Updates & Acquisitions

October 9, 2026

I did not think that I had another acquisitions update for you all, before sealing the tape on the last of four big boxes. My family are planning to move in the near future, which means paring things back and packing whatever isn't immediately necessary. And even if I, personally, would deem Golfshrine "necessary" (as an instrument to maintain morale in this cold and unforgiving world), the shelf it resides on needs to move, or we'll never get this patio door fully opened.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

It looks grim. But it shouldn't. I want to stress to you readers that Golfshrine is not ending. Now that I've found a bit that I am amused by enough to commit to it for over two years, I'm not just going to throw it away. I aspire to greater things for it. A better shelf, perhaps. More room to display Prominent Things. Until that happens, though, I'm going to need to declare a moratorium on new Golfshrine acquisitions, because I won't have anywhere to put them for a while. At least, that's what I had told myself before the other day.

Of course no sooner than I'd safely put away my inventory into what I'd hope are very temporary cardboard chrysalises (chrysali?), than I'd decided it was time I get my affairs in order with the local businesses. By which I mean, I had over $400 in store credit at the game place that needed to be eradicated by any means possible. All those expensive things I'd been saving for a rainy day? Well, it hasn't really rained lately, but damn if it wasn't the day in question.

And would you believe, it's still not all spent. Funny story.

These items were not cheap. Even then, I was struggling to rack up that much of a bill without just targeting one of their needlessly expensive premium items (like the $349.99 copy of Popful Mail in the back case). But here is what all's in here, golf or otherwise.

• Another Code: Recollection - Nintendo and Arc System Works' recent dual-remake of the pair of games from the DS and Wii era, that the US knew as Trace Memory. I'd loved the original DS game and never quite got around to the Wii game, and always did enjoy this dev team's style.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Kirby games are almost always good. Even the less-good ones are still good enough. The demo of this one had intrigued me, and I'd just never felt like spending Nintendo Prices on it. Well, it ain't technically my money, this time.
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 (GameCube) - Golfshrine previously owned 2004 for Windows and for N-Gage, but the GameCube edition has a unique feature: it connects to the Game Boy Advance version of Tiger '04 (not yet represented in Golfshrine) to carry over career winnings and unlock The Predator course early. Players of the GBA version's Career mode may choose to send their current career balance over the GBA Link Cable to their save on the GameCube version, but not the other way around.
• Nintendo Entertainment System 2 - The 1993 redesign of the classic NES, commonly referred to as the "top-loader," also came with a redesigned "dog-bone" controller. It's much more reliable than the original "toaster" design, though unlike its corresponding "New Famicom" equivalent, does not have composite AV output.
• Rollerball - This adaptation of the 1975 sci-fi bloodsport film starring James Caan tasks the player with-- what? ... It's not based on the movie? Alright, fine. Rollerball is the title given to HAL Laboratory's series of 8-bit video pinball games, unrelated to the sci-fi film. The NES game contains one ultra-tall table, The Skyscraper, full of hidden bonuses. It is the immediate precursor to HAL's Game Boy games, Revenge of the Gator and Kirby's Pinball Land.
• Killing Time: Resurrected - Nightdive Studios' KEX Engine remaster of Studio 3DO and LogicWare's oft-forgotten first-person shooter, in which the player travels to a remote island to investigate mysterious rumors surrounding the estate of the presumed-missing Tess Conway. An excellent remaster.
• CyberTiger (N64) - Now completing the unholy trinity of Weirdly Proportioned Tiger Woods Games, the N64 version of the game is a distinct entity from the PlayStation and Game Boy Color versions already present in Golfshrine.
• Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots - The first Everybody's Golf title to appear on a non-PlayStation platform, and also the first neither developed by Clap Hanz nor published by Sony; this entry functions as a "best of" compilation of sorts, combining characters and courses who appeared throughout the series, with a few newcomers and special game modes. This appears to have been an Asian-English release of the "D1 edition," which contained a code to unlock Pac-Man as a DLC character, that does not work on the US eShop (and it had expired anyway). I think I spent too much for this thing.

Funny story. I had just finished emptying my customer account and brought the goods home, when I checked the bag and found that I'd forgotten to ask the store employee to fetch the RF and power cables. Had to go all the way back for them. For my trouble, they graciously added $5 credit to my store account. Which I guess at some point I need to go back and figure out how to spend, now, because past a certain point I'm not going to be able to come back.

I'm... also going to have to be careful about where I pack these, so that they can be properly added to the Golfshrine inventory when that all gets shelved. ...In several months, likely.

Item(s) of particular note this time

• PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon investigates a nearly 30-year-old cold case: whose dead body was that, in Golden Tee Golf '99?
• Hey, Normal Golf Game is out and it's ten bucks!
• Under unusual circumstances: veteran game designer Steve Ettinger got in touch with Golfshrine via email, and said he found my previous coverage of his Intellivision game, Chip Shot Super Pro Golf, to be quite amusing. He also wanted to let me know - and by extension, all you readers out there - that he'd found his source code from 1987 again, and decided it was time the world got a new and improved sequel for Intellivision. So, meet Chip Shot 2: Super Pro Golf - 40th Anniversary Edition - available FOR FREE at AtariAge. Thank you, Mr. Ettinger. I will have to find some way to play this at some point.

A word from your impresario

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