A brief history of California Games - Plus the company behind them, which few people know about today

There are games that become popular and stick in people's memories, even though, in their own right, they may not have been particularly impressive as games. A good example is Defender of the Crown, which was ultimately cobbled together with tape and glue to meet a deadline, and this was evident in various places. Yet it remains one of those games that many gamers look back on with immense fondness.

Without comparing the two games in any way, California Games is, in a sense, in the same category as Defender of the Crown. There are other sports games that are better than California Games, yet it is this game that has etched itself into the memories of many slightly older gamers as something quite special.

California Games was first released in 1987 for platforms including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC, and the following year it also came out on the Atari 2600, Commodore Amiga, and PC-DOS. In 1989, California Games was also ported to the Sega Master System, and we'll return to that version briefly a little later. The game was originally developed by the American company Epyx, Inc. and was published by no fewer than nine publishers across no fewer than 18 platforms over the years.

Since the mid-1980s, Epyx, Inc. had enjoyed great success with Summer Games, Winter Games, and World Games, all of which were centred around "serious" sports. During the 1980s, however, a trend began to spread amongst young people, particularly in the US, who were taking an interest in slightly more alternative sports, and not least, sports that could be played on the streets and in alleyways.

Epyx, Inc. quickly spotted this trend and wanted to be part of it. They therefore took the template and concept from their popular Winter Games and Summer Games and created a game that appealed to young people in a completely different way than before. Both the visual style and the music helped to build the game's "beachy and casual vibe", and it had far more personality than their other sports games.

What was new was that both young men and women were taking an interest in these "street-based" sports, and following the release of California Games, Epyx, Inc. also stated this particular game was the first of its kind from them to perform equally well with both genders in focus groups leading up to the launch. The potential target audience was therefore enormous.

Before we go any further, let's take a moment to look at who Epyx, Inc. were. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it's a name we hardly ever hear today, despite the fact they were among the very biggest game developers of the 1980s. The company was founded way back in 1978 under the name Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, and their focus was on simulation games for home computers. As early as December of that same year, they released their first game, Starfleet Orion, for the Commodore PET, and the following year it was also released for the TRS-80 and Apple II. The game was programmed in the simple BASIC programming language, and it was a very humble beginning for what would later become one of the world's leading game developers.

As the target audience for serious simulation games was relatively narrow, Automated Simulations eventually shifted its focus towards action games and, in particular, sports games, the latter of which, after all, were rooted in reality and simulation. However, the people behind the company felt this new focus called for a name change, and Automated Simulations was renamed Epyx, Inc. From then on, things really took off.

The company's heyday spanned from the mid-1980s to the late 1980s, and at one point it had more than 200 employees, which was quite a large software house at the time. Epyx, Inc. was responsible for more than 115 games across a wide range of platforms; the most popular were probably Mission Impossible, the racing game Pitstop, Summer Games, Winter Games and, of course, California Games, and they were also responsible for the US release of the smash hit International Karate.

As mentioned at the start, California Games was quite different from the more serious sports games such as Summer Games and Winter Games; there was more of a focus on having fun and looking cool under the Californian sun with some rather unusual sports. The game was built on the foundations of the other titles in the Games series, but as a new feature, California Games included real-life sponsors, which you chose to partner with at the start of the game, rather than selecting which country to represent, as was the case in Summer Games and Winter Games.

It wasn't all that common to include sponsors in games in this way, but Epyx, Inc. had secured partnerships with brands such as Santa Cruz Skateboards, Casio, Kawasaki, Ocean Pacific (OP) (a classic Californian surfer lifestyle clothing brand), and Costa Del Mar (a sunglasses manufacturer). This probably also helped to engage the target audience even more effectively, as they may already have been familiar with some of these brands through their interest in these street sports. Epyx, Inc. thus demonstrated they understood their target audience, and this helped to boost the popularity of California Games.

California Games features six different disciplines: surfing, half-pipe skating, roller skating, BMX, frisbee, and footbag (Hacky Sack). Depending on which version of the game you played, there were slight differences in the content; for example, the Sega Genesis version did not include the frisbee event, and the Atari 2600 and Atari Lynx versions did not feature either the frisbee or roller-skating events.

