Links: The Challenge of Golf

Released

1990 on DOS

Releases by Date (by platform)

Publishers

Developers

Access Software, Inc.

Moby Score

6.9

#13,061 of 155K

Critics

69% (19)

Players

(54)

Ranking

#104 on SEGA CD
#292 on DOS

Collected By

40 players

Genre: Sports
Perspective: Behind view
Sport: Golf

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Description official descriptions

Links: The Challenge of Golf is a golf simulation that tries to implement realistic aspects of golf in a video game format.

The game uses VGA 256-color graphics, with courses containing trees, water, sand traps, and the fairway. The addition of ball physics, mulligans, changing the lie of the ball, real digitized environmental sounds, and the ability to view a replay (from multiple angles) helps to emphasize the realistic aspect.

Links comes with one Championship Course, Torrey Pines, located in San Diego, California, USA.

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Credits (DOS version)

19 People (17 developers, 2 thanks) · View all

Project Leader	Vance Cook
Programming	Roger Carver Vance Cook Kevin Homer
Additional Programming	David Curtin
Music / Sound Programming	Brent Erickson
Level / Scenario Design	John Berven Bruce Carver Chris Carver Zeke McCabe
Graphics / Artwork	John Berven Bruce Carver
Sound	Jon Clark Steve Witzel
Cover Photos	Zeke McCabe
Documentation	Bruce Carver Steve Johnson Douglas Vandegrift
Assistant Producer	Bruce Carver David Curtin
Playtesting	John Berven Chris Carver Guy Carver Jim Slade
Special Thanks To	Mike Bicker
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Trivia

Covermount release

A complete version of Links: The Challenge of Golf is available on Classic Games Collection CD featured with the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer Magazine.

Development

According to the back of the manual, here's what it takes to design a Links course:

Play the course. Take over 500 aerial and landscape photos. Videotape the entire course. Obtain topographical and grading drawings. Gather information about prevailing winds and weather. Convert topographic maps into terrain data. Locate greens, tee boxes, bunkers, hazards, etc. Digitize actual vegetation found on the course and place appropriately along with other objects. Use a specially designed course editor to smooth and refine original terrain data. Digitize and install panorama. Install tee markers, ball washers, benches, clubhouse, etc. Playtest and refine for accurate course representation.

This process takes two men months to complete and generates approximately 700,000 bytes of course data--10 times more than other golf games!

Ducks

For no apparent reason, when pressing 'Q', the game will play a sound of a quacking duck and on rare occasions it will play the quack automatically after a particularly bad shot.

Big Bertha

The famous club and ball image featured in the cover of the game box, also used in Links 386 Pro and other releases (sometimes inside the game instead of the cover) is the classic Big Bertha driver from Callaway, part of its signature Big Bertha club series. Fading with the black background, barely anything from the club can be seen except reflections and the golden face with strips. The head of Big Bertha with the ball has been associated with all the early releases of the Links series, with many boxes (e.g. The Links 386 Pro box featuring the image beveled) giving proper credit displaying the sentences: The image of "Big Bertha" on the front is used with permission of Callaway Golf. "Big Bertha" is a registered trademark of Callaway Golf".

Awards

Computer Gaming World
- November 1991 (Issue #88) – Action Game of the Year
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #5 Most Innovative Computer Game
GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/1999 - #36 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
Power Play
- Issue 02/1992 – Best Sports Game in 1991

Information also contributed by rstevenson and Servo.