No.21: Hyper Sports - Imagine/Ocean, 1985
I can’t believe that we are almost at the top 20 of my favourite Spectrum games. It feels like such a journey already, chock full of ace games, a few surprises and hopefully a list that shows what a good quality games machine the Speccy was.
Arcade conversions were starting to become very popular by 1985 and, having recently purchased the rights to the Imagine name, Ocean began publishing a few of Konami’s sporting coin-ops via its new label.
Hyper Sports is a spiritual follow-up to the famous Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, and while it may not have sold as many copies, or be quite as nostalgically well-remembered, I think it’s a far superior game, especially my favourite event pictured here, skeet shooting. It was programmed by Jonathan Smith, and it’s not the last we will see of the dearly departed Ocean man on this list.
Thanks to www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk for images.
