Updates & Acquisitions
April 6, 2025
I had so much opportunity to prepare an April Fools gag last week. I wouldn't say I so much as chose not to, as I just didn't think about it while I had the time to prepare it. I probably wouldn't have done anything terribly elaborate; maybe a change in format (an article about golf solitaire, maybe?). But maybe next year. Maybe when I'm feeling independently silly.
This update's acquisitions come from two ultra-kind donations, both via very cool people that I know through the VGHF and Gaming Alexandria discords. One box was much larger than the other, so I'll start with the small box first.
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| Some add-on discs in an ecosystem I haven't done a lot of research on. |
This particular package came from past Golfshrine donor (and enthusiast of the Nova Scotian game industry), Adam Hartling - his box contained these two add-on course CD-ROMs for the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, The TPC Courses and The Tournament Courses. Previously, Golfshrine only owned the Buick PGA Tour Courses disc, and the PGA Tour add-on ecosystem is something I've been meaning to look further into, as far as identifying which games the add-ons actually work with, where the formats change, whether there are converters... and for that matter, if any user courses have survived the past 25 tumultuous years of internet. I haven't completely tested these discs yet, because Tiger 2000 has proven very difficult to get working on my machines thus far. Either way, thank you once again Adam, for your kind contribution.
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| And this one was a real big'un. |
The larger box was sent to me by a user who told me it was fine not to credit them. They, like me, enjoy collecting physical software for PDAs, though their motivation is to image them for Redump. A very good thing to be doing, given how uncommon said software is, these days. They happened to have some extra stuff they no longer needed, and I'm quite happy to provide homes for such extras. The take here is three PDA golf games (well, two, and one of them in two languages), two copies of one PS1 demo game, four balls, and a pile of Weird Extras. A note to future contributors to Golfshrine: I love getting weird extras.
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| ZIOGolf in Japanese! | ...and in English! |
The first title(s) is ZIOGolf - one of Palm OS's more detailed golf simulations, which supports color and greyscale Palm devices (and a version specific to Handspring Visor, of which I'm not sure of the difference). Normally sold as downloadable shareware, ZIOSoft evidently also sold these physically, in multiple languages. The Japanese version of ZIOGolf was published in association with NEC InterChannel, and unlike the English copy here, includes the extra "ZIOCourse" add-ons that you'd normally buy from their website. I've yet to verify whether they represent real-world courses.
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| ZIOGolf, running on my Sony Clié PEG-N760C. I'd love to own one of the clamshell models eventually. |
Interestingly, ZIOGolf was evidently so detailed that EA Sports licensed the software to rebrand as Tiger Woods PGA Tour in 2002. Rather complicating matters, though, was the fact that there was already a Tiger Woods PGA Tour game for Palm OS, from a completely different developer. Golfshrine does not yet own the 2002 edition, but I was able to form the following comparison shots by way of an archive of Redump-verified discs of games for PDAs. I am so glad that efforts are being made to preserve these.
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| Tiger Woods (1999, Handspring Visor). | ZIOGolf. | Tiger Woods (2002). |
An item that I haven't properly tested yet (but have taken personal backups) is this copy of DaDa palm game series: Golf from DaZZ Co., a company that I am otherwise only finding budget-priced PlayStation games from. I think this game was only released in Japanese? But it looks cute. I just forgot to try it out. It would appear that DaZZ did also cover the usual array of game genres, going by the insert leaflet.
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| DaDa Golf - click to also see the back cover. | The leaflet also advertises baseball, mahjong, American football, and... World War 2? |
Another untested (but safely backed-up) item is a pair of demo CDs for Minna no Golf/Everybody's Golf (みんなのGOLF) for PlayStation, the game that we in the US know better as Hot Shots Golf. They're visually different from each other, with different disc designs (and one has case artwork while the other doesn't), but I'm fairly certain the contents of the discs are the same, or at least have identical byte sizes. The real neat part of this box, though, wasn't even any of the games; it was these:
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| [Duke Nukem voice] I've got BALLS-- |
The sender tells me that these were sold as genuine, but that there is realistically no way to verify that they are. These golf balls were presumably given away at press events or trade shows in the mid-1990s as vendor swag, a lot like some of the decks of playing cards I have. The logos on them are for Atlus, Capcom, HAL America Inc., and Kemco-Seika, roughly from the NES or SNES eras; the HAI one even features an "Adventures of Lolo" illustration on the reverse side. I may not be able to prove they're 100% real, but realistically, I can't imagine anybody would want to counterfeit a HAL America golf ball to flip on eBay.
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| Pictured: average Steam Discussions thread. left index finger for scale. |
As for random Weird Things, the sender included a Nanoblock model kit of a fire extinguisher (and a bonus fire for it to put out), a promotional pocket manga for Square Enix's Fullmetal Alchemist games, a promotional DVD for Sega Golf Club on PlayStation 3, and two small plastic Yoshis.
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| The Yoshis are now duty-bound to protect my ultra-valuable, definitely tournament-legal Ultrapicchu. |