Video Olympics

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Video Olympics" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Video Olympics is a

The games are a collection of bat-and-ball style games, including several previously released by Atari, Inc. as arcade games. The games use the Video Computer System's paddle controllers,^[3] and are for one to four players (three or four players requires a second set of paddles).

Games

Video Olympics includes 50 games and variations:^[4]: 30

• Pong - The classic table tennis simulation.^[5]: 42
• Super Pong - A Pong variation where each player has two paddles.^[5]
  ^: 42
• Robot Pong - A solitaire Pong variation.[5]^: 42
• Pong Doubles
• Quadrapong - A four-player, four-wall Pong variation.^[5]
  ^: 42
• Foozpong - Based on Foozball, this Pong variant has the players control a vertical three-paddle column.^[5]: 42
• Soccer^[6]
• Handball - A handball simulation.^[5]: 42
• Ice hockey
• Hockey III - An ice hockey simulation where players can catch and shoot the puck at the opposing goal.^[5]: 42
• Basketball - A basketball simulation.^[5]: 42
• Volleyball - A
  spike.^[5]
  ^: 42

The cartridge and its individual games were reviewed twice in Video magazine. In the Winter 1979 issue of Video, the cartridge was reviewed as part of a general review of the Atari VCS where it received a review score of 8.5 out of 10, and its constituent games were characterized as "old standbys" but "still lots of fun".^[4]: 33 A more thorough review appeared in Video's "Arcade Alley" column in the Summer 1979 issue where the release was generally praised for "tak[ing] Atari's Pong concept and explor[ing] it to the limit." Individual games were singled out as well, with praise for Volleyball and Robot Pong (described as "astonishingly good"), and criticism for Handball (for its use of a visually disturbing blinking paddle rather than an absent paddle to indicate inactive players), and Basketball (described as primitive compared to Atari's own 1978 version of Basketball).^[5]: 42

See also

• List of Atari 2600 games

References