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.
Originally published June 30, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
