{"id":2425,"date":"2013-06-17T12:42:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2014-09-07T21:43:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T03:43:17","slug":"golfyssey-07-sega-sg-1000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"Golfyssey 07 \u2014 Sega SG-1000"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sega what?<\/p>\n

Why, the SG-1000<\/a> – Sega’s first entry into the video game home console hardware market that almost nobody remembers because it soled poorly.\u00a0 It sold only (legitimately) in Asia, though clones sold in other countries.\u00a0 One of the clones really took off in Taiwan, so there’s that.\u00a0 The hardware for this console is very similar to what the ColecoVision had under the hood.\u00a0 You might be thinking that I forgot to review a golf game for the ColecoVision, but as far as I know, there were never any golf games released for that system.<\/p>\n

If you’re old enough to remember Sega’s TV ads from the early 1990s, then you remember how they positioned themselves as the daring and edgy company who wasn’t afraid to show blood and guts and mature content while Nintendo made kids’ stuff.\u00a0 But if you’ve ever played any of the games for the SG-1000, you’ll see that the story wasn’t always like this.<\/p>\n

Most games for this system are really cutesy and kid-friendly.\u00a0 And since Sega was an arcade game producer at the time, most games are Sega titles.\u00a0 There’s nothing startlingly original here, and most of what can be found for this system exists in better versions elsewhere.\u00a0 One exception is the odd hybrid version of Pitfall II.\u00a0 It’s not a port of the real Pitfall II, rather it’s a strange looking mashup of Pitfall<\/a> and Pitfall II.<\/p>\n

But there are several sports themed games for the system, and among these is a golf game.\u00a0 “Champion Golf”, from 1983:<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

I get the feeling that Sega wasn’t trying as hard to impress people with this console as they were with their arcade games.<\/p>\n

This golf game has a different control mechanism from most that I’ve seen.\u00a0 Once you get past the title and demo screens (and quickly annoying cheery music) you see a screen that looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

There sits your ball upon the tee over on the left side on the screen.\u00a0 This first hole appears pretty challenging, and you must choose either the left or right path to avoid the rough and the trees in the middle.\u00a0 But either way, you have to avoid sand traps.<\/p>\n

See that little dude holding the flag on the border of the course?\u00a0 He’s how you aim.\u00a0 Your joystick moves him around and wherever he is standing, that’s where you will drive the ball.\u00a0 That stick-man holding the golf club in the top-left corner is animated, and he is in continuous movement.\u00a0 There is no power meter for this game, nor anything really like that.\u00a0 Rather, you are supposed to time your swing to where the animated golfer’s club appears in his swing.\u00a0 When he’s got his club all the way back and you press the button, you will get the most powerful shot.\u00a0 When he’s raised his club only slightly, you will hit the ball only a fraction of that strength.\u00a0 The trick is to time it properly.<\/p>\n

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.\u00a0 In reality, it doesn’t always work like this and the shots end up being pretty much random.\u00a0 This is a very bad game.\u00a0 It quickly gets ultra-annoying due to the loud bell-ringing sound the flag-dude makes when you move him around the course too.\u00a0 Was that really necessary?\u00a0 Golf is a game that requires patience, skill, relaxation and meditation.\u00a0 It’s not fucking flashy, action-packed and loud.<\/p>\n

Ugh.\u00a0 I might as well finish my review.\u00a0 I took more screenshots, it would be a shame not to use them.\u00a0 Here is the ball sailing through the air, no doubt despite the best efforts of Sega and Mr. Loud Bell Flag Dude.<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

I should probably mention the wind speed and direction meter and the club indicator too.\u00a0 They really aren’t any good when the actual swinging mechanism is this broken, so you might as well ignore them.\u00a0 In fact, I don’t think there even is a way to select a club, I think the game automatically chooses one for you.<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, how bout that, I managed to make it to the other side of the course.\u00a0 This was actually my fourth attempt at doing so because I was trying to use the emulator’s built-in screenshot utility while playing the game and it was kind of tricky.\u00a0 Other than that I only have awesome things to say about Meka<\/a>.\u00a0 Download it now!\u00a0 It has one of the best interfaces for an emulator that I’ve used.<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, it’s ON motherfucker.<\/p>\n

\"Champion<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is a closeup of the green.\u00a0 The Animated golfer is now holding a putter and instead of a wind speed and direction indicator, you see slope information about the green.<\/p>\n

And this is where the broken swing mechanics just ruin the game.\u00a0 I gave up after 17 swings because I just could not rely on Mr. Animated Display Of Swing Strength Deceit to actually show me how hard my swing was going to be.\u00a0 Two pixels from the cup?\u00a0 Let’s hit it hard enough to physically crack the surface of the ball!\u00a0 You like walking, don’t you?<\/p>\n

So believe it or not, the SG-1000 was later sold as a computer<\/a> after it had a keyboard and some other stuff bolted to it.\u00a0 This is the kind of system that really should have had better games made for it.\u00a0 And if you stick around for my review of golf on Sega’s next piece of hardware, you will see that this is a familiar refrain with Sega.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sega what? Why, the SG-1000 – Sega’s first entry into the video game home console hardware market that almost nobody remembers because it soled poorly.\u00a0 It sold only (legitimately) in Asia, though clones sold in other countries.\u00a0 One of the clones really took off in Taiwan, so there’s that.\u00a0 The hardware for this console […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[510,474,38],"tags":[484,476,483],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-video-game-consoles","category-video-games","tag-broken-games","tag-golf","tag-sega"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7491,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions\/7491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}