Am I the only one who has totally fallen under the charm of this game? I can't stop playing it, even Civ 3 has fallen by the wayside. I am getting the same vibe I got when I played Railroad Tycoon for the first time. Totally addicting. At this point, I consider the demo limit of only being able to make 3 holes a form of cruel and inhuman punishment. I am soooo desperate for this game to come out.

Anyway, if you know anything about golf, I highly reccomend checking this puppy out.

DeanCo--

I just barely started playing the demo, and I was pretty hooked too, given that I didn't really know what I was doing. Can't wait to play it some more.

Don't know if it's an unpopular position round here, but I'll say it with pride: I love golf computer games!

I wish I could play that "Ninja Golf" golf/hand-to-hand combat game for the Atari 7800. Wonder if the existing emulators are up to the task.

I've gotten to play it a little bit. It does seem to be fairly addictive. And that three hole limit is painful! It also looks like they're going to include a lot of different locations to build courses, which will hopefully keep me interested longer.

I did notice a few problems though. Bridges say that they'll cost $1000 before you place them, but it charges you $10000 when you actually build one.

At one point I had three Gary Golfer guys running around the first tee. I selected the Play a Practice Round option and two of them disappeared.

I don't like the snapshot thing either. Most of the time, it doesn't even display a picture, it just puts a frame onto the screen and goes away immediately. That makes for a distracting flashing.

But I still really like demo. This has definitely gone onto my buy list.

-Trevor

Yes yes, I see a lot of stuff in the game that is screaming 'beta'. I hate the snapshot stuff as well, maybe there will be a way to disable it in the final version. Some of the buildings can be rotated, others can't. Yes, scenic bridges are overpriced. BTW, you can lay a path across the water and it turns into a bridge if you need a cheap bridge. I see stuff flash on the screen for a split second, then dissapear. Sometimes you just can't lay a tree down in a square. The game just won't let you do it. You make what you think is a short par 5, the game insists it's a long par 4.

All that, and I still don't care. I've gotten more hours of fun out of this SimGolf demo than I have from some full version games.

And in true Sid style, you just have to put down a tee and a green to start playing. (You just have to connect 2 cities by rail and buy a train. You just have to hit B to build your first city.)

DeanCo--

I'll say this about the demo... its kept me playing longer than the game it came on, Sims Hot Date.

I think THIS is the game Sid wants to really make, not Civ 3. and its pretty good so far. It plays like a perfect Golf version of Rollercoaster Tycoon, which is good. hope the full version adds one more zoom level... the players get all cluttered when theres alot on the course.

etc

Well, I think this was the game that Sid dropped the Dino project for, which is saying something. That project was getting bogged down and he just started making a prototype for Golf and POW! -- new game ready for development.

I do bug testing at work all day, so I'm just overly sensitive ;)

And even with all the problems, I still end up playing for 30-40 minutes when I only plan to play for 5.

-Trevor

What's so fun about building a golf course? JW

Actually, I'd kinda echo that...

When I first heard about SimGolf, I went "What?" Sid and Will Wright are teaming up for a GOLF game?? What a waste...

Hearing the comments I have since then, perhaps I've changed my tune a bit. I'll be looking into this one, I suppose.

I think this game is the next RCT/Sims game to hit big. Its close to RCT to get those fans interested and has the option to use characters from The Sims to be customers at your golf course. Pretty smart... to be able to attract Sims and RCT fans. Those games havent left the top 10 forever! Maybe all they need left to add is a Diablo mode where you can hack all the whining golfers who hate your course and you have a billion seller!

etc

"What's so fun about building a golf course?"

Fair question. Not sure I can answer that, but I'll try.

You make a hole, and the little Sims come and play on it. The more fun they have, the higher greens fees they pay. Fun means challenging. Challenging means sand traps, water hazards, etc. In other words, exactly the kind of things that cause your golfers (assuming they fall in the trap, water, etc.) to have less fun! So everyone has to be just challenged enough, without becoming frustrated. That's a thin line to walk, considering that players of all skill levels will be playing your course, from Susie Hacker to Joe Pro. If a player likes your course enough, he will become a member, which means he will return regularly. Which means that the 10th time he plays Hole #1, he will have less fun than the first time he plays it. Unless you add a trap here, an ornamental tree there, etc. from time to time. Now add to the equation the fact that you can build practice putting greens and driving ranges, which will cause the little Sims to become better at the game. So a hole that was too hard for a guy before, suddenly becomes fun. And a fun hole becomes too easy. Unless you do something about it.

