1993 ICOM Simulations
Platform: PC and Mac
ICOM Simulations, the makers of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, were to follow up with a title called Global Golf: The Earth Invitational.
Announced around Summer 1993, the game would give you the chance to play on hypothetical holes on places like Everest, the desert and the Grand Canyon. The game had been in development for sometime, and PC Player magazine showed a single screenshot of the game in action (in what seems to be at the Grand Canyon).
PC Player suggested that the game would feature across locations such as Kenya, Africa, Siberia and Switzerland. 200 video images would be stored on the CD-ROM for each hole in the game, and there would also be video animations where the individual holes are viewed from a helicopter perspective. It was described as “Not realistic, but graphically impressive: golfing on the edge of the abyss – you can hit a lot of expensive balls…”
It wasn’t to last long, with magazines such as CD-ROM Today announcing in the fall of 1993 that Global Golf was delayed indefinitely. In Computer Game Review and CD-ROM Entertainment, November 1993 – they said it was “temporarily shelved, since it wasn’t going to hit Christmas 1993.” This all seemed to occur shortly after Viacom had purchased ICOM, and may have been a result of this takeover.
At this stage we know little else about the game, including who was working on it exactly. Team member Karl Kuras, who flagged up the title, found that a trademark was registered for Global Golf Association in 1993, but later abandoned.
If you know anything more about this game, such as developers, artists and maybe leads to more screenshots – please do get in touch.
With thanks to Karl Kuras for the information, archive.org for one of the scans and Abandonware France (via Hoagie) for the heads up and other screenshot scans.
There are a few more pics in Joystick 35 (2/1993) p52.
Thanks Hoagie, will take a look asap!