Winter Olympics 94 (Master System Review)

Jump! For my love!
Jump! For my love!

 

Olympic Gold, or Barcelona 92 was pretty much a success so when US Gold were handed the Winter Olympics 94 franchise I was expecting good things – but not this good.  At a glance it could be a direct port from the 16-bit version but I think it only fair to review it in its own right as it’s done a lot more with the hardware than the MD version.

 

They’d already told him it wasn’t a commode
They’d already told him it wasn’t a commode

 

As with most US Gold titles, the presentation is slick.  And you’d hope so for an Olympic games, even though most of the screens are a boring grey it all seems to work.  The mascots are here too and they perform a nice opening ceremony, boom goes the 8-bit!  The usual practice and Olympic modes are available as well as a definable mini Olympics.  All of the interesting events from the games are here, sorry Curling fans, you’ll need to wait a while.  The majority of them look fantastic and play superbly.

 

You put your left leg in, your left leg out…doh!
You put your left leg in, your left leg out…doh!

 

The Bobsleigh and Luge events look great and you get a good sense of speed as you hurtle around the track.  The skiing events vary in quality.  The downhill and slalom events are fun but the cross country event is fairly tedious. Moguls is fun, get the timing right and you’ll be busting out some awesome combos.  Ice skating is fast and furious and you end up forgiving the awful collision detection, it’s definitely acceptable to breeze straight through your opponent to get that precious gold.

 

Everything is very well animated in Winter Olympics and the sprites are large and bold. The theme music and event music are varied enough to keep you entertained.  The sound effects aren’t bad and it’s quite funny to plough into the shrubbery on some of the skiing events.

 

Fantastic graphics, slick presentation, great gameplay = a true gold medal game.

 

winter-olympics-lillehammer-94-ms-reivew

 

If you like this…

Olympic Gold (MD Review)

 

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