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The history of the surfing games
Thursday, 10 November 2011 10:40

Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer: he imagined the first artificial wave pool in a computer game

Surfing games have been played since the 1980's. The first video game in the history of surfing was California Games and was available for the Commodore 64 computer in 1987.


Launched in 1987, it was a huge commercial success. Despite the low resolution of the entire graphics, the surfing game was very enjoyable. Players could perform simple moves such as the bottom turn, cut-backs, aerials and tube rides.

Soon after, California Games was ported to Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari 2600, Atari ST, Atari Lynx, DOS, Sega Mega Drive, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo Entertainment System, MSX and Sega Master System.

In 1988, T&C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage was released, but it was not a commercial success. California Games 2 arrived in 1993 with the famous message: "Get a virtual life, dude". This time, surfing was replaced by bodyboarding.

The first console surfing video game ever released was Surf Riders. The overall graphics were improved and the flow of riding a wave was clearly better. Meanwhile, the PC platform answered with Championship Surfer, a surfing game with a long list of pro surfers as main characters.

PlayStation 2 enters the world of surfing with Surfing H3O, in which the analog sticks responded well to the type of game. The water physics was getting better, but perfection was still far.

Ultimate Surfing is Gameboy's first adventure in the world of surfing. Released in 2001, it was an easy and simple game that didn't have success among the surfing community.

Sunny Garcia Surfing got a release for PlayStation 2 and featured the Hawaiian icon and the main attraction. Transworld Surf was a success in the Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions, in 2001. Everything was improved and the game was very enjoyable. Surfers could pick ten dream surf spots.

Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer is the last console surfing game ever released and also the best of its kind ever. Great controls, great graphics, interactive waves and a lot of perfect tricks and moves. The game was released in 2001. If you consider Surf's Up a real surfing, then it was the last one.

While the surfing community waits for the next release, we can play online surfing games.


 

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