''Golden Tee Golf'' is a

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...

series by

Incredible Technologies Incredible Technologies (IT) (formerly Free Radical Software (FRS)) is an American designer and manufacturer of coin-operated video games and Class III casino games, based in Vernon Hills, Illinois. The company's most widely used product is the ...

. Its signature feature is the use of a

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball to position the on-s ...

to determine the power, direction and curve of the player's golf shot. Play modes include casual 18-hole golf, closest to the pin, and online tournaments. One of the longest running arcade game series, ''Golden Tee'' has maintained a large following and spawned a competitive tournament scene.

History

The ''Golden Tee'' series began as a project at Incredible Technologies to create a large scale

golf simulator Indoor golf is an umbrella term for all activities in golf which can be carried out indoors. Venues include indoor driving ranges, chipping areas, putting greens, machines and home golf simulators. Many of these indoor facilities are businesses t ...

for sizable family entertainment centers. The idea was scrapped, but not before programmer Larry Hodgson had already written software to create virtual golf courses. Rather than discard his work, Hodgson retooled the concept to develop a golf game for regular

arcade cabinet An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

s. He worked with co-designer Jim Zielinski, who initially rendered the courses using

Deluxe Paint Deluxe Paint, often referred to as ''DPaint'', is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported ...

. Instead of a regular

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

and buttons for controls, they used a trackball, which Incredible Technologies had previously used for ''

Capcom Bowling ''Capcom Bowling'' is a top down bowling sports simulation game developed by Incredible Technologies (under the brand name Strata) and released by Capcom to arcades in 1988. Up to 4 four players could play a single game playing alternately. T ...

''. The first ''Golden Tee'' was play-tested in a bar, a venue which would become the most popular location for ''Golden Tee'' cabinets. Released in 1989, the first iteration was sold exclusively as a kit that could be used to convert existing arcade machines to ''Golden Tee.'' It sold relatively well, but the series would find greater success with ''Golden Tee 3D'' several years later. The 1995 '' Peter Jacobson's Golden Tee 3D Golf'' (featuring

Peter Jacobsen Peter Erling Jacobsen (born March 4, 1954) is an American professional golfer and commentator on Golf Channel and NBC. He has played on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour. He has won seven events on the PGA Tour and two events on the Champion ...

) was the first in the series to support online networked play. Rather than being networked to each other, the cabinets were all linked to a central computer which compared scores for tournament play. The first test tournament, held on 24 game cabinets in the

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area from November 24 to December 17, 1995, awarded real money to the winners, including a $1,000 grand prize. The first "real world" tournament was held mid-June to July 7, 1996, on 145 cabinets across six states, and was considered a major success. By the end of 1996, 1,250 cabinets were installed across 32 states. The tournament gave rise to a large competitive play scene for the franchise. Ryan Bourgeois has won the US national championship three times. Since ''Golden Tee 3D'', Incredible Technologies has released a new entry in the series to arcades every year. Versions of the game have also been published for the original PlayStation,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and Android. A plug-n-play

dedicated console A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges, discs, downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consol ...

version has also been released.

References

External links

*{{official
Google Play Golden Tee Golf
1989 video games Arcade video games Golf video games Trackball video games Video game franchises Video games developed in the United States

History

See also

References

External links