Planning for another episode in Epyx’ "Games" series began in the middle of December 1985, after the production of Winter Games. World Games was picked from a pool of ideas that included Sci-fi Games, Ancient Greek Games and Medieval Games. Among the disciplines discussed (and dismissed) were surfing, BMX biking, wood logging and pistol duels.

The German national discipline was supposed to be soccer, or more precisely: penalty kicks. However, Epyx deemed this too difficult to implement, and chose Barrel Jumping instead. Allegedly, they got the idea from an American book which extensively described it as a German national sport. For the record: barrel jumping is unknown in Germany.

Near the end of production, some Epyx members went to a Scottish Week in a nearby city. When they witnessed the caber tossing contest there, they were shocked to see that the object of the discipline is not to throw the log as far as possible, as depicted in World Games, but to throw the log so that it lands on one end, stands straight, and then falls directly away from the thrower. This was not changed in the game since "nobody in the US understands this discipline anyway".

Epyx did the design and graphics for World Games, but not the sound and programming. Jeff Webb, a freelance composer, contributed the music. Programming was outsourced to an external team in Chicago, K-Byte. There, eight programmers focused on the eight disciplines; the routines for the menus and the score boards were taken from Summer Games 2. Programming took from March to September 1986. World Games was released in the US in early October.

Epyx had to produce a European C64 version of World Games. Two disciplines, Cliff Diving and Slalom, caused European C64s to crash. The problem: European C64s are built with a different graphics chip than US machines, adapted to the PAL TV standard rather than the American NTSC. The European version of World Games was released two weeks after the US version.

Source: Happy Computer magazine #4/87