Aussie Games

Game Meta:

Genre:

Sport

Format:

Diskette

Creator:

Gregg Barnett (Concept, Design, Producer, Programming), Russel Comte (Graphics)

Company:

Beam Software (Developer), Mindscape (Publisher), U.S. Gold Ltd (Publisher)

Platform:

Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum

“Aussie Games” was made in response to the success of Epyx’s “Californian Games” (1987) and the popularity of the movie “Crocodile Dundee” (1986) in the United States.

A compendium of different games, it includes a boomerang throw, a bellywack competition, an Aussie Rules football punting game, a dry boat race and the infamous skeet shoot. In the skeet shoot game, you have to hit an empty beer can thrown from a moving ute. Success results in the dog, who is riding shotgun in the ute, chundering*! “Aussie Games” offered a very tongue in cheek survey of Australian sporting prowess. The games were developed individually by differing Beam staff with Gregg Barnett as the producer. Russel Comte’s graphics for Aussie Games are most humerous.

Australian slang for vomiting

Version information:

Around the time that “Aussie Games” was written, Melbourne House was sold to Mastertronic and Beam no longer had the ability to distribute their own games. Alfred Milgrom recalls that the relationship with Mastertronic was difficult at the time which meant some games in production did not have a confirmed publisher. “Aussie Games” appear to have been published later by Mindscape in the US, in 1989, for the Commodore 64. The game, priced at US $29.95, is listed in “Commodore Magazine”, April 1989, Volume 10, Number 4 on page 6. World of Spectrum record that the game was also released by Erbe Software S.A for the Spanish market in 1990. It was released in the UK though U.S Gold in 1990.