With incredible thanks to our Patreon backers, we bring you the very finest selection of Winter Sports Games, right here on your beloved Amiga this Christmas. If you fancy a round of party games with friends, check out these dangerous and downright lethal events, from safety of your home computer.

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00:00 – Intro
00:30 – Winter Games
05:37 – Eskimo Games
09:04 – Advanced Ski Simulator
10:22 – Ski or Die
15:28 – Super Ski (Eddie Edwards)
19:45 – The Games Winter Edition
26:01 – Winter Olympiad ’88
32:44 – Super Ski II
40:32 – Winter Sports ’92
50:48 – Winter Olympics: Lillehammer ’94
58:18 – Ending

Production Notes:
Captured: 27th August 2021 (all games) (a mixture of PAL and NTSC, 000 and 030 setups)
Narrated: 16th November 2021
Edited: 27th Aug – 21 Dec 2021

I wanted to do something special this year, and thanks to some extra funds, it was possible to think about a much larger project. The idea of a top 10 winter sports games came to me at some point, and so in August this year, I sat down to collect and play all of those I could find. The idea was to rank the events by making up a league table of games and events at the end of each one, and marking the events out of 10. That idea had to be scrapped due to running time constraints and general concerns about spending too long on it, so at the end of the film there is a recap of the top events in each category. I noticed each game had one event that was a highlight, so this recap was an attempt to image ONE game with ALL of these events contained within it. It would also be a fun party game to play all of the best events from these games, to showcase what the machine was capable of.

When I played through all of those games and recorded them, most of these events were brand new to me, and I can say I had only played Winter Games on the C64 before this. While playing them, ran a running commentary in my head, which of course wasn’t always very complementary toward certain events, particularly The Games: Winter Edition. I then used this narrative as the inspiration behind the eventual one-take and unscripted (as usual) narration. I never know what is going to happen with the commentary, and I was surprised that I started talking about Christian Bale, Bob Sleigh and Lille Hammer. A caption was meant to pop up to show this was meant to be a joke, but I feel it was better to leave the audience bewildered, especially as many will have had a few drinks over Christmas. These jokes are embarrassing for me to watch. A pop-up of AVGN was due to appear in the downhill ski section of The Games: Winter Edition, but I forgot to add it. If I sound like I am shouting at some points, I probably was, as I tend to speak quite loudly in these videos these days. Hopefully this will change.

Danscore
It is easy to see that the stand of quality in Amiga games was improved over time, from the 8-bit ports to EGA-looking ports, and finally the ST ports. By 1990, the coders finally had the platform under control, and we got some 16 bit quality titles. Although Eskino Games is clearly meant to be a joke, and most of the events seem impossible, the classic Amiga charm is here, and only Amiga made that possible. It is interesting to see how much 3D had started to creep into games by the later period, and with a faster CPU it means they really shine and it becomes a joy to play those events. Overall, the best events were more fun to play than expected, and a lot more fun to play than to watch on the screen. The worst events were far less fun than expected, and far more frustrating than it looks on screen, so a mixed bag.