Olympia on PC | DiePress.com

How do you like the Olympics so far? As a working person, you unfortunately miss most of the competitions due to the time difference, which is unfortunate because after June (football) on one side it is refreshing to watch less popular sports (fencing etc.).

I experienced the best Olympics myself as a kid – and in a somewhat unsportsmanlike way. And not just every four years, but four years in a row: Many of the boys in the neighborhood had Commodore 64 and all sorts of floppy disks (that’s what they were called) with the world’s greatest games on them. They were called the Summer Games, the Winter Games, and the World Games and they were all (pseudo) Olympic tournaments in which you could compete against each other. From today’s point of view, the graphics were amazingly poor, as was the sound, and you had to wait patiently for minutes between competitions because the device loaded very slowly. Playtime, for example throwing logs, jumping cliffs or lifting weights, is usually over after a few seconds. Then it’s time to wait again before the next player can operate the joystick for a few seconds. The best I’ve found is that in the beginning you can choose a country among dozens of flags and listen to the respective anthem (with awesome acoustics).

A little later, there were also the California Games, in which you played against each other in sports like inline skating in front of the (weirdly poorly animated) California scene. By the way, the game was definitely not graphic, but in terms of content it was ahead of reality by decades – skateboarding was Olympic at that time in the C64 world, while in the real world, as is known, this was only the case this year. Anyway, I was always very grateful when the boys let me play. Even if – because computer gaming isn’t one of my island talents – it mostly ended up in last place. But that doesn’t matter. known to be there. . . You already know.

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(“Die Presse,” print edition, July 31, 2021)