CD-i member Cat Mantra shared with his experience with the great CD-i title 'World Cup Golf', a great golf simulation developed by Arc Developments in 1995 and published in a deal between Philips Media Games and US Gold. "Fired this up for the first time (ever) tonight. Picked it up in a bundle. It's bloomin fab! Plays very much like (imho) the most fun golf game of all time, PGA tour on SNES. Except with superior graphics of course, good voice-over commentary, and great flyovers on a shot. Can't wait to get a mate (or my son) over to the casa for a round of matchplay. Class!"
It is a great game on CD-i! The digital video fly-overs really amazed me and it gives a great feeling over the whole field. With games like this (and same-gen games like Flashback, Pac-Panic, Micro Machines) Philips was ready to compete with the SNES (and in those days they really tried). It is a brilliant game; such a shame Philips CD-i did not catch on; otherwise we would have had more great games like this! 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.
[Thanks, Cat Mantra, Glen Parsons]