California Games II

California Games 2 is a sports game released by Epyx for the Amiga, MS-DOS, Sega Master System, and Super NES in 1993. This game is a sequel to California Games.

The five sports events consisted of:

Hang gliding
Jet ski
Snowboarding
Bodysurfing
Skateboarding

The object of the game was to score as many points as possible by performing stunts and surviving the event. Each event had different play mechanics and physics as well.

The DOS version of the game made comical references to death and even some animated gore. For example:

Hang Gliding: In the instances where the game's female character falls off the cliff (although comical), the game player views her falling off the cliff on to the beach. When she hang glides into the side of the cliff, her front is flattened on the side of the cliff and falls to the beach below. Every so often, if she is unable to make it up the cliff and bails in the water, the dorsal fin of a shark will emerge where she bailed, circle around her, while bubbles (from her breath) float up from the water. Some comments from the score board would read, "Cliff 1, Glider 0" and, "Shark food, dude!"

Snowboarding: Before the event takes place, the player has to control the helicopter to bring its male character up to the top of the mountain, where he must be dropped to start the event. If his point of descent is not high enough to deploy the parachute, or not low enough that he can safely hit the snow, the character (in the form of a dot) will bounce from the mountain and roll all the way back to the beach. If the helicopter is not piloted correctly, you are able to crash the helicopter.

Body Surfing: During practice mode, the first practice run's wipe-out and every odd numbered wipe-out shows the character washing up on the beach. The second practice run's wipe-out and its subsequent even numbered failure results in the surfboard washing up on the beach, with dirge music playing in the background. The game over screen says, "Get a virtual life, dude."

Skate Boarding: By far, this is the most comically morbid event. If the player loses the event, either through bailing 5 times, failure to complete a pipe jump or slamming into the side of the tunnel before entering, a picture is shown of the character looking up from his unfilled grave, seeing friends and family in mourning, and your skateboard as a tombstone. Chopin's "Funeral March" plays as this image is shown. The next screen comments, "Death, where is thy sting? Game over, man!" Also, particular to the DOS version, when the player's unseen face and body slam into the tunnel, the impact is so hard that blood is spattered on the area of impact and trails down as his body goes limp from instant death. This happens no matter how fast the character is traveling. In the subsequent console ports, they keep the character animation, but eliminate the blood.