Description

California Games was the original "Extreme Games" – what today's generation might call "X-Games in the sun". Players can select sponsors (absent in some versions) and compete in events such as skateboarding, footbag, surfing, roller skating, flying disc (frisbee) and BMX. The surfing event is ranked by judges, which give a score to help the players improve their routine.

The Atari versions (2600 and Lynx) of the game omit the flying disc and roller skating events, while the Genesis version omits only the flying disc event.

Alternate Titles

  • "Jogos de Verão" -- Brazilian Sega Master System title
  • "Calgames" -- Informal title

Part of the Following Groups


Merchant Title      
ebay.com
California Games    
amazon.com
California Games    
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User Reviews

SMS California Games in Better than Genesis Version Shocker SEGA Master System Liam Dowds (51)
It's GREAT to be playing CALIFORNIA GAMES! DOS Accatone (5229)
This radical game is totally awesome dude! DOS Roedie (5145)

The Press Says

The Video Game Critic Atari 2600 Jun 16, 2001 A 100
GamePro Genesis Jan, 1992 5 out of 5 100
Game Freaks 365 SEGA Master System Jan 15, 2006 9.8 out of 10 98
Zzap! Commodore 64 Sep, 1987 97 out of 100 97
Computer and Video Games (CVG) SEGA Master System May, 1989 93 out of 100 93
The Games Machine (UK) Commodore 64 Oct, 1987 92 out of 100 92
Power Play NES Nov, 1991 77 out of 100 77
VideoGame SEGA Master System Mar, 1991 3 Stars3 Stars3 Stars3 Stars3 Stars 60
CU Amiga Amiga Feb, 1989 60 out of 100 60
The Games Machine (UK) ZX Spectrum Feb, 1988 45 out of 100 45

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Trivia

California games was one of the handful of games released that pushed CGA to its limits by using a timing/hardware trick to get more colors on the screen. It called this trick "MORE-color" mode (as opposed to the normal "4-color" mode), and it achieved 7 different colors on the same screen by switching from one color palette to another at a particular scanline. The switch was masked fairly well by:

  1. making sure that the graphics had a horizontal boundary somewhere on the screen that wouldn't look funny by a color switch, and
  2. switching from the red-green-yellow palette to a tweaked red-cyan-white palette and using the common red color to mask the switch.


You can see how much better these screens looked by going to the Screenshots section of the California Games entry and looking at the shots marked "CGA MORE-color". While not as good as EGA, they were definitly much, much better than what CGA could normally produce.

While this technique has been used in other games (like Jungle Hunt), none did it so well as in California Games using clever graphics composition and good programming. Kudos to the programmers!

PS: This technique will only work on 4.77MHz machines, as the timing required to change the palette is very exacting. Also, there is no way to capture, with a program, these screenshots; I had to capture them normally, then change the used colors where the split occured. They are identical to what's displayed on the screen, however, down to the additional color split in the names at the bottom of the title screen. Authenticity, baby! :-)


This entry was contributed by POMAH (18619), PCGamer77 Bronze Star Contributing Member (3051), Kohler 86 (6367), Kabushi (43635), gamewarrior (5127), Terok Nor (10118), Macintrash Bronze Star Contributing Member (2541), Servo (51212), Garcia (5020) and Rantanplan (1759)
 

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