Now add the fact you have to hire groundskeepers, add scenic landmarks, buy more land to expand your course, sell on-course real estate to your members, hire security to subdue golfers that have hit their ball into the water for the 5th time in a row and are totally pissed off, hold tournaments that you can play in (did I mention you have your alter ego in the game who can play the course once you've built it?), raise and lower land to make uphill and downhill lies...there's a lot more, but I'll stop here.

Speaking of Diablo, mtkafka, you're right, the only thing missing from the game is to be able to go into the pro shop and be able to buy stuff like the +5 Azure Putter of Accuracy. I think I'm gonna write Sid and suggest it. :)

DeanCo--

Sounds like fun. Are there gophers that dig holes in your course? Can you hire Bill Murray to exterminate them?

The game's an obvious place to leverage Caddyshack content.

---

Quote:

They're like the Viet Cong... Varmint Cong. So what you got to do... you got to fall back on superior firepower and superior intelligence. And that's all she wrote.

-- Carl

---

If SimGolf doesn't have any explosives in it, it should. :-D

Since I lost the Civ 3 thread, and am too lazy to go finding it again...

Finally got my copy today, but haven't had a chance to fire it up yet. So, tonight at work I'll have to study the manual.

I just got the demo(I asked what was so fun about building golf course earlier). I like being able to create my own golfer and I had to put up his skills so I could win money for my course. But I still seem to be losing money. And I always run out of things to build really fast so I end up just watching the sims repeat lines over and over.

I really kinda like the demo. It's horribly unpolished and buggy, but if they clean all that stuff up (and improve the organization of the interface a bit), I think I'll spend a lot of time with it. The pop-up stuff is particuarly annoying, when you try to cancel it and instead turn something into rough or whatever.

What does it for me is the personality. Plop down a tree, and there's this great animation of the trunk and branches springing up out of the ground, and all the leaves go "pop!" into existance. The Simlish is probably the best part. It's not just watching the little people going around playing your golf course (which is oddly compelling), it's the sounds they make. Just as in the Sims, it perfectly conveys emotion without actually being speech.

The demo's kind of a mess in terms of balance, some interface quirks, and bugs. But since when has a Maxis game ever shipped without all that stuff worked out? Assuming this follows suit, looks like a winner.

I forgot to add that Sid has included milestones so you alwayse feel like you're progressing. After building 1 hole, the wealthy heiress will play your course, if she has fun she will donate a historic structure (which is broken in the demo, you have to pay for it). After 2 holes, the county commisioner will play, if he likes your course you can buy more land. And the visiting pro will challenge you to a head to head match. After 3 holes, you can hold tournaments. Etc.

Yup, this is a Sid game. I sense the touch of the Master. The Sims bit is marketing really.

And I've stopped playing, out of sheer frustration that I can't build more that 3 holes.

DeanCo--

I, too, have stopped playing the demo -- not so much out of frustration, but merely because, hey, it's a demo, so it's limited. I've gotten all I can out of it.

It is definitely buggy and has what seems to be place-holder material (I think some, if not all, of the Simlish sounds are just pilfered straight from the Sims (which might be something they could get away with in teh final product, I suppose)). My suspicion is that EA was looking to promote the product to a wide audience with the release of Hot Date and so Sid, et. al., had to get a demo version done in short order.

The interface definitely needs work, but I'm pretty confident they're aware of this. The core elements of the interface are actually really solid, though -- actually playing a course works well without turning into Links, and building a hole is self-explanatory and quick. I'm sure this is a result of the much-touted prototype development of The Exalted Sid.

Someone else mentioned the cool way that trees pop into the world and buildings fall from teh sky when placed... I really like the musical tones when fairways, etc. are placed. It's the little things.

