Spectrum Computing

How can we have never had a really good golf game? There are hardly any moving objects, you can pretty much do it all in green and white and the main graphic is a dot. There are all sorts of ways to make it good within the limitations of the hardware. You can do it in overhead view with minimal/no scrolling like Sensible Golf, or you can do it sideways like the excellent Stickman Golf games on iOS and Android. But nobody did.

The Leaderboard games are decent with multiple courses, but they're not amazing - uggo graphics (quite often you can't even really tell where the flag is), having to watch every hole painstakingly drawn in front of you, and incredibly finicky control that'll see you start off recording a lot of 15s and 20s. But after that things plummet downhill at a rate of knots.

Konami's Golf plays kind of okay - the controls are super-simplifed but fast and you're never really sure how far the ball's going to go - but it's almost totally silent and you don't even get one full course - only nine holes.

Nick Faldo Plays The Open is just about the only other major full-price golf title and it's hilariously bad - shocking graphics and a mess of an interface that takes up most of the screen so you can't really see where you're shooting on the tiny play area.

(Let's just pretend Royal Birkdale Championship Golf doesn't exist, as clearly 90% of the development time was spent on the lovely title screen.)



Then we're down to two pretty rotten Atlantis budget games - Pro Golf, in which you may die of old age before you get to actually hit a ball, and Pro Golf II - and the sort-of-okay Codemasters effort with a very similar name, which is zippy and has a course editor and is probably the pick of the bunch overall so long as you can remember where the hole is (you only get one chance at an overview) and don't mind the comedy scrolling.

Of 87 games revealed by the database, the majority - 51 - are either crazy golf games, ZX81 titles, magazine type-ins, Crap Game Compo entries or MIAs that may never have been released, and a bunch more are just the same game but with different courses. And even some of the professional commercial releases look like this:









The Speccy's performance in this field really was sub-par, and not in the good way.

(btw, can anyone get Leaderboard - Famous Courses Of The World to run in any emulator?)

My fave golf game was rge Amiga version of PGA European Golf. I've only played Leaderboard on the speccy but found it tooslow.

StanVanman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 3:24 pm (btw, can anyone get Leaderboard - Famous Courses Of The World to run in any emulator?)

It runs in Eighty One and the NO$ZX emulators providing you load the second TZX in the package first.
Didn't hang around to try all the courses but it seemed to be ok. Just a black screen then lockup in Fuse after the loading screen.

Something like Planet Golf would definitely be doable on the Speccy:

What about https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... batrossity

Leaderboard is probably the only one I can find bearable.

Maybe there are others out there.

catmeows wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 9:00 am What about https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... batrossity

Ooh, will definitely give that a try, although it looks like it veers maybe a bit far over the fuzzy line between "golf" and "crazy golf"

[EDIT] Yeah, that's good fun, but the different ball types make it more of a puzzle game with some golfy mechanics than any sort of actual golf game.

flange wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 4:11 pm It runs in Eighty One and the NO$ZX emulators providing you load the second TZX in the package first.
Didn't hang around to try all the courses but it seemed to be ok. Just a black screen then lockup in Fuse after the loading screen.

Hmm, didn't work in EightyOne (v1.39) for me. The second, third and fourth files all load and work, but the first just black-screens even if you load the second one up first. Any chance you can make an .SZX or .Z80 snap of the first?

StanVanman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 2:24 pm

I used to enjoy this one.

StanVanman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 2:17 pm Hmm, didn't work in EightyOne (v1.39) for me. The second, third and fourth files all load and work, but the first just black-screens even if you load the second one up first. Any chance you can make an .SZX or .Z80 snap of the first?

Sorry about this I explained badly. What I should have made clear is that I couldn't get the first file to run in any emulator, apologies.

flange wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 2:34 pm Sorry about this I explained badly. What I should have made clear is that I couldn't get the first file to run in any emulator, apologies.

Doesn't matter anyway - have just noticed each hole is loaded individually, so snapshots don't work

Hi, I made a TZX file out of both for my personal archive that loads the first course (didn't check the other, honest) with Spectaculator and SpecEmu.

Maybe you could try it and see if it works for you.

http://www.alessandrogrussu.it/zx/Lbfcotwv1.zip

This was a quite well received golf game in the arcades:



Probably sets the bar quite high but could be worth a try on a Speccy 128K ?

sn3j wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 4:42 pm This was a quite well received golf game in the arcades:

Probably sets the bar quite high but could be worth a try on a Speccy 128K ?

Yeah, pretty high

But the Speccy is definitely at least up to matching something like Golf on the Game Boy/NES.

Alessandro wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 3:52 pm Hi, I made a TZX file out of both for my personal archive that loads the first course (didn't check the other, honest) with Spectaculator and SpecEmu.

Maybe you could try it and see if it works for you.

http://www.alessandrogrussu.it/zx/Lbfcotwv1.zip

Yup, that seems to work, in so far as Volumes 2, 3 and 4 do (which is to say that Fuse still hates it, but other emus don't), so now we at least have a full set. Nice one

I wonder what Fuse is bitching about?

Not played this one, but seems pretty impressive

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 6:11 pm Not played this one, but seems pretty impressive

Yep, as I said in the OP it's probably the best of the bunch overall, which isn't stellar praise but still.

I've always liked the look of this for the CPC. Hard to do on the spectrum

I liked Leaderboard. It very obviously wasn't designed around the Spectrum's graphics though and they went for faithful gameplay over fixing any of that when porting. Access Software went on to develop the legendary Microsoft Golf for the PC, which is basically the same game but prettier and you don't have to wait ages for the course to draw every shot.

Turf Masters is a very different kind of game. The controls are very basic but and the difficulty comes from the insane design of the courses. Before too long you're hitting postage stamp-sized patches of grass in the middle of a river practically every shot. It's still got a cult following largely because nobody ever did anything like it.

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 7:57 pm

I've always liked the look of this for the CPC. Hard to do on the spectrum

Of what? The picture doesn't work.

StanVanman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:34 am Of what? The picture doesn't work.

I only ever played World Class Leaderboard and thought it was great! A little slow to build the landscape may be but there were a lot of trees to render on those courses.

Written by Jim Bagley so gets extra points for that surely?

sn3j wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 4:42 pm This was a quite well received golf game in the arcades:

Just awesome. Love the music

Morkin wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 11:34 am “Welcome to Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. I am Carvallo.

LOL you beat me to this. Note that it's a real game now!