Time Warped 1980 - AVCS Golf

On 02/12/2018 at 03:18 PM by KnightDriver

In which I am heckled for playing Atari 2600 Golf by Al Czervik during a party on his yacht.

Hey. Is the TV broken? All I see is green. Al, it's Atari's Golf on the Atari 2600. This joystick here controls the position of the golfer and the angle of the swing. Then you push the button to hit the ball, holding it down longer for a stronger shot. You play 9 holes to try and beat a par 36. Here I'm about to drive the ball from the tee.

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That's the smallest 3-wood I've ever seen (Al's entourage laughs). Come on everyone, let's watch me make that Judge Smalls boat eat my wake.

Just as I was about to hit par for the course, the boat rocked violently and everything flew across the room and disconnected. Al must've run right over Smalls boat. I jumped out a porthole in case we started sinking and swam to shore. My time machine was behind by the caddyshack and I jumped in and returned to 2018.

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Back home I turned on my Xbox 360 and entered Game Room to see if it was still there. It was but the servers were turned off, so no more leaderboards or store to buy more games. Luckily I had bought Atari 2600 Golf a while ago and so played it. This game is still surprisingly fun. I got kind of annoyed that my ball was stopping at the edge of the fairway part of the course and not flying over the blue corners (the "rough"). I found out later that you can toggle the difficulty switch to change that. The "b" position is the easy difficulty which gives you a larger hole and the ball will stop at the edge of the fairway. The "a" position is the advanced difficulty that lets you shoot into the "rough" (blue area), or through it and over water hazards. I needed to switch it to "a". It actually plays more realistic that way.

I was having fun with the game and so played it again on Atari Anthology for original Xbox, when I had that hooked up, and then again on Xbox One within Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 2. All played just fine. What is it about golf that works so well in video games? I could care less for golf in real life.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

02/12/2018 at 09:59 PM

This is a pretty ghetto golf game. But ghetto golf games can still be fun. Love that cartridge art.

KnightDriver

02/13/2018 at 10:50 PM

Maybe they were going for a Jack Nicklaus look on that cover. He was the biggest name in golf in 1980.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/12/2018 at 11:49 PM

I spent a not insignificant portion of gta v trying to beat my golf rival.

02/13/2018 at 10:46 PM

Golf within GTA. I like it. Got to try it.

Cary Woodham

02/13/2018 at 02:14 AM

I could never get into any Atari 2600 era golf game. Have you ever played the 2600 Mini Golf game? It looks like they tried to make a golf game out of Adventure graphics. The first golf game I ever really played much was the first NES Golf game. I got that for my dad back then. It's one of the few NES games he played, along with Rad Racer.

02/13/2018 at 10:38 PM

I tried minigolf and didn't like it at all. Regular Golf is great though. I agree though, it's not exactly going to eat up time. I play a couple rounds and then move on.

goaztecs

02/13/2018 at 12:26 PM

Fun games don't need fancy graphics...it helps but there are a handful of games I remember playing on an Atari that were a ton of fun.

02/13/2018 at 10:31 PM

Sometimes you don't need much to have a good time.

PixlBit