What are the “must plays” of this genre?

[TigerQuoll]

#9411

Golf is really not my jam, but golf games were a big pillar of the DOS games scene in the early 90s, so I feel like I should give a couple of them a chance.
But Mobygames lists 56 golf games for DOS! No way I’m going to play that many!

At the moment I’m thinking of looking at the following:
* Links 386 because it was lauded for its revolutionary graphics
* Sensible Golf because it looks cartoony and cute
* Fuzzy’s World of Miniature Golf because I mean obviously
* AM’s Mini Golf 3D because it looks like it has a nice “Vitual Pool” vibe

Any others that I should check out?

Oh yeah, I’ll definitely be playing PC Golf (1985) because I had it on my XT when I was a kid. I encourage you to search it! It’s quite… something.

[gregkennedy]

#9412

I think you should also try Fuji Golf – one of the games included in the various Microsoft Entertainment Packs for Windows 3.x. It’s “not DOS” but still… Rather abstract. before “serious” golf game companies figured out how to port their games to Windows, there was this. It used the Windows vector drawing primitives to render a golf course, in a sort of minimalist approach to a simulator of the game.
https://netizen.club/~wildweasel/fuji.html

Also: Gravislizard has deleted their twitter account, but years ago they had a good thread on “PC golf aesthetics” that may be a nice reference
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1099393668929118208.html

[patrick_wd]

#9413

My dad is very into golf, so I have distinct memories of a couple golf games that we had on our 486 and pentium.

The first one is Links: The Challenge of Golf. This is the precursor to Links 386 and the followup to World Class Leaderboard. The line “Looks like I hit the tree, Jim” is permanently etched into our brains and my brother and I would quote it to eachother for years afterward.

The second game was Jack Nicklaus Golf Signature Edition. This one I mostly remember the distinct adlib tune in the menus and the swing power UI that was a solid bar instead of the horseshoe thing that Links used. We played 2 player in this one quite a bit also, but it didn’t have the memorable voice lines of Links.

It’s been far too long for me to recall which one I enjoyed playing more, or if one of them was distinctly better, but I intend to revisit both during the month. These are some of the few DOS games that I played back in the day but have not revisited at any point since.

[TigerQuoll]

#9414

Thanks for the hints guys!
I actually have Fuji Golf, in the very entertainment pack you mention. What struck me about it is that it seems to be a much more serious, fully-fledged offering of a game than the all the other quite small casual titles in the Microsoft Entertainment Packs apart from Chip’s Challenge.

Jack Nicklaus rings a bell. I’m sure I’ve heard the name bandied about in reference to golf games par excellence. Might have to have a look at that one too.

[Greg77]

#9416

Links Golf was brilliant and then links 386 Pro was introduced. This game Was the reason my brother and I paid the extra dollars to get a 386 SX 25 instead of the 286 we had been intending to order. The funny thing is, it computer came with windows 3.1 and with it installed, links 386 pro was so slow, it was unplayable. If however we used a startup disk so that windows was bypassed, it was completely playable. We spent so much time on that game.

[Spoonboy]

#10078

I’ll definitely be playing the original Links: CoG, as it was one of the first games I ever played! It was in a three game bundle that came with my family’s Amstrad 286.
I remember that the ground vertices took a long time to load, but I loved to watch it happen 😀
Looking forward to trying other games too.

[falselogic]

#10218

The first thing that came to my mind was Sid Meier’s SimGolf. The next thing was that in no way was that a DOS game…

[butterburp]

#10245

“no way a DOS game” = Mini Golf Maniacs?

Fuji was an interesting one. It comes with a text file so you can theoretically modify the computer players, but reducing their skill levels never had any effect, as far as I could tell. But I did like changing their names to Bugs Bunny and so forth.

Links 386 always felt like an unattainable status symbol to me, because I was stuck on an old 286-12 (with a B&W monitor) until I got to college. I was quite envious of my friends who had 386’s and 486’s!

[ericiseasytosay]

#10258

As a kid, my father and I played hours and hours of Accolade’s Mean 18 golf game. There was a time that I didn’t even have to refer to the manual to check on each club’s max distance – I had it all memorized!

It also came with a course designer and I put hundreds and hundreds of hours into designing golf courses. Such a smart move by the developers to include the designer with the game – I didn’t know anyone else who had the game but I wonder how many people would share courses they made with all their friends.

