Updates & Acquisitions

August 4, 2024

Am I a Master yet? No, there is always someone stronger, but I do now have a lot more games with "Masters" on the cover, thanks to Golfshrine contributor nebula once again.

In this photograph you find 4 new additions, 1 title previously already in Golfshrine, and 1 disaster. But let's cover those in an appropriate order.

Starting from the bottom left is New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta, what I believe is the first of T&E Soft's golf simulations for Super Famicom. This kicks off what would end up being a longer series of T&E's golf games to be set at Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia (the United State, not the former Soviet republic). Augusta plays host to the Masters Tournament, an annual competition taking place the first full week of April, since 1934, and holds trademark over the word "Masters" as it pertains to golf. To the immediate right of it is Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2, an updated version of the game that, among other things, enlarges the viewing window, adds more objects in the periphery of the course, and tweaks up the interface a bit. On the far right of that row is the third game in this series (that Golfshrine already had): Harukanaru Augusta 3: Masters New, a vastly enhanced version of the game that includes an SA-1 coprocessor on board, which makes the course rendering not only much smoother, but much more detailed, and makes the interface much more in line with the 32-bit versions of T&E's golf games.

Above, left to right, top row to bottom: Augusta, Augusta 2, Augusta 3 Masters New, and Augusta for Sega Saturn. Masters New released a little bit after the Saturn version, incidentally, and to be honest, it actually does look quite a lot nicer to my eyes.

On the top row of this update's acquisitions would be a trio of Tiger Woodses. I don't see myself going out of my way to collect the entire Tiger Woods series per platform (that would take up an entire shelf if not more on its own!), but I did feel the need to get on some unique per-platform features, and have some XBox 360 representation in Golfshrine, as that's been a bit lacking. So in order, we have Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for XBox 360 (the first HD-era PGA Tour game), Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for Nintendo Wii (with an exclusive mini-putt mode), and what should be yet another game with "Masters" in its title, except...

Hey, this isn't Soccershrine! Get that outta here! ...This, of course, is not nebula's fault, and I'd hardly blame the game store this came from either because all these EA Sports games get to look alike after a while. It does mean I'll need to mail this back at some point.

Until that happens, though, I updated the Golfers Gallery with the character I created for Tiger Woods 06 - a game that doesn't have a "Random Extreme" button.