool game , check out my Top 10 multi event sports video for coverage of it

[@timhaskett1733]

A bit part of Summer Games II for me was being able to combine it with Summer Games, that’s genius

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah that was pretty cool

[@nanorider426]

I played all the games in question and I loved they, and as for fencing: In the late 90's I joined a fencing club. I took up sabre. Fencing in Summer Games II is actually an accurate representation of the sport - yes it's rather clunky - but accurate.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah , i think it just doesn't make a fun game event although accurate 👍

[@nanorider426]

@@BastichB64K I got pretty good at it. ;)

[@yorgunsamuray]

I played World Games and California Games on our cousin's C64 and then the 1988 Summer Games on our Amiga. The first time we wouldn't know the waggling the joystick routine of the "Barrel Jumping" of the World Games, we could have only low number of jumps. Due to joysticks breaking our parents wouldn't want us to play with them anyway. Also they were all bootlegs (since we are in a different country and did not have original games at all. I know many of Amiga crack groups because of that....all our games had those intros before the game), we didn't have any explanation on how to play, we had to figure that out ourselves. Anyway they were fun...at least the ones I could play. I got an Amiga a bit later. But since the Seoul olympics were not that far away, I enjoyed the Summer Games 1988 a lot.

[@BastichB64K]

Awesome , glad those games delivered as much fun to you as they did for us 🕹️👍

[@2112dorf]

Have you done a video on First Star Software? I used to play the basketball, baseball, and boxing games a ton, and remember them to be quite popular. I would like to learn more about the company...

[@BastichB64K]

Not yet , I played their Superman and Spy vs Spy games though and i do plan do a vid on the Spy games trilogy at some point

[@lurkerrekrul]

Nice work! I played all of the Games series on the C64, but I probably played World Games the most. I liked some of the events in the other ones, but I think that one had the most events that appealed to me. One thing you didn't mention is that if you had both Summer Games I & II, it was possible to load in the events from the first game and play them all as one big game. Street Sports Baseball was the one game in that series that I played. I was never a sports fan, so most sports games didn't appeal to me. To be honest, I didn't expect to like SS Baseball either. I'd tried other baseball games, but found them boring. Although the players have different stats, you really don't notice a big difference when you're playing and they all look alike. SS Baseball was the first game where the different characters not only looked different, they had visible differences in the way they played. I was always disappointed that they never ported it to the Amiga. When the other Street Sports games came out, I didn't like that the players were now wearing colored uniforms. I understand that this was necessary so that you can keep track of who's on your team, but I thought it took away some of the unique look of the characters, which was what appealed to me in the first place.

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah i totally forgot to mention you could combine the games 🤔 i even wrote that down 😂 damnit! , Yeah ss baseball is very cool and made me actually appreciate. Baseball games , fun and easy to play

[@timhaskett1733]

Epyx, Accolade, Access and Gamestar, about 90% of my C64 life

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah , i need to do a documentary on Access at some point

[@50shadesofbeige88]

You fo fanatic work. Keep it up.

[@BastichB64K]

Thank you 👍🕹️

[@bitoxic]

I had the cracked version of Cailfornia GAMES by Eagle Soft! 😄

[@BastichB64K]

😂👍so did i originally

[@jbw9999]

Each Games series that came out were played less and less by us. I ended up not playing World Games nearly as much, and The Games Winter/Summer barely at all.

[@BastichB64K]

Definitely wasn't that way with me and my friends at least till the end of the Games Winter edition

[@sebastiaanluiten7843]

Love the games! I always wondered about California Games II, do you know about that one? Not released for the c64 unfortunately...

[@BastichB64K]

Yeah unfortunately it wasn't , there's 2 versions of it one for consoles (snes) and dos and amiga ones ... Its ok , its no classic ... It was made as epyx fell apart so the game is a bit of a mess , not really worth bothering with .

[@sebastiaanluiten7843]

BastichB 64K good to hear i didn’t miss anything then 🙂 ...used to play winter games a lot especially during family parties; still annoyed that one annoying nephew still has the highscore on figure skating 😅

[@IsaacKuo]

This video reminds me of something I forgot I missed ... AFAIR, there never was an Ultimate Frisbee videogame. I remember back in the day, I tried to come up with some ideas of how to make Ultimate Frisbee (on the C64 of course), but I didn't understand how the game worked enough to do it. If I were to do an Ultimate Frisbee game now, I'd have to admit I don't really understand the game well enough to do it justice. So, I'd go with a SpeedBall or Pigskin style game which is inspired by Ultimate Frisbee, but not 100% faithful to the original game.

