Everybody's golf is a golf game for Sony Playstation published in 1998, authorized for all ages. The game engine itself is very anime-like and was rereleased for Europe in an English/French/German/Italian/Spanish version, the original version was, of course, in Japanese. The translations are poorly made, but that doesn't narrow the amusement.
There are five courses available, one at the beginning, the others have to be played free through an experience point system. The courses are imaginary but could be real; wind as well as rain (slowing down the ball) are also implemented.
When you enter any game mode (except for the driving range) your HUD displays the following:
- Top Left:
- Center Left:
- Bottom Left:
- Currently selected club, you can change it via the L1 and R1 buttons
- Maximum range of the club, you can change the mode of batting with the square button, there are two modes available for the Putter (30ft and 100ft maximum) and the Pitching Wedge (two different strengths). On all other clubs you activate the power-shot. You have 12 power-shots for each course, they enlarge the maximum length of your drive by about 10% but also makes it more inaccurate. Using this is only usual at the tee.
- Top Right:
- Bottom Right:
- A blue arrow showing the direction the ball will fly. If the surface it is lying on is sloping on the left side, this arrow will be slightly turned to the left.
- A picture of golf ball.
- The terrain the ball is currently lying on. Depending on how hard you hit the ball into the bunker or rough it might be stuck in/under the sand/grass.
- Interval showing how much of the energy you put into the bat will be used for the flight of the ball. At the tee it says 99-100%, if you hit the bunker really hard it might say 40-60% (therefore if you want to move the ball 20 yards you have to hit with a strength that would suffice for 40 yards if it was on the tee)
- Center
- Bottom Center
Alright, let's say the hole is far away and we simply want to blare the ball as far away as we can: First, we press R2 to throw down some grass, we see the grass landing about four yards on the left of the player. Next we press START to get an overview of the hole. A yellow line marks the way our ball is probably going to fly, a yellow arrow is found at the end of the line, marking the maximum length of our bat. We return to the normal view via START again and zoom onto the hole with the triangle button, ensure that the end of the line is not in the rough and adjust our aim a bit to the right (yes, because the wind is going to the left). We relocate the view via R2 - now we really want to know it. We activate the power shot via the square button, this amplifies the maximum of our club, the amount of power shots left is displayed on the right of the power-meter in red letters.
To shoot we press the X button. The yellow dot behind the MIN-mark on the meter wanders to the left. We want to shoot with full power so we wait for the dot to reach the MAX-marker. We hit the X button again and the dot will now move to the right immediately. Now we have to wait for the dot to reach the MIN-marker and hit X again. If you hit a little too late the dot will be on the right side of the zero mark, therefore the player will hit the ball slightly more on the right side which causes the ball to fly slightly to the left. That's how it goes. (When you're putting the second exercise drops out, you only have to adjust the right strength.)
At the beginning there are five game modes available:
- Training: Pick a course and a hole and practice undisturbed
- Stroke: Up to four players can play a normal golf game against each other
- Match play: Same as stroke, but the number of holes won counts, not the exact number of shots or points.
- Tournament: A Stroke game against 30 computer players. You get cups and experience points for successful participation in these tournaments. Experience points unlock new courses and the sixth game mode.
- VS-mode: A match play against a computer player. You can choose the characters of you and your computer combatant. At the beginning there are only two characters available (Mary & Taku), if you manage to beat the third character (Yuki) with one of the first two the third character gets unlocked, the same with the fourth.. There are ten characters available.
There is also a miniature golf course available which is not as funny as the rest of the game.