badmojo wrote:How excellent! I didn't reaslise there were tournaments - I only "discovered" Links about 5 years ago. I played a fair bit of th […]
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clueless1 wrote:BTW, I was a Links junkie back in the 90s. They had online ladder tournaments, and even Ryder Cup tournaments. I helped represent the US along with some of the world's best, like Paul Willey and Roger Davis. Seems like it was another lifetime.
How excellent! I didn't reaslise there were tournaments - I only "discovered" Links about 5 years ago. I played a fair bit of the real thing during the 90's - highschool / university years - but only had a copy of the MS Golf CD that came with a CD-ROM driver. That MS thing was based on Links I assume - lots of similarities - but was far less impressive.
386 Pro is a real gem - just the right amount of challenge and never cheats you. The CD version includes commentary from Bobcat Goldthwait! Fortunately you can turn it off!
I recently bought a copy of Links LS, which looks to be the next version after 386 Pro. Looking forward to trying that out when it arrives.
EDIT: what was your favorite course out of interest?
Gosh, I'm trying to remember which courses were available on Links386 (I played through Links LS2001). There's a couple of desert courses that I seem to remember really liking: Bighorn and Troon North.
Just to give you an idea of the level of skill we were playing at, we'd all pretty much made our own (or shared) club distance charts, chip charts and putt charts, complete with adjustments for wind, slope and green hardness. On 386Pro, shooting in the 50s was common. Most of us were able to get into the high 40s a couple of times. And this was on the highest difficulty and from the back tees. We pretty much hit the snap 90+% of the time. There was no variability built into the game engine, so as long as your distance chart was good, the conditions were identical, and you hit the snap, it was relatively easy to repeat hole-outs over and over.
When Links LS came out, it was much more challenging (there was a certain amount of variability introduced in the game engine), but within a few weeks people like Paul Willey were regularly shooting in the high 50s on the highest difficulty from the back tees. I think I had a few rounds in that range, but my average was low to mid 60s--good enough to be top-20 in the world (the world of online golfing in the late 1990s, at least 🤣). My favorite course on the LS platform was Kapalua Bay. BTW, I still have my Links LS original CDs and ALL the courses (it's installed on a Win98 PC that I never use). I no longer own Links386 Pro, though. I should pick it up, since I primarily game in real DOS now. Thanks for stirring up good old memories 😀
EDIT: might be fun to send each other game recordings like the old days. I'd forgotten that L386 did this. Record your round, send the file to a friend, then friend plays against your recorded round.