One thing I'm unsure about is the combination of the conversational text and the Simlish. To me, this is a bad combo. I adore Simlish and the conversation icons in the Sims specifically because it so elegantly replaces real dialogue. Having both seems weird. Screenshots of Sims Online gives me the same feeling. It really undercuts one of the cool features of the Sims to suddenly have my people using *words*.

Regardless, this demo -- as buggy and limited as it is -- really sheds light on what I think will be a fantastic game in the vein of Rollercoaster Tycoon. As someone said, I bet it will take the casual market by storm... as well it should.

"I really like the musical tones when fairways, etc. are placed."

Um, that's a Bach piece. Keep clicking and laying fairway at a steady rate, you'll hear it. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, I think.

DeanCo--

Sid snuck in a CPU Bach reference? Heh.

Yup, was about to say that Sid is a Bach fan :)

Anyone still play CPU Bach on the 3DO? Never had much luck selling that at EB.. hell I'm having a hard time remembering any 3DO system title outside of The Horde with Kirk Cameron.

My boss played a bit of the SimGolf demo and known for the kind of complaining he does about games didn't have a lot of complaining to do about the demo, which was surprising, given its state.

--- Alan

3DO -- Best conversion of Super Street Fighter II Turbo ever. I've still got my Panasonic 3DO t-shirt with Akuma on the front. That one game was worth the price of a discounted 3DO when it was released. I traded my 3DO system and games for a Neo Geo cartridge system with one game.

There are a bunch of good titles on the 3DO though and some innovative stuff too. Twisted was one of the best uses of full-motion video I've ever seen and it was a good precursor to the board game craze with mini-games that Mario Party revived a few years ago. Gex was good fun.

It's a shame the controllers were so crappy. You had to loosen the screws on the original pads to get the diagonals working properly.

--Dave

Meier used Bach (and some Handel, I think) in the music to Pirates! as well. To this day, when I hear one of the Goldberg Variations, I think "We've captured the enemy ship, Captain. Shall we sink her or keep her?"

What exactly was CPU Bach on the 3DO ? A musical composition program ?

Yes.

It would compose and then play pieces in the Baroque style.

I still have my 3DO hooked up, but that's the only thing it ever runs. The notion of a private composer and concert amuses me no end.

--Dave

What sort of input does the user give CPU Bach ?

I never owned a 3DO, but I loved the CPU Bach concept and wished they would have made it for the PC.

You can pick up a used 3DO for around $60 or less on Ebay depending on the package you want. You might even get CPU Bach along with it.

--Dave

>You can pick up a used 3DO for around $60 or less on Ebay depending on the package you want.

Really? I'll have to check it out. I've always wanted a 3D0 in order to play the enhanced version of Star Control 2, which was made only for that system. I'd rather have just that enhanced game than the entire Dreamcast library.

Stefan

ENHANCED VERSION OF STAR CONTROL 2!?!

Okay, sorry for that, but those caps are not used wontonly. This is big news!

Gimme the scoop on that baby, Desslock. Enhanced!? ENHANCED?!?

gibber gibber gibber meep meep....

It's pretty cool...Star Control II on the 3DO. Fully voiced with some really spiffy graphics for the time if I recall correctly. It's one of the best games that ever appeared on the system.

--Dave

>ENHANCED VERSION OF STAR CONTROL 2!?!
..Gimme the scoop on that baby, Desslock. Enhanced

I never played it myself, so Dave can probably tell you more, but as he indicated, it had full speech for all the dialogue (and apparently it was really well done, especially compared to SC3), stereo sound, some graphical enhancements and a few minor story tweaks with the rainbow worlds, etc..

Stefan

Great... Now I have to drag my 3DO out of storage and boot up SC2 again. It really was one fine game. The spoken dialogue often went on for too long, but it was nicely done for the time. Space Hulk on 3DO was pretty good too.

SC2 on the 3DO rocked. A veg'd out for hours in front of it. The Spathi voices were hilarious.

Bob,
you're thinking of Starflight. Excellent game in its own right. Particularly the sequel.

-Andrew

Bub,

The Spathi are indeed in Star Control 2. What makes you think Bob meant Starflight?

