California Games

California Games is a 1987 sports video game developed and published by Epyx for the Apple II and Commodore 64. Branching from their Summer Games and Winter Games series, it is a collection of outdoor sports purportedly popular in California. The game was successful and was soon ported to other home computers and video game consoles, and was the pack-in game for the Atari Lynx when that system launched in September 1989. It was followed by the sequel California Games II in 1990.

The events vary slightly per platform, but include half-pipe, footbag, surfing (starring Rippin' Rick), roller skating, BMX, and flying disc.

Epyx reportedly used more than three man-years to develop California Games, including a surfer who wrote the surfing game. 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, would go on to invent 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, a member of the band Negativland.

Originally written for the Apple II and Commodore 64, it was eventually ported to Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari 2600, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Sega Genesis, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo Entertainment System, MSX and Master System. The Atari Lynx version was the pack-in game for the system when it was launched in September 1989. A version for the Atari XEGS was planned and contracted out by Atari Corporation to Epyx in 1988, but no code was delivered by the publication deadline.

California Games was a commercial blockbuster. With more than 300,000 copies sold in the first nine months, it was the most successful Epyx game, outselling each of the four previous and two subsequent titles in the company's 'Games' series. CEO Dave Morse said that it was the first Epyx game to appeal equally to boys and girls during playtesting. The game topped 500,000 units sold by 1989, at which time Video Games & Computer Entertainment reported that sales were 'still mounting'.