Winter Gold
Winter Gold, developed by Funcom and published by Nintendo in 1996.
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Player's Review
"WINTER GOLD - It's a winter sports extravaganza that KICKS everything BUT the bucket!
Jump, twist, tuck, flip, turn, kick and ski your way to victory. in six world-class, winter sporting events! Go for record-breaking times in the Downhill, Luge and Bobsled events. Soar to ridiculous distances off the Ski Jump and amaze the judges with extreme combos in the Aerial and Snowboarding competitions! The eye-poppin' 3D, polygon graphics really make you feel like you're in the game. We've even tossed in our famous ACM (Advanced Computer Modelling) graphics to create the realistic athletes you compete with. Mix killer graphics and great play control with an intense soundtrack and you've iced the recipe for a seriously cool game!
ACM and blistering-fast polygon graphics comprise the entire game!. Take on the varied challenges of six intense winter sporting events. Up to eight people can play in Compete Mode using their own customized athletes. Battery back-up saves your best records. Multiple endings!"
Winter gold is another Olympic sports game containing six events which you play multiple times across four countries. When starting the game the introductory presentation is like nothing else right away al thanks to the SuperFX2 making the game stand out. It shows off all the events in it pseudo 3d rendered presentation and great soundtrack leaving you pumped to play the game. One through the menu where you setup your players you can choose the game type between competitive multiplayer or circuits which takes you through all the events of the game. Note that there are no difficulty options and now were in the game.
The opening event is promising, Start off with good speed with a quick stick wiggle and then just follow the centre line and avoid large jumps so you don't lose too much speed in the air. Now the issues start to creep in. The controls are quite unresponsive with a lot of lag between button presses and reaction on screen so timing the jumps becomes an issue. Once the final results come in, prepare to be heart broken. To get the top scores you need to be an Olympian. The cpu players are not messing about and are here to win it. You need to put in a near perfect game for a shot at the top. You can not make a single mistake. ( I guess this is just how sports are in real life, but this is meant to be a game that feels fun and rewarding. Not to let you win no matter what of course but the amount of effort required and poor controls are a real kill joy). And that is how many of these multi event type games can feel making that $59.99 cartridge purchase feel a little sour.
The longplay aims to show all events through all the countries whilst doing reasonably well. I cant win all events due to requirements but I try to put in a good effort. To move on to the next county you have to finish in the top three after all six events. Two of the events, snow boarding and Aerial are combo driven events requiring multiple moves in the correct sequence for the best reward scores. There are twenty possible combos and the manual only lists four of them. In the case of Aerial, it's not like you have much time to figure things out and controller lag means I am never sure if I am inputting the correct move sequence at the correct speed. I get through them, but just barely. Snow boarding is a complete non starter for me as I have trouble executing even the listed moves.
Overall a very well presented game that looks and sounds (thx to Jeroen Tel) great but not without it's issues. The difficulty and controls I've already noted but then there is the little things like the score boards that take an age to populate and you cant button mash to skip them. The game box notes multiple endings but as far as I could tell there is only one final ending for getting the best score by the end of the forth city sticking it to Stuart who enters late in the competition with the intent to dominate it. As usual, these type of games are best played in multiplayer. I cant say I'm having much fun competing with some crazy scores put out by the cpu players.
An interesting side note regarding the games 3d rendering programmed by Paul "Lone Starr" Endresen of Spaceballs, an Amiga demo scene group is also credited as the Polygon programmer for this game. The result looks a lot like the effects used in the scene demos State of the Art and Nine Fingers by Spaceballs in 92/94. Could this be an example of demo effects actually getting used in a game.
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:30 Salt Lake City - Downhill
00:06:23 Salt Lake City - Snow Boarding
00:08:01 Salt Lake City - Aerial
00:09:51 Salt Lake City - Bobsled
00:11:46 Salt Lake City - Ski Jump
00:14:05 Salt Lake City - Luge
00:16:52 Albertville - Downhill
00:19:43 Albertville - Snow Boarding
00:21:26 Albertville - Aerial
00:23:33 Albertville - Bobsled
00:25:36 Albertville - Ski Jump
00:28:09 Albertville - Luge
00:31:10 Lillehammer - Downhill
00:33:51 Lillehammer - Snow Boarding
00:35:42 Lillehammer - Aerial
00:37:40 Lillehammer - Bobsled
00:39:41 Lillehammer - Ski Jump
00:42:34 Lillehammer - Luge
00:45:38 Nagano - Downhill
00:48:45 Nagano - Snow Boarding
00:50:47 Nagano - Aerial
00:52:51 Nagano - Bobsled
00:55:00 Nagano - Ski Jump
00:57:45 Nagano - Luge
01:01:08 Credits
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01:02:17 Some fail clips
Jump, twist, tuck, flip, turn, kick and ski your way to victory. in six world-class, winter sporting events! Go for record-breaking times in the Downhill, Luge and Bobsled events. Soar to ridiculous distances off the Ski Jump and amaze the judges with extreme combos in the Aerial and Snowboarding competitions! The eye-poppin' 3D, polygon graphics really make you feel like you're in the game. We've even tossed in our famous ACM (Advanced Computer Modelling) graphics to create the realistic athletes you compete with. Mix killer graphics and great play control with an intense soundtrack and you've iced the recipe for a seriously cool game!
