♪♪
[typing]
Well, it's that time again here on LGR.
Time to walk in from just off-camera
and talk about a game from my childhood that was one of those
firsts for me in gaming.
Now, before I have covered
what was probably the first open-ended
adventure kind of RPG fantasy thing for me.
But, uh, this time around,
it's time to look at what is probably the very first sports game that I ever played.
Oh, yeah...
World Class Leader Board,
developed and published by Access Software, Inc. in 1987
for popular 8-bit home computers
like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum.
And, yes, that's the same Access Software
that made the popular Links series of golf games in the '90s,
although before World Class Leader Board, they released
Leader Board and Leader Board Executive a year prior.
But we're looking at World Class
because it's one classy world
and as such is the best of the Leader Board series.
It was a lot like the older games, but it added a top-down view,
printable scorecards, punch shots,
a course editor, more graphical details,
and on the PC version, a feature called Real Sound
that made its debut in this game and another Access title called Echelon.
Inside the box, you get the game on a world class floppy disk,
and a manual detailing all the details of the game,
the courses you'll be playing on,
and instructions for editing courses and the finer details of golf in general.
You're also supposed to get a security key in the box in this version,
which is a dongle that plugs into a port on your computer
and acts as the game's off-disk copy protection.
Mine didn't come with one,
so I had to resort to becoming a dirty pirate
just to play my legit copy.
And in this edition, you actually got the first expansion disk to the game,
which added four new 18-hole courses on a separate floppy disk
and came with a fold-out booklet,
providing information on those, as well as advertising the other expansions.
First up is the Commodore 64 game,
since this is one of the earliest and is just awesome,
especially for the hardware it's on.
The game can take a while to load,
and obviously the color depth is a bit lacking,
but the game play is all there
and that's all you really need.
Except when you need more, and in that case you can always do better,
like the MS-DOS EGA PC version released in 1989.
While there are even better versions than this,
the rest of the video I'm going to be showing the PC port,
'cause DOS and nostalgia combined are impossible to ignore.
Booting up the game provides you with the title screen
and an example of the patented Real Sound technology in action.
[birds chirping]
Yeah, those sound effects are coming from the PC speaker,
which is pretty darned impressive.
6-bit digitized PCM audio playback
from hardware that normally only provided beeps
blew my mind when I first heard it as a kid,
and since I didn't have a sound card, this was amazing.
From the main menu, you can select the number of players,
from one up to four, and go from there.
Alongside things like changing the ball color and difficulty,
you have three real-life courses to choose from,
Cypress Creek, Doral Country Club and St. Andrews,
as well as one fictional course, the Gauntlet Country Club.
Of course, you can play custom courses, or those from expansion disks, too,
accessing them through the software
by pressing a key combo on the main menu screen.
You can also bring up the course editor using another key
that you have to read the manual to know about,
which naturally allows you to edit courses.
Well, somewhat,
as it's rather unintuitive and only lets you do so much,
but, hey, it's better than nothing.
To play a round of golf,
play a round of golf,
where you're greeted by the scenery loading in piece by piece
and the peaceful sound of crickets and frogs.
[crickets chirping]
[ribbit]
Pressing Space or a joystick button makes your dude start swingin'.
And if you've played pretty much any golf game ever,
it's rather intuitive what to do.
Hold the button down until the meter on the right reaches the power you want,
then let go and press the button again at the right time
to make sure you don't hook, draw, fade, pull, push,
thrust, twist, turn, exfoliate, slice, or dice the shot.
ANNOUNCER: Looks like he hit the tree, Jim.
Dang it, Jim! I'm a golfer, not a wood cutter!
Yet I'm always hitting the tree.
And the sand traps.
And the water.
[bloop]
[audience awws]
ANNOUNCER: Ooh, can't be too happy about that one.
Man, I suck at World Class Leader Board!
Holy crap, I inhale through my mouth so sharply.
Even playing on Kids difficulty,
which makes all shots perfectly straight and removes wind and such,
I still end up with some ludicrous score
of thirty over or something.
And yet, I keep coming back to this game,
and whenever I start playing it, I find it difficult to stop.
Even if I play seventeen terrible holes,
by the eighteenth, I still feel like THIS one will be that awesome double birdie.
I feel strangely compelled to master it,
even when I don't always know exactly what club to use,
or whether or not I should be using a punch shot or pitching wedge
or if the slope of the green is really going to affect the putt how I think it will.
Hmm, or maybe now that I think of it,
it could be the fault of the game for being so freaking vague
with these details that makes me suck at it.
Yes, there are meters, numbers and graphics to let you know
how far you need to hit the ball and at what angle,
but interpreting them can be like translating doctor scribble sometimes.
Yeah, I see it, I think I know what it's saying,
but I'm not 100 percent, so I'll just do my best and–
Oh, there goes the ball
a hundred yards off course.
Again.
For one thing, swinging your club and the timing of the snap
is just WAY to freakin' arbitrary.
Now, absolutely, it should be tough to time things
so that you hit the ball perfectly straight,
but it shouldn't be so that it hooks or slices
like a tornado is overhead
when you're just a tiny fraction of a second or a pixel off.
Not only that, but judging the relation between the measurement of how far the hole is
to the indication of the power you're using on the meter
is just ridiculous.
Here, it feels like I'm not given the tools
to do as well as I should be doing
with the information the game is giving me.
And yet, I keep playing
course after course.
There's just something about old golf games,
particularly this one,
that just fills me with a sense of wonder when I start playing.
Maybe it's the simplicity of the graphics,
or the way everything redraws itself when you move,
or the eerily scarce but impressive sound effects.
I dunno, I guess it's the combination of all three
that makes me feel like I'm inside this little virtual golf world
that feel potentially infinite.
Like, if I could just hit my ball
beyond THAT tree right over there,
there'd be this weird little shack or building to check out, or
another golfer just doing his thing on a nice sunny day,
or the yeti from SkiFree, or something.
I always got a strange sense of imagination-fueled immersion
when playing World Class Leader Board as a kid,
and if I let my mind wander a bit, I can still get that,
which really made the game feel special to me,
and still does.
Though I would sooner recommend their later Links games from a gameplay perspective,
as those just expanded on literally everything
and made it easier to determine what each shot should do,
which makes them hold up far better today.
But there's something intangibly cool about playing such an advanced golf game
on an AT-class PC or something even older.
And combine that with the fond memories
and maybe even a bit of infuriating multiplayer action with friends,
and World Class Leader Board is still in a class of its own
as far as I'm concerned.
[audience awws]
♪♪
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