Year:  1991

Developer:  Ballistic

Number of Players:  1-2

I never had a Sega Genesis when it was a current system.  My brother and I were Nintendo fans through and through.  Over time I did get a Genesis and I have found games on the system that I do enjoy and I am still finding new games for the system to try out.  Winter Challenge is a game I came across while looking for games to review while the 2022 Winter Olympics  are going on in the world.  What I found as a good pickup and play sports game.

The game has eight winter sports you can choose from.  Luge and Bobsled have you racing down a track going as fast as possible while not flipping over.  Downhill skiing and Giant Slalom are ski events where you race in-between gates.  Cross country skiing has you racing around a track on skis while biathlon is the same with the inclusion of parts where you have to shoot targets.  Speed skating is racing on ice and finally ski jump sees how far you jump after coming down a ramp.  Besides not having figure skating and snow boarding (which wasn't added into the Olympics until 1998), this is a pretty good list of winter sports to play.

You can practice each event which lets you try to improve on your scores.  The tournament mode has you create a player and go against other players or the AI in all the events.  Each event has its own controls and each one is easy to figure out except the ski jump which I consistently crashed in.  Each event also only lasts a few minutes at most so these events are easy to replay over and over again to get better at.  The game has content, but it can quickly get repetitive.

I expect games on the Genesis to look at least decent and this game does that.  The game uses a behind the player camera angle which works for all the events.  The environments have some detail to them and the player models look alright.  The game has some music and sound effects but nothing I felt that was beyond decent.  The game does do a good job with the crash animations.

I enjoyed playing Winter Challenge.  The game has enough events to give everyone something to play and each event is short enough that none of them feel like they are dragging on for too long.  While I note the short event times as a positive to me, this does also mean that these events can get repetitive pretty fast.  This is not a game for longevity but it is good for some quick pickup and play action.  This becomes a game for me to play when I have friends over and we want to play some winter sports games or if I'm in the mood to play a winter sports game.