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California Games is a 1987 Epyx sports video game for many home computers and video game consoles. Branching from their popular Summer Games and Winter Games series, this game consisted of some sports purportedly popular in California including skateboarding, freestyle footbag, surfing, roller skating, flying disc (frisbee) and BMX.

The game sold very well, topping game selling charts for winter months. It also got very positive reaction from reviewers, many of whom consider California Games to be the last classic Epyx sports game, due to staff changes not long after its release.

The game was followed in 1991 by California Games II, but the sequel failed to match the original's success.

Development

Several members of the development team moved on to other projects. Chuck Sommerville, the designer of the half-pipe game in California Games later developed the game Chip's Challenge, while Ken Nicholson the designer of the footbag game was the inventor of the technology used in Microsoft's DirectX. Kevin Norman, the designer of the BMX game went on to found the educational science software company Norman & Globus, makers of the ElectroWiz series of products.

The sound design for the original version of California Games was done by Chris Grigg, member of the band Negativland.

Ports

Originally released for the Apple II and Commodore 64, this game was very lucrative for Epyx and was released for several other platforms over the years. It was eventually ported to Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari 2600, Atari ST, Atari Lynx, DOS, Sega Mega Drive, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo Entertainment System, MSX and Sega Master System.

More recently the game was released for mobile phones in the Java format, and current rights holders System 3 CEO Mark Cale has stated that the game will be available in future as both a retail product and an on-line product for the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS. The Commodore 64 version was released for the Wii's Virtual Console service in Europe on April 11, 2008 and in North America on July 6, 2009.
Events

The events available vary slightly depending on the platform, but include all of the following:

Half-pipe
Roller skating
Surfing
BMX
Footbag
Flying disc

Team sponsors

Team sponsors for California Games include Epyx, Costa Del Mar, Kawasaki, Santa Cruz, Ocean Pacific, Casio, Auzzie, Spin Jammer, Maxx-Out, Milton Bradley, Jetski and Ray-D-O.

Review scores

Publication Score
CVG 37/40
Crash 36%
Sinclair User 8/10
Your Sinclair 7/10
Zzap!64 97%
MicroHobby (ES) 5/5 stars
The Games Machine 92%
MegaTech 80%
Mega 60%
Award
Publication Award
Zzap!64 Gold Medal

California Games was very successful for Epyx, outselling each of the four previous titles in the company's "Games" series. Computer Gaming World recommended the game, calling it fun. Compute! called California Games "both inventive and charming". The game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon #129 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4½ out of 5 stars. Historian Jimmy Maher in 2015 wrote that