Games 92: Espana, The Download (1992 Sports Game)

The 1992 olympic games took place in Barcelona, Spain, and the corresponding computer game came from Ocean: The Games '92 - España. The sports simulation boasts an impressive variety of diciplines, divided into three sections:

Track and Field: running, relay, hurdles, steeplechase, discus, shot putt, hammer throw, javelin, long jump, triple jump, high jump, pole vault;

Water Sports: free style, breast stroke, back stroke, butterfly, relay, diving;

Fighting: boxing, wrestling, judo, fencing.

Eliminating the different distances in single events (such as 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle), though, The Games' "over 30 events" melt down to 22; and counting only those which differ to some degree in their execution, it boils down to six: running, throwing, jumping, swimming, diving and fighting.

The Games '92 is divided in three parts: During preparation time, manage and train twelve athletes by sentencing them to gym time and daily practice. Game time advances with each action until the olympic games begin.

In pactice, heats and finals, you take control of your athletes and drive them to peak performances through rhythmical tapping of the cursor keys, and the occasional press of the space bar.

In the database section, you can read up on previous games and winning athletes, and take a look at Barcelona location maps.

Introduction:

This game is a sport simulation which will take you to Barcelona, Spain, in year 1992 and put you in shoes of a professional athlete competing for the gold medal in various sport disciplines. So, if you have ever dreamed of becoming a top-class sportsman (and I know you have), as well as widely known and respected winner of the Olympic medal, here's your chance. Do you have what it takes to become a legend and take your place in the sports' history? There's only one way to find out...

Basic Information:

The Games '92 - Espana features an astonishingly wide range of various sports events, over 30 of them in total. They are divided into 3 subcategories: Track and Field (100m, 200m hurdles, javelin, discus, hammer throw, etc.), Fighting (judo, fencing, boxing, etc.) and finally, Water sports (all swimming styles and diving). This game also supports 5 different languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Italian) and was released on other platforms as well (Atari, Amiga).

Gameplay:

First off you get to choose which nation will your athlete represent. Once you do that, preparations for the Olympics begin. Your task is to train up to twelve athletes and get them to the peak of their form so they could do their best in the main event. This means you'll have to guide them through gym practice every day, while carefully monitoring their stamina level (they mustn't get too tired). Once you do that, you can practice actual events your athletes can compete in, or you can enter the competition.

Graphics and sound:

This game doesn't look great, although the graphics are VGA. Athlete animation is somewhat rough, while the usefulness of menus remains questionable. You navigate through them by clicking on pictures and icons, which can be very confusing. Many objects on menus are animated, but as I said, animations in this game are just not my cup of tea. Sound is nothing special, boring theme and a few sound effects.

Controls:

You can also choose whether you'll use joystick and keyboard, mouse and keyboard or keyboard only. I recommend you avoid the 'keyboard only' option because that would make navigation through menus even more painful. If you ever played sport simulations in which have to press keys as fast as you can (keeping the pace) until your fingers bleed and your keyboard turns to dust, just in order for your athlete to perform better, then you will know what to expect form this game. Basically, all you have to do is repeatedly and rhythmically press the cursor keys and just occasionally press spacebar. I don't really like this control method and I honestly think a better solution should have been introduced.

Database:

Probably one of the best points of this game is it's huge database which features all kind of statistics and information about the Olympics. It tells the tale of Olympic Games from the ancient times to the 1992, as well as story of how various sport events developed through that time. It also introduces extremely thorough statistics and records for all the events featured in the game, as well as Barcelona stadium maps and locations. And guess what, it also has printer support integrated so you could print all the interesting information.

Conclusion and personal opinion:

Let me first get one thing straight. If you want to play good sport simulation game which features a wide range of events, there are certainly better choices than Games '92. But that doesn't mean this game isn't worth your attention. On the contrary, this is very interesting game with some of nice features like big number of events and thorough database, but with some serious flaws like graphics, control system and not so good menus.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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