Originally published June 30, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
Stepping backwards from the futuristic sport that was Knot in 3D to the more mundane real world sports in today’s Your Sinclair Top 100, we arrive at a coin-op conversion originally from Konami, though on the ZX Spectrum Hyper Sports was delivered from Imagine Software.
Imagine Software had begun to pick up a number of arcade titles during the latter half of the 1980s, which included such names as Arkanoid, Renegade and also this multi-sports game Hyper Sports, which arrived in 1985.
Multi-sports games were not a new thing on the rubber-keyed wonder – the year before we had seen the Ocean Software game Daley Thompson’s Decathlon destroy joysticks up and down the country. However, Hyper Sports brought with it a slew of new events including Archery, Clay Pigeon shooting and Swimming; all involved again numerous button bashing, that or joystick waggling.
If I were being completely unbiased here, I’d tell you that Hyper Sports is a good looking game with a nice selection of decently animated sporting events and I’d recommend it for all sports fans. Though it does have a couple of issues, the main one being horse event is difficult to master and some instruction on how to achieve the goal would be great.
However…I’m not a sports fan and I never have been! I believe that sports and computers must live separately, if you want to play sport then you logically should go outside, soak up some Vitamin D and get healthy; sports games in my humble opinion aren’t fun. As I’m completely biased towards sports games I’d happily point Hyper Sports straight out of the Your Sinclair Top 100 without a second thought.