[@BastichB64K]

I think they did a great job with this event ... Not sure what else you could do with the concept definitely not back then

[@IsaacKuo]

@@BastichB64K Oh "Ultimate Frisbee" is not just throwing/catching a frisbee, it's a "get the ball across the goal" type game like Football/Soccor or hockey. The rules are simple, and you can play with anything - not just a frisbee - which made it really popular with pick up and play games. You decide a rectangular field with two goal lines at the ends. If you catch a frisbee beyond your goal line, you score a point. When you catch the frisbee, one of your feet must remain planted in place until you throw the frisbee. This forces a team play aspect to make progress. You must have 2 vs 2 or more players. If the frisbee goes out of bounds or lands on the ground, it's a fowl and the opposing team gets to have the frisbee. Basically, imagine soccer/football where you can't dribble the ball - you can only stand in place and pass the ball to another player. The result is a game which is vaguely similar but different in interesting ways. In other words, it's more of a "street sports" thing than a "games" event thing.

[@technischemaschinenfabrik5882]

The intro of The Games: Summer Edition was the best graphic intro i've ever seen on a computer in 1988. To collect discs in a paper box is also a good idea. What kind of paper box is it?

[@BastichB64K]

It got those boxes from ikea , i think they were for cd's but fit floppy discs perfectly

[@technischemaschinenfabrik5882]

@@BastichB64K How many discs fit in such a box?

[@BastichB64K]

@@technischemaschinenfabrik5882 i have no idea I'd have to check

[@CatholicAging]

You deserve 64K followers.

[@BastichB64K]

I'll agree with that 😂👍👍 thx

[@eddielegs344]

Good old times , I was crazy about part biathlon in winter games ... Why don't I see a video of Samanta Fox strip poker anywhere , not that special game was but still we had never seen that then on the c64. With her Big Guns haha Maybe a tip for a short video B ;)) go crazy.

[@BastichB64K]

Cant really cover that game for 2 reasons , #1 is there is nothing to say about it ... Its poker ... End of info and #2 you can't show nudity on KZbin ... Which makes this game pointless to cover 😂👍 .. end of review. Thanks for watching the Epyx video , biathlon is a epic event loved it as well.

[@eddielegs344]

@@BastichB64K Yes that's true mr. youtube doesn't like that don't think about it, The only thing I remember was the cool sound of it. I never got very far. I still don't understand poker. I just did what I hoped you would see. We were young. 😉 Is another game I never see I had it original on tape (most of what I had was illegal) Hignoon fun game

[@pacbilly]

You like Street Sports Baseball more than Sporting News, also from Epyx? I'll have to give Streets Sports a try, but I thought Sporting News was really good.

[@BastichB64K]

Its just my preference obviously if you enjoy more realistic baseball then Street Sports B is not gonna be as appealing

[@BGwControlStop]

It seems like the reviewers were far from independent when forming thier opinion of these games. they seem to be advertisements rather than reviews

[@BastichB64K]

What reviewers are you talking about ?

[@BGwControlStop]

@@BastichB64K the review publications that you mentioned in your videos, high 90s reviews without much criticism. Sure These games were enjoyable but they were far from nearly “perfect” Even the later games were gettting reviews in the 70s when they were as you mentioned not that good. Non the less thank you for making this video

[@BastichB64K]

@@BGwControlStop I think there was a lot of cash handed over for reviews back then even though they deny it 😂😂

[@ddscora]

Great content 👍👍👍i really enjoyed to look back at all these games that i played in the 80's. About street soccer, at the time, i had a street soccer game but it wasn't this one (it was with vertical scrolling) and was far more good than this one... Obviously i don't know the real name of that game. 😁

[@BastichB64K]

Pity you dont remember the name of the game , could be interesting to check out 👍

[@ddscora]

@@BastichB64K i searched for it, the real name was: 4 soccer simulators from Codemasters 😉