The Winter Olympics are in their final week, which means you may soon find yourself missing all the action on the slopes and ice sheets of Italy. The world of video games can always be counted on to have your back when you need a sporting fix, and while the Winter Olympic Games may not have as consistent a history as some of the major sports video game franchises, that doesn’t mean they don’t still have a long and interesting story of their own.
Come along as we look at the different eras of Winter Olympics video games, both officially licensed and not, and learn about the hits and misses along the way.
The Early Days Of 2D Winter Wonder
Although early video game systems and computers may not have had the processing power to accurately simulate sports the way we are used to today, that didn’t stop developers from doing their best to bring real sports to the virtual world. These games arrived in the early days of video games and set the mark for future Winter Olympic Games to chase:
- Winter Games (Epyx Games, 1985): Like many winter sports games, this game was borne off the success of a prior summer-themed game by Epyx and put gamers in the position of representing their nation in competition with up to seven other athletes. The game had a range of events, including downhill and aerial skiing, skating, and sliding events to take part in.
- Winter Olympics (Tynesoft, 1986): If Winter Games set the bar high for Winter Olympic video games, Winter Olympics was ready to kick off the proud tradition of sports games landing with a thud. With two of five reviews of the game giving it just one point, on 5- and 12-point scales respectively, it was not a smash hit.
- The Games: Winter Challenge (MindSpan, 1991): Representing a big jump forward visually, this game also went down well with gamers, with it playing as well as it looked. The game stuck to simpler to represent sports, primarily the various downhill events, as well as some cross-country skiing and biathlon.
- Winter Olympic Games (Abstract Images, 1993): The first Winter Olympic video game to carry an official license, for the Games in Lillehammer, it also saw the debut of two popular winter games events as both short track speed skating and freestyle moguls, which was only available for console releases, were the first minigames of their respective sports to find their way to video game consoles.
The Strange Case Of Officially Licensed 3D Olympic Games
Perhaps realizing that others would keep filling a void if it existed, the Olympics entered a period of four straight Winter Games where there was an officially licensed video game to play. Interestingly, at no point in the cycle did the same company make a second game, meaning each new edition was forced to build out from the ground up instead of building off any prior internal work for an earlier game. It’s not the biggest surprise in the world to note that none of the games was considered particularly great, which can go a long way to explaining the hot seat situation:
- Nagano Winter Olympics ‘98 (Konami, 1998): Kicking things off on the chain of developers was Konami for the 98 games. Sadly, the Japanese developer did not manage to do right by its home Olympics as the game reviewed poorly on both PlayStation and Nintendo 64 platforms. On a positive note, the game marked the video game debut of curling, the niche winter games standout.
- Salt Lake 2002 (Attention to Detail, 2002): For this version of the Winter Olympic Games, developer Attention to Detail paid particular attention to the skiing events, featuring downhill, slalom, ski jumping, and aerials, along with men’s parallel giant slalom, two-man bobsleigh, and curling. Like its predecessor, the game failed to wow critics or gamers and received middling scores across all platforms.
- Torino 2006 (49Games, 2006): It was major publisher 2K who got the next crack with developer 49Games, and once again, the result proved to be poorly received. It wasn’t for lack of trying, however, as Torino 2006 saw improvements in scale with up to 15-event competitions and an increase from 16 nations to play as to 24, with an additional pair of special unlocks for Jamaica and Team EU.
- Vancouver 2010 (Eurocom, 2010): This represented the best of the four consecutive licensed games, as well as the most comprehensive, covering nearly all sports outside of those with cross-country skiing components. That the highest aggregate ranking it earned was a 60% of the GameRankings score for the iOS speaks volumes about the general quality of this era of games, as mediocre results also make it the most well-reviewed of any of the editions across any system.
The Licensed Winter Olympic Tie-In Content
If independent game production wasn’t the solution for a winning Winter Olympic video game, perhaps the solution was to be found in licensing. Rather than looking for games developed from the ground up as stand-alone products, the Olympics have also sought out partnerships to license the imagery of the game to developers with underlying games already in place. This allows for a more focused approach to the sports covered while still providing that Olympic feel:
- Winter Heat (Sega AM3, 1998): Not originally an Olympic game, Winter Heat was the cold-weather follow-up to warm-weather sports game DecAthlete and released with a collection of fictional athletes to play as. For the Seta Saturn edition in 1998, however, Sega AM3 got the Nagano Olympics license to give the game, which was reviewed strongly compared to its Winter Olympic video game peers, that official touch.
- Olympic Hockey ‘98 (Treyarch Invention, 1998): Before this, most team events had not featured Olympic video games, with them often requiring levels of complexity in their execution that made including them in mini-game style collections difficult. Treyarch decided instead to slap Olympic branding on its existing hockey game for the standalone Olympic Hockey. Unfortunately, it suffered from a now common complaint, namely that the game barely did more than reskin Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey ‘98, which was itself panned for offering too few meaningful improvements from the first game in the series.
- Steep (Ubisoft Annecy, 2016): Rather than a standalone Olympic game, the Olympic content for Steep came in the form of DLC. As they did with the Winter X Games, developers created a unique story mode where you take control of a snowboarder trying to earn their way to the Olympic Games, posting results and qualifying events before progressing on to the real deal and looking to claim gold medals in big air, slopestyle, and halfpipe events.
The Battles Of Gaming Franchise Titans
After more than two decades of developers trying to make a compelling Winter Olympic game and not quite succeeding, it turned out the secret sauce was a system seemingly tailor-made for minigame-style gaming and a cast of fictional athletes gamers already loved. The Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games line of games started with a summer edition before adding two more, each of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. They stand out as still the most-beloved Winter Olympic video games because they kept things simple and fun for a good time with a broad player pool.
- Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Sega, 2009): The first attempt at making a Winter Olympics version showed that the developers at Sega could translate the success of the initial Summer-based game over to the winter sports. Like its predecessor, the game put you in control of various heroes, villains, and side characters from the two franchises in minigames utilizing the Wii’s unique controller system.
- Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games (Sega, 2013): The clearly worst-received of the two games, Sochi 2014 is still one of the best Winter Olympic games ever made. The primary criticisms came not for its value as a standalone game but instead, in the fine sports game tradition, for failing to do enough to justify being a new game compared to the previous Winter Games entry.