The development of California Games took place in-house at Epyx between 1986 and 1987 and took around nine months to complete by a development team of 12 people. This was quite a large team for a single game at the time, when games were often developed by a single person or, for slightly larger productions, typically by three to five people. Each programmer was responsible for their own sporting discipline; for example, the game's surfing discipline was developed by a real surfer, whilst the footbag/hacky sack discipline was developed by Ken Nicholson, who later developed DirectDraw, which eventually became the technology behind Microsoft's DirectX.

California Games was released on a wide range of platforms, but it wasn't Epyx, Inc. who was responsible for all these ports, as for example, Sega had secured the rights to port the game to the Sega Master System. A certain Mr Mark Cerny was working at the time as a programmer and game designer for Sega in Tokyo, and he was tasked with porting California Games to the Sega Master System.

Cerny did not think it would be a major problem to port a game comprising six mini-games to the new platform and initially estimated that it would take his team around three months, as it ended up taking more than twice as long. Cerny and his team consisted of himself, an art director and a planner/project manager, and they used the Commodore 64 version as the basis for the Master System edition. Unlike some of the other versions, the Sega Master System version of California Games included all six original sports and was regarded as perhaps the best version of the game, alongside the Commodore 64 version.

California Games was a major commercial success for Epyx, Inc. and went on to become one of their best-selling games. It sold around 300,000 copies during the first nine months, which was quite a high figure back in the late 1980s. By the end of 1989, it had reached half a million copies sold, thereby surpassing the sales of Summer Games, Summer Games II, Winter Games, and World Games.

Many today regard California Games as the last true classic Epyx sports game. The inevitable, and somewhat less successful sequel, California Games II, was released in the early 1990s for platforms including PC-DOS, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST, but it never became a major success. By that time, things had started to go wrong for Epyx, Inc. They had run into a series of financial difficulties and, according to Stephen Landrum, a programmer who worked at Epyx for many years, the company's decline began when they spread themselves too thin and tried to do too much.

Epyx, Inc. actually produced more than just games. Amongst other things, they made gaming accessories such as joysticks, and they also began developing their own, rather ambitious, handheld console, which went by the working title "Handy". It was showcased to industry professionals in January 1989, but Epyx soon realised they didn't have the funds to produce the console themselves, so Nintendo was invited to join the project. Nintendo declined (they were presumably busy with their Game Boy, which was released a few months later, in April 1989), so Epyx and Atari eventually reached an agreement whereby Atari would handle the production of the console, whilst Epyx would be responsible for developing the games. The Handy was renamed the Atari Lynx.

Although the Handy project was a rather visionary one (among other things, it featured a colour LCD screen), the console marked the beginning of the end for Epyx. They struggled to fulfil their part of the agreement with Atari, which led Atari to withhold vital payments, a move that proved disastrous for Epyx. Following the release of California Games in 1987, Epyx had more than 200 employees, and two years later, that figure had fallen to fewer than 20 people. In 1989, Epyx stopped developing games for home computers such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, in order to focus on making games for Atari's Lynx, and they managed to produce just over a handful of games for the machine.

In October 1989, Epyx, Inc. went into administration, marking the end of Epyx, Inc. as we know it, just over two years after the release of California Games. Today, nobody talks about Epyx, even though they were among the most successful games developers of the 1980s. However, Epyx still exists today as Epyx Games, and it's possible to licence their IPs if, for example, you'd like to create a new California Games. Since the 1990s, California Games has been released in some rather unfortunate versions for PC and Android, whilst California Games X from 2008 for Java was built around quick-time events in the sporting disciplines and bore no resemblance to the original game.

California Games stands out as one of the finest achievements Epyx could produce, not so much because it was their best game, but because it quite simply hit the nail on the head with a trend among its target audience, and Epyx, Inc. had got it spot on. Epyx were "on top of their game" at the time, which is why it's sad to see that, some two or three years later, the company had all but disappeared, and today nobody talks about Epyx, Inc. anymore. Fortunately, many of us still remember California Games as something quite special.