Sid Meier's Sim Golf (Impossibru Difficulty)

TheFjordFox · February 16, 2022, 02:28:41 AM

Anyone else got to play this game back in the days when it was new and fresh? In ye olde days of 2002? :)
For me personally, it's a game I like to come back to every now and then and just chillax with some digital golfing mixed with the the sims universe.

Never gets old for me, tho it does get tedious when your course gets to a certain point! :P

If I'm not mistaken, this should be abandonware by now. I have at least seen discussions of it where it has been linked to as such.
Pro tip to get it to work properly - I fiddled around a bit with it, well, a damn lot, actually... and finally I managed to make it work properly (somewhat, in a 800x600 window in the middle of my screen, but other than that all good) - it seems the trick is to run it in Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatibility mode, and "run as administrator" ticked on. There may or may not be other steps, but this worked for me on Windows 10!

I'm currently doing a playthrough of if on youtube, if anyone wants to follow along! Going through it on Impossible difficulty until I got 18 holes and a damn nice course, or the game eventually breaks down on me and spirals into an unrecoverable domino-effect of horrendousness, as it might, due to the difficulty level and certain game-mechanics.

Not much more to it than simple relaxed sim gaming, really! Hope it will be of some value to at least one other person out there!

KyzBP · February 16, 2022, 04:20:47 AM

One of my all time favorite games. I've never found a successor to it and trying to get it to run is a bit of a pain. I'll be watching.

TheFjordFox · February 16, 2022, 06:18:01 AM

It truly is a great game! Simple, entertaining, and addictive! And yeah, I struggled a lot to get it to work, there were issues with inverted colours and all sorts of stuff. But thankfully I managed to get it operational after a lot of trial and error.

I think in episode 9, which I'll be uploading very soon, I managed to break the game. Towards the end of it I'm seeing a whole plethora of glitches I have never seen before in my life, and I've played this a lot over the two decades it's been out there.

Hole 6 glitched out several times while creating it, and when I opened it, it opened up as hole 0 and did not register my course as having 6 holes.

While I let the game run after ending the episode, some lady got pissed and didn't want to play anymore after hole 6, and left the course at hole 19??? So yeah... gonna be exploring these glitches a bit more in episode 10 xD

There was a lot more too!

Grim.Reaper · February 16, 2022, 06:27:02 AM

Yep, had it back in the day. Seemed like a game that I should have enjoyed more than I actually did. Don't recall the reasons but had small shelf life for me.

TheFjordFox · February 16, 2022, 06:35:11 AM

I guess, if I'm being honest, the thing with it for me is that it's really fun to start playing it. For the first 3-4, or even 5-6 holes sometimes, it's pretty damn fun. But then, due to some choices of how to progress and such, and the fact that to playtest hole 18, you have to play through all the preceding 17 holes first, and if you want to make a minor adjustment and try again... well, you have to play every hole that comes before it once more. That can be kinda deal-breaky. I usually go into this game like "this is gonna be fun!" and then after a few hours everything just takes so damn long that the pacing grinds to a halt, and I lose interest.

It might be something similar that shortened it's shelf life for you?

FlickJax · February 16, 2022, 07:03:48 AM

have you seen this one on steam?

GolfTopia - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144020/GolfTopia/

This thread got me interested in simgolf again and found golftopia on a search

Grim.Reaper · February 16, 2022, 07:13:01 AM

Quote from: TheFjordFox on February 16, 2022, 06:35:11 AM
I guess, if I'm being honest, the thing with it for me is that it's really fun to start playing it. For the first 3-4, or even 5-6 holes sometimes, it's pretty damn fun. But then, due to some choices of how to progress and such, and the fact that to playtest hole 18, you have to play through all the preceding 17 holes first, and if you want to make a minor adjustment and try again... well, you have to play every hole that comes before it once more. That can be kinda deal-breaky. I usually go into this game like "this is gonna be fun!" and then after a few hours everything just takes so damn long that the pacing grinds to a halt, and I lose interest.

It might be something similar that shortened it's shelf life for you?

It's possible....might just have been that I wasn't good at it. I do remember being excited about it and immediately buying....

TheFjordFox · February 19, 2022, 07:10:55 AM

Ah, yes, I've heard about GolfTopia! I want to play it, but part of me wants to hold off and wait, so I have some sweet golf game to look forward to in the future. Just artificially trying to recreate the anticipation I had as a kid when I needed to save up for games for ages before I could get them. It's more rewarding playing something when you've wanted to for a long time, but haven't been able to. I want that feeling again! :P

Grim.Reaper · February 19, 2022, 08:11:28 AM

Quote from: TheFjordFox on February 19, 2022, 07:10:55 AM
Ah, yes, I've heard about GolfTopia! I want to play it, but part of me wants to hold off and wait, so I have some sweet golf game to look forward to in the future. Just artificially trying to recreate the anticipation I had as a kid when I needed to save up for games for ages before I could get them. It's more rewarding playing something when you've wanted to for a long time, but haven't been able to. I want that feeling again! :P

If you like golf in general vs just golf management sims, I recommend checking out DKS's golf game. It's more of a season simulator than actually building courses and managing a golf course. But its really good if your looking for a "PGA" experience that is non-arcade.

https://www.dksports.com/golf.htm

TheFjordFox · February 19, 2022, 08:24:57 AM

Thanks for the tip! I'll have a look and maybe try it out! I did use to play some golf in my younger years, so it's definitely a thing I'm interested in in general! I liked the Tiger Woods games in the early 2000s, and I've tried this game called "The Club" or something, but I found that horrendous to play with a mouse and keyboard. Simply impossible to get the ball where you want it :p

KyzBP · February 19, 2022, 02:11:18 PM

There's also this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/869060/Resort_Boss_Golf/

I'd say it's the spiritual successor to Sim Golf but it lacks that charm that Sim Golf has. It's worth a try though.

FlickJax · February 22, 2022, 07:48:13 AM

Been watching the play vids on golftopia, not pulled the trigger yet but impressed with the power of the editing tools included and the depth of options. From the vids I watched you are not forced to add the scifi elements to your courses too if you prefer a more traditional course.

Lost links play throughs -

FlickJax · March 03, 2022, 05:47:48 AM

Golftopia 50% off until 9th March $9.99 - Will grab when home tonight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144020/GolfTopia/

TheFjordFox · March 04, 2022, 03:25:51 AM

Oh dang! Thanks for letting me/us know! I'm definitely gonna be grabbing myself a copy!