Updates & Acquisitions

July 3, 2024

Did I say "when it shows up"? Because if I'd waited just one more day...

This just showed up by UPS, and I was not expecting it until Friday. This is an unusual version of MicroProse's 1992 golf simulator, David Leadbetter's Greens. Leadbetter was regarded as "the pro's pro," a golf instructor who had at that point coached many golfers who had gone on to win major tournaments afterwards - the likes of Nick Faldo and Ernie Els among them - and wrote a ton of books and shot a ton of instructional videos, so to have a golf sim with his name and likeness on it, MicroProse had to do better than just "play as David Leadbetter!" - David's advice takes a prominent role in this game, as he offers recommendations on how to set up your shot throughout the game, and there are tons of shot-analysis tools available as well.

What makes it more unusual though: notice the box art is all black-and-white? And what's the deal with it being the "Competitive Upgrade Version"? Well, Greens already supported multiplayer for up to 4 local players, or 2 via modem or direct link cable (MicroProse loved doing this; World Circuit and Knights of the Sky offered similar options). What that refers to is a special campaign, detailed in a leaflet found inside the box:

MicroProse's upgrade campaign intended for you to "upgrade" to Greens from a competing golf simulator. Make no mistake, there was a lot of competition out there! So MicroProse must have really thought they had the best golf sim money could buy, to run such a campaign. This was the only copy of this edition of the game that I could find on eBay though, so who can say how widespread this campaign actually was.

Anyway, I already had a copy of Greens from a compilation CD-ROM, but it was missing a manual, so I've never actually gotten it past the manual-lookup copy protection before today. Welcome at last to Golfshrine, Mr. Leadbetter. Maybe you can help me with that wicked hook.