We had two golf games on CD-i: Palm Springs Open by Fathom Pictures, developed in 1990 and World Cup Golf, developed by Arc Developments in 1995

Personally I am a big fan of golf and I'm very pleased with the golf games we have on CD-i. There are actually two and I would like to take a look at them. The first one is a launch game on CD-i: Palm Springs Open was developed by Fathom Pictures, famous for also bringing us Escape from Cybercity and all the rumours about the follow-up prototype 'Return to Cybercity'. They started CD-i development with the ABS Sports iteration of Golf, located at Palm Springs, a true existing Golf place in California, USA. We've met several CD-i members who actually recognize the horizon of what was used in this game. Fathom Pictures could, thanks to the CD capacity, use high quality pictures, something that was not possible on previous generation of consoles (MSX, Odyssey, and the likes). For the first time, On Philips CD-i a photo realistic golf game was possible. It had its downsides though, as the game feels a bit static and the player is clearly 'pasted' on the scenery. Sometimes this works out well, but often t feels a bit stiff.

In 1995, US Gold announced to bring a few games to CD-i thanks to a licensing agreement with Philips Media Games. Thanks to the efforts of David McElhatten we have a CD-i version of Flashback and also World Cup Golf arrived in 1995 on CD-i. The CD-i version was converted by Arc Developments. While Palm Springs Open was a CD-i exclusive, World Cup Golf was multi-platform and this was also available on 3DO and Playstation. World Cup Golf was located at the Hyatt Dorado Beach, another true existing golf paradise based in Puerto Rico. You play with fictional golf players in various tournaments. The beauty here is that it makes use of the Digital Video Cartridge to give a full motion video overview of your golf course everytime you hit the ball. It's a great addition to the feeling of being there. The graphics are rendered realtime which is impressive on CD-i, but as it does not use photos on the background, the scenery looks less accurate compared to Palm Springs Open.