Under the microscope: Virtual Golf (Saturn, PlayStation)
a.k.a. Tournament Leader, a.k.a. SwagGolf?!
Hey, didn’t I already cover this game? Yes, but I missed some things in the first article. I’m taking a mulligan.
As I mentioned last time:
Like Actua Golf, this game requires your players to be “pros” to play in the Pro level tournaments. If you try to play as an amateur, you’ll be asked for a password.
It turns out that you don’t have to mess around with passwords to turn your players pro: just name the first one MOM and they’ll all be upgraded.
The code that checks for this is located at 06028854 in the Saturn PAL version. The relevant function has logic like this (pseudo-Python adapted from Ghidra’s decompilation):
if (
(player_name_06042364[0] == 'M') and
(player_name_06042364[1] == 'O') and
(player_name_06042364[2] == 'M')
):
for i in range(8):
pro_status_060431d0[i] = 1That is, it checks the first three letters of the first player’s name. If they’re MOM, all eight players get their pro status set. Note that only the first three letters get read – you can name your player MOMMY and the cheat will still work.
That isn’t the only special name. Set your name to BOD to control whether the background music plays. Pause the game, then keep holding Start to turn it off and back on. The controls are a little finicky here:
The game checks for this right after it looks for MOM.
Here’s a third special name: PEL makes your player’s golf ball much bigger.
The ball’s normal size is 8 units, but the PEL cheat changes it to 28 units. If you want an even more comically sized ball, this Saturn Action Replay code will let you have one:
16042b88 007f # Adjust the value to taste
I’m not the first to notice that this game checks for special names: this Japanese cheat site claims lists:
SPD: Increase shot speed.
H??K: Double shot distance (question marks are wildcards).
These are indeed present in the game data. The site also lists ?UU?, but I can’t find evidence of that one.
The cheats above work in both the Saturn and PlayStation versions of Virtual Golf, which are pretty similar to each other.
I did find some things in the PlayStation version that aren’t in the Saturn version, however. First, some leftover strings that indicate this game might have been called Swag Golf at some point?
801fffc0 SwagGolf demo (C) 1996 Core Design Ltd.Maybe this game was going to feature Swagman characters? One can only hope.
This screen is in unused PlayStation version, but it looks like it belongs the Saturn version:
There are also some unreferenced strings with scenario names from ThunderHawk II, an earlier Core Design game:
80075fb0 "PIRACY"
80075fb8 "OIL DISPUTE"
80075fc4 "RECAPTURE TERRITORY"
80075fd8 "ESCORT CONVOY"
80075fe8 "RECAPTURE TOWN"
80075ff8 "CANAL CRISIS"
80076008 "STEALTH DOWN"
80076018 "ARMS RUNNING"One imagines that code was being shared among projects, of course, but one wonders how these wound up in the wrong binary!
Outro
For other attempts at finding interesting things in decades-old golf games, see my earlier articles on Swingerz Golf and Actua Golf.
Rings of Saturn will return soon with more retro game reverse engineering. Subscribe to get the next edition as soon as it’s published:
