Mega Sports

Your Sinclair

Overall 62%

Jonathan Davies 62%

REPLAY Re-pla, vt To play again. n That section in YS which covers re-released games. (We just thought you'd like to know.) MEGASPORTS Kixx £14.99 [redacted] Reviewer: Jonathan Davies My knowledge of Spanish is rudimentary to say the least, so I'm afraid I'm unable to translate 'Mega Sports' into English for you. (Our JD, eh? He's a card and no mistake. Why, in a recent poll of Most Card-Like Shed Crew Members, he came top by miles. We love him through and through. Ed) But seeing as how this is Olympic Games time, and this compilation is presumably some sort of unofficial tie-in, the name probably means something romantic like 'Flaming Torch' or 'The Five Rings'. I hope so, don't you? Fab name aside, the actual games are old Epyx titles. Remember? - the ones where you get loads of little subgames (or 'events'), and invite your chums round to stage championships. SUMMER GAMES Not a promising start. This was, I think, the first Epyx sporty thang, and it's showing its age. Diving and pole vaulting are amongst the dubious highlights. Erm, make that diving, pole vaulting and loading up something far more interesting. 46° SUMMER GAMES 2 Like this. Summer Games 2 is a distinct improvement, with events like horse riding and the triple jump displaying a much better grasp of those essentials like graphics and gameplay. 70° THE GAMES - SUMMER EDITION Definitely getting there - quite a few of the events are rather good fun. Best of all is diving, which is chock full of silly moves. Now you too can be like that Greg Lake (or whoever) - you know, the one who slipped off the board and clonked his head, and won a medal for it. 72° WINTER GAMES Not only does this one actually look quite nice (all snowy and picturesque) but it's got the weirdest event ever - the Biathlon is a combination of skiing and shooting! Whatever will they think of next, eh? How about the Poodlematic - a combination of walking the dog and doing the washing at an ultra-low temperature but still removing those embarrassing stains? Perhaps not. 68° THE GAMES - WINTER EDITION The compilation takes a dramatic downturn with a ridiculous luge event, hopeless figure skating, and... no, you don't want to know. Believe me. Ifs simply too ghastly for words. 53° I never liked this sort of thing much, and multi-loading all these events in one after the other (there are thirty of the blessed things altogether) really brought home how flimsy most of them are. But get a few pals in on the action and you might discover a competitive streak you never knew existed!

Another daring stunt from the hit film The Amazing (But Mostly Ridiculously Improbable) Adventures Of Captain Femur Roominghouse and His Stupendous Seven.

Bicycles, eh? What wonderful inventions and no mistake. Did you know that the first bicycles were made of porcelain and had no wheels? It's true.

If you look very closely at the top of the mountain on the right, you can see Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tenzing and Lucinda the dancing poppy.

Tragically, Dennis's revolutionary helicopter boots failed the most elementary of safety tests.

