Turn on the coverage of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics right now and it’s hard not to feel inspired to pick up a winter olympics video game. Athletes who’ve devoted themselves to very specific, often dangerous disciplines, braving the harshest elements and representing their nations at the very top level of their sport – who wouldn’t want a brief glimpse of what that feels like?
It’s why my classmates and I turned our shop class into a surprisingly well-equipped curling tournament (perspex, CNC machines and youthful exuberance go a long way) during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and why a lot of us are looking to video games for that elite winter athlete hit right now.
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Tragically, there’s no official title on PC or consoles for this year’s games, ending a run that began way in Lillehammer ‘94. So if we want to taste what it feels like to be Shaun White or Arianna Fontana we either have the NFT-laden mobile game Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022 or the 2018 Olympics DLC for Steep. Or, looking further back still, a pretty rich back catalog of both official and unofficial titles that chart the zeitgeist of winter sports over the years and in many cases still offer a genuine laugh. Lillehammer ‘94 on Genesis, you’ve aged like an oak-smoked Michelle Pfeiffer.
Here’s a potted history of video games’ dalliances with the Winter Olympics, going right back to the 8-bit era when we were expected to pull off figure skating routines with a NES controller and taking us up through to more modern glories.