[TigerQuoll]

#10310

So I’ve downloaded a little grabbag of games I want to try out this month. I’m not sure what I’ll think of some of them.
Golf will always be an enigma to me. It’s such a weird, almost farcical idea for a sport in my eyes.

Mini golf I understand, because it leans into that and doesn’t take itself seriously.
But when I see massive tournaments and elite athletes and millions of fans who take it incredibly seriously, I feel like I’ve stepped into some bizarro world.

Imagine if you woke up and suddenly extreme ironing was inexplicably one of the most popular and prestigious sports in the world! That’s how I feel about golf.

No offense intended to anybody who is a fan of golf. I play bagpipes competitively, so I’m really in no position to talk haha!

[patrick_wd]

#10311

I can’t help but recall that famous Robin Williams bit about the invention of golf.

[TigerQuoll]

#10334

Haha, love that clip! Pretty much sums it up for me.

Did you see how many water bottles he had? Wild. The man must have been 97% cocaine.

[butterburp]

#10339

GULF [LOSING HORNS]

Well I played around with FUJIGOLF.DAT in Fuji Golf (hopefully that semi-counts as a DOS game) and verified that you can’t change the CPU skill levels. I tried changing both the actual skill assignments and the probabilities. The game results are the same every time, no matter what you do, I guess it’s hardcoded. In fact, it’s always the same players at the top, in the same order. The only thing you can change are the names, in case you really want to play with Peppy La Pew or whoever.

One thing I’ve noticed – once you get on the fairway, you have to switch to the 3-wood (which happens by default on a long course). Using the 1-wood gives much shorter distance. Maybe real golf is like that too, I don’t know.

[TigerQuoll]

#10340

Nice work, butterburp!
I’ve always enjoyed tinkering with game files and seeing what interesting things you can do. Weird that the .dat file has no effect on the game. Maybe it’s supposed to be more of an info file for the user’s reference?
Krush Kill n Destroy had something similar – a text file that looked like it contained unit stats, but they were really only there for player reference.

I think historically we haven’t counted windows games, even 3.x, but I don’t see why we can’t sneak in a cheeky one when there’s so many on the list anyway 😉
I know I’ll be giving Fuji a little play this month.

[vga256]

#10492

Just echoing my appreciation for Fuji Golf. I got to play it when I was 12 years old, in a university student computer lab while my mom went to class. My mom told me the door lock password to the lab, and I’d sneak in there when it was quiet and pretend I was a student, so I could play Microsoft Entertainment Pack games.

Fuji Golf (and Jezzball, and Rodent’s Revenge) were on there, and I had a TON of fun with them. It didn’t take long to figure out how to copy files from the university lab’s Novell Netware server drive to a floppy disk, and take pirated copies of the MEP games to play at home.

Not-DOS, yes.. but Win 3.1 is just a fancy DOS shell anyway! 😉

The other game I played a ton of – and I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet – is PGA Tour Golf (1990) by Sterling Silver Software/EA. While most people automatically think of Links 386 as the ubiquitous golf game, I think PGA Tour had a better mix of arcade and realistic gameplay. As a kid, I found Links a bit too stodgy and complex – more like a flight simulator than a golf game. The television style fly-by animation at the start of each hole absolutely blew me away as a kid, and to this day looks just wonderful.

It’s just a shame that while the intro has a gorgeous MT-32 track, the rest of the game has horrendous non-digitized PC speaker sound effects.

[TigerQuoll]

#10494

vga256 – “Not-DOS, yes.. but Win 3.1 is just a fancy DOS shell anyway! 😉”

Blasphemy! 😉

Anyway, I’ve added a couple of games from pix’s thread that sound interesting, but I think I’ll put PGA on there on your recommendation as well.

Now I think of it, I’m sure it was a game I had heard of as a kid. I remember my computer booting up and displaying the graphics mode as “EGA/PGA/VGA”. I always assumed it had nothing to do with it*, but a little part of me wondered if it was a special graphics mode just for PGA golf!

*I think it actually stands for “Professional Graphics Adapter”? – a rare and pricey piece of kit from the mid 80s. I dunno, there’s a huge thread arguing about it on vcfed 😛