Tag Archives: golf

Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Golf

Leave a comment

Ah, golf. The one sport I can get behind in that it involves minimal physical activity (aside from walking about a bit and occasionally giving a small ball a hefty thwack) and is mostly about being very quiet.

Video game adaptations of the game that spoiled many a good walk have been around for a long time, as it happens, with one of the earlier ones being Atari’s own simply named Golf for Atari 2600.

Let’s go play a round in the video below — meet me in the 19th hole and subscribe on YouTube when you’re done!

header-4165360

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Leader Board

Leave a comment

Ah, golf. A good way to ruin a perfectly good walk, or something. Unless you’re playing it on your Atari 8-bit home computer, of course, in which case you don’t even have to get out of your chair!

Leader Board from Access Software wasn’t the first computerised golf game, nor was it the inventor of the power and accuracy meter system that many golf games continue to use to this day. But it did help to popularise the genre among home computer users, as well as cement a lot of conventions that have very much stood the test of time.

If you can play Everybody’s Golf, you can play Leader Board… in theory, at least. I can definitely do the former, so let’s see if the latter is true, shall we?

header-4165360

Delving Into..., Dream Course, Kirby

Delving Into Kirby’s Dream Course – #1

3 Comments

During my exploration of Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush, I mentioned that I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Kirby game other than, well, the unexpected.

I was expecting at least some of the games in the series to be relatively conventional platform games — and I know they’re there somewhere! — but the next one I happened to alight upon, courtesy of the SNES Mini’s built-in lineup of games, was Kirby’s Dream Course.

I had no set expectations for what Kirby’s Dream Course was going to be before firing it up for the first time. But I can tell you I didn’t expect it to be a thoroughly charming minigolf game!

Continue reading Delving Into Kirby’s Dream Course – #1 →

Essentials, Neo Geo

Neo Geo Essentials: Neo Turf Masters

5 Comments

It’s honestly kind of surprising how many times the sport of golf has been adapted to the arcade format.

On the surface, you wouldn’t think the two things are particularly compatible; golf is a terribly sedate, polite sort of sport that takes all day to play, whereas arcade games are typically noisy, spectacular and, in many cases, over and done with in five minutes or less.

And yet that hasn’t stopped a number of developers trying their best to adapt it to a quarter-munching format, with one of the very best examples being Nazca’s Neo Turf Masters for Neo Geo, a game which has had a bit of a resurgence recently thanks to numerous ports to PC and console.

Continue reading Neo Geo Essentials: Neo Turf Masters →

One-Shots

Everybody’s Golf: First Impressions

1 Comment

I’ve been intrigued by golf games since Leaderboard on the Atari 8-Bit, and I sank a fair few hours into Microprose Golf on the Atari ST, wowed by its then-revolutionary 3D polygonal courses.

However, the games that truly cemented my love of this genre of games — although not the actual sport itself, which I find impossibly difficult to play and rather tedious to watch — were Camelot’s Mario Golf on the Nintendo 64, and Bottom Up’s Tee Off on Dreamcast. I didn’t play the Everybody’s Golf series on the early PlayStations — my first encounter with it was the Vita game — but I’m certain it would have appealed to me, because it tickled those same happy places that Mario Golf and Tee Off did by providing friendly, accessible and surprisingly fast-paced arcade-style golf action.

With that in mind, then, let’s take a look at the new PS4 installment, the latest in the line of long-running series to ditch numerical suffixes and subtitles in favour of just being called what it is.

Everybody’s Golf, then.

Continue reading Everybody’s Golf: First Impressions →