1990 Atari / Epyx
Platform: Atari Lynx
A very short entry for a title that has been flagged up by Ross Sillifant and mentioned by RJ Mical in an old Atari Lynx interview back in Electronic Gaming Monthly (issue 4).
RJ mentions the following when talking about the sprites, and mentions a ‘unique golf’ game which doesn’t seem to have ever seen the light of day:
“Lynx programmers can also produce unlimited sprites (at any given size) for their games. In other words, you can have any number of moving objects on the screen, and they can be as large as you want them to be. Epyx is currently developing a unique golf game, where the player sees things as the ball might see them (once it has been hit).
This program features over 700 sprites, while the average home computer game usually contains several dozen sprites. After examining these statistics, it’s easy to see that our golf game displays an incredible amount of detail. Here is another point of interest: the maximum clock speed of the unit is 16 Mhz. This means that the Epyx game system operates faster than any other video game console ever made.”
The game that RJ was referring to was very likely Masters Golf, which was listed in a release schedule by Electronic Gaming magazine issue 10 and briefly mentioned in other smaller publications (see scans). There are suggestions that the game would have featured a 4 player link-up mode.
Unfortunately, the title would completely disappear without any further mention – and it was just a year later that we would see Awesome Golf released, which was developed by Hand Made Software. Was this picked up by Atari as a replacement for Masters Golf?
If you know anything more about this development, please do get in touch. With thanks to Ross Sillifant for highlighting and Archive.org for the scans.
Gallery
I believe, they were only referring to Awesome Golf myself. I remember that article. I don’t remember ever seeing anything on a Master’s Golf coming for the Lynx in those days.
IF there was, it could still exist on an EPROM Cart or a Floppy Disk, I guess. Much was lost after June 1992 and the release of Batman Returns and Jack Tramiel putting Epyx Inc through Bankruptcy like he did that last half of 1992. Epyx needed money and they were converting some 30 their computer games to the Atari Lynx. The Lynx royalties were not enough coming from Atari then and they needed $50,000 dollars to help finish these up and put them on EPROMs for Fall/Christmas release and/or showing at WCES. A few could have even been on Preview at SCES had Jack not played such hardball with Epyx and their Coders there. All over a paltry $50,000 dollars and Jack holding these 30 titles hostage for the Lynx. Jack wanted the physical games and all of their code and ownership. THEN he would help or not help Epyx out with their financial difficulties. Epyx would not do it. Then we “supposedly” lost all of these games to the Bankruptcy/Buyout/Merger/or the resulting Earthquake that seemingly destroyed the Epyx offices in Redwood City, CA, I believe it was. Were the games all really lost or destroyed? Or were they just kept hidden from Jack Tramiel? That question has never been fully answered or revealed to anyone out there. I have tried asking a few about it, it is still shrouded in supposed mystery. Will the games finally come to light? We shall see. Never count the Atari Lynx out or the old Epyx Inc. !