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Let's talk about Golf games. An unsung hero of video games

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    #16
    Originally posted by JazzFunk View Post
    Let's face it, golf games are the unsung heroes of gaming.
    They really are. I have no interest in real life golf, but have always loved virtual efforts!

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      #17
      Neo Pocket Golf on NGPC was cool.

      I remember playing PGA Tour on SNES with my Dad when I was 11 or 12.

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        #18
        Can we broaden this out to talk about 3D ones?

        The Everybody's Golf on PSP... that was incredible at the time. Even if I had no idea what all the clubs etc did because it was all in Nihongo.

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          #19
          Originally posted by wakka View Post
          Can we broaden this out to talk about 3D ones?
          Sure! I agree. This thread should celebrate all golf games. Even today they are scarce.

          I remember when I was 14, waking up in the middle of night to the glare of my TV and the silhouette of a man wrapped in a blanket sitting in front of it. When my sight stabilised, I would see my father playing through a tournament on Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf on my Megadrive. This would happen for months. Sometimes I'd come home from school excited to play a game, only to find my father sitting playing Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf. The course BGM and Arnold's smug smile from the title screen is burnt into my mind.

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            #20
            Originally posted by hudson View Post
            Sure! I agree. This thread should celebrate all golf games. Even today they are scarce.

            I remember when I was 14, waking up in the middle of night to the glare of my TV and the silhouette of a man wrapped in a blanket sitting in front of it. When my sight stabilised, I would see my father playing through a tournament on Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf on my Megadrive. This would happen for months. Sometimes I'd come home from school excited to play a game, only to find my father sitting playing Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf. The course BGM and Arnold's smug smile from the title screen is burnt into my mind.
            Hahaha, that's a great story.

            I learned everything I know about golf from videogames. I remember telling my mum about how this game Everybody's Golf was really funny, because in it they called it a 'Bogey' if you did badly, and if you did well it was a 'Birdie' or 'Albatross'. I thought these were some kind of weird gag by the deveopers. She was pretty non-plussed.

            I also learned everything I know about tennis from videogames. Actua Tennis, to be precise, so for a long time I assumed all tennis players must be exact clones of one another. Medium hair, short back and sides, oddly angular face.

            Back on topic...it gets talked about fairly often, but Mario Golf on GBC is a really cool game. I really like how they built an RPG around it, recognising that the game would be played mostly single player.

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              #21
              Leaderboard and WC Leaderboard, the pioneers really. Turf Masters on the NGPC was pretty ace too.
              Lie with passion and be forever damned...

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                #22
                You got in there before me, Mayhem. . The Leaderboard games on C64 were fantastic and started my lifelong obsession with golf games. For me, Neo Turf Masters, Everybody's Golf on PSP and Tiger Woods on the original XBox were the best. But a special mention should go to Mario Golf: Advance Tour on the GBA for the RPG elements, and Golf Story for the same.
                Last edited by gordon; 06-02-2020, 21:01.

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                  #23
                  The first golf game I played was a horrendous ordeal on the Spectrum that was programmed in BASIC. Put me off the sport for years... until Golf for the Gameboy came around. Love the little “fight” animation before a round, the music, and just how the game managed to be so simple yet so deep. The game taught me the rules of golf and was my introduction to golfing parlance such as “birdie” and “bogey”.

                  A year or two later I ended up getting Microprose Golf for the Amiga, and boy was it a corker. It was to golf what Jimmy Whites was to snooker; an accurate yet highly playable simulation of the sport. If you held the mouse button down after taking a shot, the camera would even follow the ball. Groundbreaking stuff. My dad and I would play it for hours, this and Jimmy White’s were the only games he’d ever shown even an ounce of interest in playing.

                  A little further down the line I got myself PGA III for the Mega Drive after ogling over the beautiful (for the time) digitised graphics. Wow, what a game, and one I’d play with my mates as you could have up to four players with just a couple of pads. I remember leaving it round a mate’s house once and going back the next day only to find he’d stayed up for practically the whole night playing it. He showed me a replay of a shot whereby he pitched past the cup, and from the overhead box out you could see the ball fly past it, and then after what seemed like a minute, the ball rolling back into the cup. Because the camera switched to the overhead view of the green we never knew what happened, whether the ball had hit an object and bounced back, or whether a comibination of backspin, headwind and the slope of the green caused such an outrageous shot.

                  Moving on a few years I was stuck between jobs and a mate who was a manager at the local Tesco did me a favour and got me a job in the produce department to keep me off the dole. In the canteen there was a Neo cab with - you guessed it - Neo Turfmasters. Many of the lads would play it and we’d get ultra competitive over it too. One guy told me how he wound up Ben, who was top of the leaderboard, by threatening to pull the plug out, and apparently Ben was almost in tears begging him not to. I bet the operator must’ve been happy the cash box was always full in an era when the arcade machine was all but dead, so why he decided to switch it out for Metal Slug I will never fathom. Sure Metal Slug is a fantastic game in its own right, but it doesn’t have the same widespread appeal as Neo Turfmasters which was as busy as the pool table.
                  Last edited by samanosuke; 06-02-2020, 21:35.

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                    #24
                    Anyone play Links 2003? Meant to have a cult following even today. I have it for Xbox, butI've never played it.

                    I really need to give PGA III on Megadrive a good blast. Never really played that.

                    EDIT: Ah it's Links 2004 that I have.
                    Last edited by hudson; 06-02-2020, 21:46.

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                      #25
                      Originally posted by hudson View Post
                      I really need to give PGA III on Megadrive a good blast. Never really played that.
                      Based on the posts in this thread, I was thinking the exact same thing about Arnold Palmer which I have never played.

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                        #26
                        My favourite is Golf, as in NES Golf. It's simple yet super addictive. I'm terrible at it but I always come back for more.

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                          #27
                          Originally posted by Mayhem View Post
                          Leaderboard and WC Leaderboard, the pioneers really. Turf Masters on the NGPC was pretty ace too.
                          Don't forget that Microprose 3D Golf game on the Amiga

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                            #28
                            I remember Leaderboard being good on the C64. Then PGA Tour Golf on the Amiga was my go-to golf game that I played with friends when we had had enough of football and racing games. I also played later iterations of it on the Mega Drive.

                            I also liked Irem Skins Game on the SNES, which played well and looked good.

                            This century, I've enjoyed the Everybody's Golf series that's charming and fun.
                            Last edited by Leon Retro; 07-02-2020, 10:00.

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                              #29
                              Originally posted by samanosuke View Post
                              A year or two later I ended up getting Microprose Golf for the Amiga, and boy was it a corker. It was to golf what Jimmy Whites was to snooker; an accurate yet highly playable simulation of the sport. If you held the mouse button down after taking a shot, the camera would even follow the ball. Groundbreaking stuff. My dad and I would play it for hours, this and Jimmy White’s were the only games he’d ever shown even an ounce of interest in playing.
                              Completely agree, Leaderboard was an amateurish attempt compared to this, the great thing about it was you actually grew into the game and as you improved you could hit the ball further and would start from the pro tee and so on.
                              As well as the follow-the-ball camera the game introduced stats and graphs as well. It was way, way ahead of its time and easily one of the best games to appear on the Amiga, probably the best overlooked game.

                              Originally posted by Team Andromeda View Post
                              Don't forget that Microprose 3D Golf game on the Amiga
                              Don't worry, we've not!

                              The only other groundbreaking one for me was the XSN Sports on the Xbox which linked into an online internet element as well. You could set up a tournament of say three nine hole rounds to be completed over two weeks and players could then play online together or alone and the website would keep track of the leaders, best putts, longest drive etc.
                              Unfortunately MS once they realised how good it was then decided to kill it.

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                                #30
                                Originally posted by Anpanman View Post

                                The only other groundbreaking one for me was the XSN Sports on the Xbox which linked into an online internet element as well. You could set up a tournament of say three nine hole rounds to be completed over two weeks and players could then play online together or alone and the website would keep track of the leaders, best putts, longest drive etc.
                                Unfortunately MS once they realised how good it was then decided to kill it.
                                XSN was so forward thinking and so amazing Used to love the use of that in Rallisport 2. MS killed it to get EA on LIVE.

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