Sinclair UserSinclair User Silver

Graphics 85%

Sound 78%

Playability 83%

Lastability 85%

Overall 84%

Alan Dykes

Paul Anglin 84%

Label: US Gold Memory: 48K/128K Price: £14.99 Tape Reviewer: Paul Anglin Have you ever fancied the honor of standing on the winners rostrum, your national anthem chillin' the bones of the opposition and totally thrashing all the tannoys in the stadium? How about becoming a household name, right up there with the likes of Andrew's Liver Salts and HP Sauce? Well there's no gain without pain, so lace up your running shoes, step on to the track and strut your stuff. In Megasports you are cast as a young hopeful in the world of international athletics. Your aim is plain and simple - win as many gold medals as you can. In order to pick up one of these illustrious objects you must, needless to say, come first in the relevant events (big surprise). These events are many and varied. (32 at the latest count) They range from Hot Dog aerial skiing to the Long jump, stopping off at cycling, kayaking and equestrian activities along the way. As you may guess Megasports doesn't stick solely to winter or summer games, it can mix it with the best of them. Can you though? If you're all alone you can play against the computer which is a reasonably good laugh and pretty challenging, but the game really comes into it's own in multi player mode. The Spectrum version can accommodate up to four (count 'em) players so if you decide to throw a party and the musical accompaniment goes up the wall you can break out Megasports and everyone will go wild. Mega Sports is made up of four different multi sports packages previously released by US Gold so you may have seen some of them before, though surely not this many. Most of the events were a good laugh when they first appeared and that feature has stayed intact. The fact that there are 32 events to master means that you won't get bored for quite a while, and when you do there's the four player mode to keep you more than interested and get that competitive spirit going. This compilation has a very hard task to achieve; that of trying to breathe life back into an over-exhausted game genre on 8 bit systems. All of the events included look very similar to (and in fact some of them are) sims which were available eight years ago... after all how different can pole vaulting look? But the chief challenge in these games has always been figuring out how to gain more points than you opposition. With this in mind the four player option adds a great deal to the proceedings. When there's four of you battling it out for the top spot things get very intense. One of the funniest things about Mega Sports is the individual sport's addictiveness. You may sneer at the simplicity of some of these sims and the graphics and sound might send you hurtling into fits of laughter but the fact remains that you can end up spending hours at a time truing to get a dodgy little sprite to do a double backward somersault and a spread eagle and still come back for more. It's a bit sad but we're all human after all. Multiply this by 32 (though you're bound to dislike some of the games) and then include three friends and you have what adds up to a fair amount of lastability. Unfortunately as hard as Megasports tries to improve on the sports genre via 32 different events and a four player option, most of the events have been seen many, many times before. It really won't take long to master any one sport but you'll have a laugh while you're going about it. Overall, Megasports is a gallant effort to get one last hurrah from the sports field. It's fairly decent compilation for a while but it won't last forever, even in four player mode.

4x400 metres relay get up to the next competitor and fire.

Al' does a super somersault.

Guess who's winning?

OK, let's see you do a spread eagle.

Oh oh. It looks as though Yvette has taken the lead.

Speed skiing, more joystick juggling.

Swimming relay. Rather odd game to say the least.

Try to shoot two skeets at once. That's the way.

Who's gonna jump the furthest?

GAMES GALORE In case you're wondering what the 'massive 32 games' are, here is the definitive lists of them all: Archery Biathlon Bobsled Cross Country Skiing Cycling Diving Downhill Skiing Equestrian Fencing Figure Skating Free Skating Free Style Relay (Swimming) Gymnastics Hammer Throw High Jump Hot Dog (Aerial Skiing) Hurdles Javelin Kayaking Rings Rowing Skeet Shooting Ski Jump Slalom Skiing Speed Skating The Luge Triple Jump Uneven Parallel Bars Velodrome Cycling 100m Dash 100m Freestyle (Swimming) 4x400m Relay.

TOP TIPS The mainstay of the events is working out how to achieve top marks in all of them. Here's a few little handy hints on how to impress judges on a couple of the events. HOT DOG The judges go crazy over backward somersaults and spread eagles, Daffies earn reasonable marks but won't take you very high in the scores. The best combination is a back somersault followed by a front somersault and concluded with a spread eagle. But it's very difficult. SKI JUMP There's nothing really spectacular you can do here apart from land! Obviously the further you go the more points you get, you get higher points if you can keep a good position throughout the jump rather than flapping your arms like a nutter. DIVING Although diving seems to be all about how many half twists with somersaults you can pull off you actually get a great amount of points for just landing in the pool the right way up. The best thing is really to keep the dive simple at first and concentrate on the entry. SKEET SHOOTING Top tips for skeet shooting: Have patience, follow the skeet's trajectory and don't start moving the gun until you've determined where you're actually going to aim, it apparently weighs about half a ton and unless you shoot just after you've aimed it gets very difficult to hold up. When shooting at two skeets try to hit both at once in the middle of the screen.