Showing posts with label Tee Off. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tee Off. Show all posts

Retrospective: Nettou Golf - a Golfing Hidden Gem for Dreamcast

Given the plethora of Golf titles available on virtually all Sega systems leading up to the Dreamcast, it’s somewhat of an oddity that, even with the Dreamcast's shortened lifespan, there was only a mere three golf titles released worldwide, one of which was a sequel. 

Tee Off was the only golf title released in PAL regions (meaning a poor showing for the home of Golf itself!), as well as NTSC, and isn’t a terrible game. While its name change (from Golf Shiyouyo) and cover reworking completely belie its cutesy presentation and characters, it's still a reasonable enough effort. Its sequel never left Japan.

Whilst there were stories and news reports that Sega had been in the process of converting their arcade title Virtua Golf, no real evidence that this was actually in the works exists from what I can see. For more information about Virtua Golf, check out Dreamcast Today's article.

There was another golf game, however, that is probably not as well-known by many. Step forward Nettou Golf.
A Dreamcast version of this with a trackball controller would have been incredible. 
Nettou Golf isn't well-known to us Dreamcast gamers in the West due to its Japan exclusivity, but, in my opinion, it’s rather good, and surprisingly playable without needing an English translation of any sort. The fact it was published by Sega themselves (it was developed by Data East) is vaguely curious to me considering its lack of a worldwide release. Given that the name derives from "NetGolf", because the game had online capabilities, it's even odder considering Sega's global touting of online play as a big marketing push for the Dreamcast, but it was apparently decided we weren’t considered as a territory for the game. Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity at the very least given how little in the way of a translation would have been needed to cover a game in this genre.

As previously mentioned, Nettou Golf is very accessible despite the language barrier. Not only does Google Translate do a very competent job of allowing you to understand the menus and modes, but I discovered this handy site (pictured below), that despite now being defunct, appears to be a couple's attempt to provide others with enough understanding to functionally navigate through certain less heralded Japanese games that were likely never going to get a localisation of any kind. They only translated seven games prior to stopping, but luckily for us, one of them is Nettou Golf.

Ying/Bang

Well shit in my eye - it's Friday the 13th! AAARGH!

Ahem. Following on appropriately:

You know, they say (whoever the fuck 'they' are) that for every good thing that happens in life, another thing just as astonishing - but in a shit way - occurs to readdress the balance. A bit like when that Newton fellow decided that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

After the last few days' events, I'd like to find this Newton geezer and knock his fucking head off.

Some of you reading this may have been privy to one of European football's most spectacular displays of brilliance earlier this week. Yes, Manchester United's systematic destruction of Roma at the Theatre of Dreams, Old Trafford. Twas a night to remember and signal of intent to all of the lesser teams daring to attempt to win the Champions League. I for one was making merry after the final whistle. As I'm also sure (blue scum) Father Krishna was :-)


So far, so good.

Imagine my horror then, when not so long after those (Spartan-esque) heroic events on the hallowed turf at Old Trafford, I discovered that while moving my beloved Dreamcast stuff from my mother's old hovel to her new...erm...hovel (I keep my stuff there because I have no space for it!), the shaven monkeys masquerading as removal men had virtually destroyed every single jewel case in my possession. Quite how, I'm still not sure - but rest assured that every single mother-humping case is in some way broken. Not a big deal you may think, but after taking so much care of the boxes for so long...and to have them all smashed to bits by fucking ignorant Neanderthals is extremely annoying.

Nay - heart rending.

Nevertheless, life goes on (whereas my old Mum's nearly didn't when she remarked "they're only games..."). As such, let me illustrate two of my newest Dreamcast purchases:

Tee Off Golf
The Dreamcast's only golf game (I believe), Tee Off is a twee little title in which massive-headed cartoon characters battle it out for golfing domination across several generic courses. It's certainly no Tiger Woods or PGA Tour Golf (Mega Drive version), but it's playable enough and has a multitude of game modes (including a rather strange virtual reality bit). Oh, and the graphics are quite pleasant - look:


Unfortunately, listening to the 'music' is akin to letting Thor smash bolts of lightening through your ear drums with his Thunder Hammer (TM).

Tech Romancer
A frankly brilliant fighting game that has you smashing the shit out of each other...whilst controlling fuck-off massive robots! Heaven! It sort of reminds me of GASP!! on the N64 (is that a good thing?), only...erm...better. The controls are pretty simple and it's really easy to pull off some epileptic-fit inducing special moves. The best thing about Tech Romancer though (no, it's not the name), is the way each battle has the feel of an episode of a Manga-style cartoon. All round brilliance, make no mistake. Not Soul Calibur by any means, and the in-game graphics are hardly stellar, but still...Tech Romancer is a highly decent game of robotic fisty-cuffs.


Hopefully, I'll be able to keep at least these two games in some sort of semi-complete state, and even retain the little plastic tabs that hold the cases together. Hopefully...


Finally, whilst perusing Google (utilising somebody else's unsecured wireless network, I might add) I found this rather nifty (read: Geekish) Dreamcast-oriented word search! Cool or what?!


Not that I can be arsed finding all the words, mind.

Adios!