-Tom

>What makes you think Bob meant Starflight?

...especially when Starflight had no voices.

Stefan

Um...yeah. What they said. Brain-fade, Bub?

--Dave

Hmmm, what were the bubbly blob aliens called in Starflight then? I could have sworn they were the Spathi. Arrogant little jerks.

Ah, I checked Gamefaqs, I was thinking of the Spemin. Excuse me, as you were.

-Andrew

Not even tasting good, the icky blobs...

Lee? Is that a Humna Humna quote? Regardless, they were the best alien race ever. Man I wish somebody would attempt a full scale remake of SF2. That game had so much personality.

-Andrew

I have a 3do question. Anyone remember the name of the game where you were flying a ship across (i think, continents. For some reason I think you started in South America, but this part could be wrong.) The landscape was mostly flat and you were not on rails but sort of pushed along, you could only go back so far. You were always moving somewhat forward and each new level was a new continent. Every so often you came on cities that were the ground texture changed and there were some black boxes sticking up as buildings.

Ring a bell for anyone?

Thanks

Chet

http://www.starflight3.com/

Sounds like Shockwave, Chet...you were on a fixed path in that game with the ability to circle back through a limited amount of terrain. It was released by Electronic Arts and was pretty decent for the time.

Some guy's homage to Shockwave with screenshots.

There's another possibility though. Star Fighter was another 3DO game where you flew a space craft over 3D terrain (which did have a lot of undulation) and could destroy just about everything. Buildings were able to be destroyed and you even scorched the ground with laser fire. That was a really cool game that came out late in the system's life and was also ported to PC (even 3D accelerated I think). But I think you're thinking of Shockwave (which got a sequel).

Star Fighter at Gamezilla

--Dave

Shockwave is it.

Thanks.

Chet

Actually, if I recall it correctly, it was a Veloxi quote. No Shyneum Pennies for you, Humna Humna man! ;-)

I did like the Starflight games enormously... I remember taking the original Starflight home in a state of considerable excitement. Then I discovered that it wouldn't run on my PCjr--my display would lose sync as soon as the game started. Augh! I just had to play this amazing-looking game! What was I to do?

I did what any self-respecting 23-year-old geek with too much time on his hands would do: I started going through the game with DOS' DEBUG, looking for the video initialization code. I quickly recognized that most of the game was written in Forth, with some assembly routines. Having had some experience with Forth in my C-64 days, I was able to dope out the initialization code and find the video init routine, which was accessing the I/O ports of the video adapter directly, instead of initializing it by BIOS calls. A quick patch, and there was the game, in all its four-colour CGA glory.

Later, I was able to do some additional hackery to run SF1 in 16 colours using the PCjr's 160x200 video mode (which just happened to be the actual graphical resolution of the game.) Somebody figured out that my original CGA patch would fix problems that users with EGA cards were having with Starflight; Electronic Arts discovered the patch and actually gave it out to people having trouble. Later, they contacted me and offered me any game out of their catalog as a thank you. Pretty neat. :-)

Believe it or not, some vestige of that old patch still survives.

I would love to see a Starflight III, or a real sequel to Star Control II. (SC3 was such a crock that I'm inclined to try and forget it even existed.) I know about the Starflight III fan project, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Oh yeah, Star Control II on the 3DO! Heh, thanks, brings back memories now :)

John Madden Football was probably the game I demoed the most for it, but did a bunch of Gex when it came out. Return Fire was a blast, and Wing Commander III looked a hell of a lot better than on the PC. Well, so did Daedalus Encounter (with Tia Carrere!), but it was a lot lamer. There was even Flying Nightmares from Domark. Sheesh..

--- Alan

Return Fire rocked! That was one of the best damn two player games on any system at the time. It's still fun today in fact. The blaring classical music, the carnage... great stuff.

The guy I played it with got so fed up with me always taking his flag first and usually winning that he just stopped playing it. A sad, sad day. That was one of the few times I wished I had let someone win just so they would keep playing the game with me.

The feeling passed after about 30 seconds of an ass-kicking in any number of fighters on the Neo Geo.

--Dave