Summer Games: The Lost Olympics

ign.com:

Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, be sure to check out the 13 previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.

First-person shooters. Roleplaying games. Action adventures. Even though they’ve evolved significantly alongside the gaming hardware they run on, some of today’s most-popular genres are multiple decades old and are likely here to stay for good. It’s hard to imagine people not playing a Call of Duty game in 2030, just as it’s unlikely that fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken will just be over and done with in the foreseeable future.

But some some genres have definitely diminished over the years to the point of almost disappearing entirely. Real-time strategy games – like StarCraft – at one time filled entire sports arenas of people eager to watch esports competitions. I haven’t heard anyone mention the “brain training” genre in years. Some bygone genres come complete with physical relics – literal skeletons in our closets: plastic guitars, fake drumkits, or even turntable controllers One of you – yes, I’m talking to you – even still has that Tony Hawk skateboarding controller in his attic.

As a kid, I couldn’t have imagined that The Games would ever end. When we didn’t know what else to do, a “quick game” of Epyx’s Summer Games or Winter Games would inevitably fill an entire afternoon. As you may be able to guess just from their titles, Epyx’s sports games simulated events you would find at the Olympic Games or in Track & Field competitions, with different control styles depending on the style of each event.

Despite being one of the defining multiplayer game series of the ‘80s, these Commodore 64 (et al.) hits kept us busy until 1992 and then quickly vanished, essentially ending what we thought would be a game genre for the ages.

There’s not even a widely-accepted game sub-genre moniker to