This entry concerns a videogame called Hot Shots Golf Fore! Some might know this videogame as HSG Fore. Most videogame players who played this game may have moved on to other things, so I don’t anticipate that there is much interest in this topic. Hot Shots Golf Fore! is a videogame played on the Playstation 2 (or PS2) game system, which itself is rapidly fading into the past. I bought a used PS2 at a Game Stop store, primarily to play Hot Shots Golf Fore! and I’ve noted that PS2 games and accessories are mostly absent from this retail establishment. You can still find the games (like HSG Fore!) for the PS2 at Game Stop, but they are relegated to discs only, in little yellow paper sleeves, with no decorative packaging or instruction manuals. You can at the time of this entry also buy a cheap (9.99) PS2 controller if you become addicted to Hot Shots Golf Fore! to the degree to which you become enraged when you goof up and decide to smash your controller (this happened twice and I’m not proud of this, but the depth of my passion may be why I’m taking the efforts to record this).

I started playing Hot Shots Golf Fore! at a friend’s house. This friend has two sons and the three of them are avid videogame players so they’ve got loads of games. Even though his boys look upon the PS2 as a relic and focus their efforts on the Playstation 3 (PS3), my friend still maintains the PS2. My friend acquired his copy of HSG Fore! some time ago and we started playing head to head golf matches. Sometimes the boys would join us, but they find the game boring and frustrating, so they generally abstain. My friend and I have a history of video golf matches dating back to Mario Golf for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which dates back to the 1980s. What’s interesting to me is that a fundamental element of HSG Fore!, the execution of the golf swing, is fundamentally the same as the Mario Golf swing. (By the way, the use of the word Fore! in the title is a play on words! It is the fourth in a series of golf games from the same game designers. There is a fifth game in the series entitled HSG Out of Bounds which is for the PS3. I have played it, but haven’t embraced it.)

The head to head matches in HSG Fore! are played in multiplayer mode. The game moves fairly briskly and gets the competitive juices flowing. It’s the single player mode, however, where all the craziness begins. Geoff (that’s my friend, I’ll drop the “my friend” as it sounds childish after the ninth time) started attacking the single player mode, which consists of playing rounds by yourself in a few different formats to achieve a series of goals. Without at this point going any further into the details of HSG Fore! (if you want to know all the minutiae, it’s out there) let’s just say that the goal achievement aspect of the game struck a nerve in me (as well as a genuine enjoyment of the actual game play) to a degree to which I had to have my own game and equipment to do it on my own. The fact that I got frustrated, agitated and enraged enough to break two controllers suggests to me that I became so obsessed with achieving the goals of the game that I totally lost sight of the fact that the game play was ever enjoyable.

The rest of this probably means little to anybody unless they are intimately familiar with HSG Fore!.( I wish I had found an online community to share these highs and lows with while I was experiencing them, but most of the forums and other virtual gathering places for fans of these games have been long abandoned as this game has faded from relevance.)

A few days ago, I attained HSG Golf King status by passing the King Stage Trial. It was an intense experience. As I already detailed, it took a toll on my sanity. The stage trial takes place on the most challenging course in HSG Fore!, the Day Dream CC. You must play from the back tees, finish with a score of -6 or better and also have at least one chip-in birdie. For the record, I finished at -7 and had two chip-in birdies. In innumerable rounds attempting to pass this trial, under par rounds were few and far between (probably less than ten) and as far as I know, my passing attempt was the only round I completed that was bogey free. I used the Mel character with Infinity Clubs and the Infinity Ball. I made many prior attempts with some of the longer hitters, thinking that the length of the course would require somebody who could bomb it, but I struggled with control and also found many of the big hitters lacked the ultra approach mode which can be key to chipping in from off the green. If anybody out there has passed this stage trial using T-Bone or Chaos, my hat is off to you.

I really came to despise the Day Dream CC course. It made me scream and it made me cry. It made me wish I’d never heard of this game. It also made me get much better at chipping, not just because you have to sink a birdie chip to pass the trial, but because you get so many opportunities in the course of playing. There are four par 3s on this course. The set up on these holes is such that it is very hard to land tee shot on the greens (that goes for many other holes as well, but the difficulty on the par 3s seems more pronounced to me), thus you find yourself with many opportunities for birdie chip-ins. However, this course has some crazy greens with insane slopes or multiple tiers which makes chip-ins problematic. After a while, it did feel like some chips were gimmes, especially when you have a flat lie and a hole located on a flat part of the green surface or on an upslope. Of course the hole locations vary round by round, so it’s not always possible to know a safe place to put the ball for an easier chip-in. (Also, even if you know where you want the ball to go, getting it there is a challenge with wind and other course conditions). I did find myself employing backspin with some confidence for the more challenging chips to holes on downslopes. Also learning how to chip the ball short of the hole and let the slope of the green and gravity do its thing is essential. Either that or become so good that you can always plop the ball down on the green near the hole (yeah, right).

I don’t think I would have passed the trial without at least one break. My break came on the par 3 16th hole. This is a green surrounded by water. The green is also substantially lower in elevation than the tee, which for some reason always gives me trouble. I know I should be able to apply some mathematical solutions to this problem, but I’ve never been able to translate the solution into an execution based on “feel”. Needless to say, the 16th has screwed me over. I came to the 16th at -5. I needed only one birdie on the final three holes. In the moment, I was hoping just to not to fuck up the 16th, get out with a par and take my chances on 17 or 18. (Okay, 17 is another bitch, but if played conservatively, is fairly easy to par. At that moment, 18 was probably my best bet). The 16th always has strong wind. Between trying to adjust for wind and the lower elevation, it is a real challenge to get the ball to land on the green. There is also a tree in the front of the green. My shot hit the upper branches of the tree and dropped straight down, landing within ten feet of the hole. I made the birdie putt and was now at -6! (I guess hitting the tree might be a successful strategy in that you can stop the momentum of the ball and get it to plop down on the green. I’m not sure how often I could execute this move in practice.)

It was a white knuckle ride from there on out, but there were no distressing incidents. 17 yielded par and my third shot on the par 5 18th landed nicely on the green meaning I had a two putt to pass. The birdie was just the icing on the cake. I did it! Kiss my ass HSG Fore!