ACM and blistering-fast polygon graphics comprise the entire game!. Take on the varied challenges of six intense winter sporting events. Up to eight people can play in Compete Mode using their own customized athletes. Battery back-up saves your best records. Multiple endings!"
Winter gold is another Olympic sports game containing six events which you play multiple times across four countries. When starting the game the introductory presentation is like nothing else right away al thanks to the SuperFX2 making the game stand out. It shows off all the events in it pseudo 3d rendered presentation and great soundtrack leaving you pumped to play the game. One through the menu where you setup your players you can choose the game type between competitive multiplayer or circuits which takes you through all the events of the game. Note that there are no difficulty options and now were in the game.
The opening event is promising, Start off with good speed with a quick stick wiggle and then just follow the centre line and avoid large jumps so you don't lose too much speed in the air. Now the issues start to creep in. The controls are quite unresponsive with a lot of lag between button presses and reaction on screen so timing the jumps becomes an issue. Once the final results come in, prepare to be heart broken. To get the top scores you need to be an Olympian. The cpu players are not messing about and are here to win it. You need to put in a near perfect game for a shot at the top. You can not make a single mistake. ( I guess this is just how sports are in real life, but this is meant to be a game that feels fun and rewarding. Not to let you win no matter what of course but the amount of effort required and poor controls are a real kill joy). And that is how many of these multi event type games can feel making that $59.99 cartridge purchase feel a little sour.
The longplay aims to show all events through all the countries whilst doing reasonably well. I cant win all events due to requirements but I try to put in a good effort. To move on to the next county you have to finish in the top three after all six events. Two of the events, snow boarding and Aerial are combo driven events requiring multiple moves in the correct sequence for the best reward scores. There are twenty possible combos and the manual only lists four of them. In the case of Aerial, it's not like you have much time to figure things out and controller lag means I am never sure if I am inputting the correct move sequence at the correct speed. I get through them, but just barely. Snow boarding is a complete non starter for me as I have trouble executing even the listed moves.
Overall a very well presented game that looks and sounds (thx to Jeroen Tel) great but not without it's issues. The difficulty and controls I've already noted but then there is the little things like the score boards that take an age to populate and you cant button mash to skip them. The game box notes multiple endings but as far as I could tell there is only one final ending for getting the best score by the end of the forth city sticking it to Stuart who enters late in the competition with the intent to dominate it. As usual, these type of games are best played in multiplayer. I cant say I'm having much fun competing with some crazy scores put out by the cpu players.
An interesting side note regarding the games 3d rendering programmed by Paul "Lone Starr" Endresen of Spaceballs, an Amiga demo scene group is also credited as the Polygon programmer for this game. The result looks a lot like the effects used in the scene demos State of the Art and Nine Fingers by Spaceballs in 92/94. Could this be an example of demo effects actually getting used in a game.
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:30 Salt Lake City - Downhill
00:06:23 Salt Lake City - Snow Boarding
00:08:01 Salt Lake City - Aerial
00:09:51 Salt Lake City - Bobsled
00:11:46 Salt Lake City - Ski Jump
00:14:05 Salt Lake City - Luge
00:16:52 Albertville - Downhill
00:19:43 Albertville - Snow Boarding
00:21:26 Albertville - Aerial
00:23:33 Albertville - Bobsled
00:25:36 Albertville - Ski Jump
00:28:09 Albertville - Luge
00:31:10 Lillehammer - Downhill
00:33:51 Lillehammer - Snow Boarding
00:35:42 Lillehammer - Aerial
00:37:40 Lillehammer - Bobsled
00:39:41 Lillehammer - Ski Jump
00:42:34 Lillehammer - Luge
00:45:38 Nagano - Downhill
00:48:45 Nagano - Snow Boarding
00:50:47 Nagano - Aerial
00:52:51 Nagano - Bobsled
00:55:00 Nagano - Ski Jump
00:57:45 Nagano - Luge
01:01:08 Credits
----------------------------------------------
01:02:17 Some fail clips
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