Links 386 Pro | Gaming Lore

[@BradM73]

What a great game. I remember playing this throughout college in the mid 90's. I had most of the expansion courses too. I probably still have my diskettes around somewhere.

[@londongaz2]

This absolutely blew me away when it came out!

[@TheKnackeredGolfist]

I used to play this a lot. My favorite was the opening theme music. I also loved the theme music for the fly by holes at Riviera CC. I did an internship at Riviera Country Club and I knew where all the holes were because of Links 386. No one needed to show me around at all. I also enjoyed Bobcat Goldthwait quotes too. Omg I commented on this 4 years ago. Bloody brilliant!

[@garry12gg]

"Funny quacking sound" "Aw it's in the deep stuff."

[@ThorVonLomax]

This is "Dr Lomax" who competed on CSN. Another name I had later was "Big Lefty" and we connected with ISPs in LinksLS. Anyone remember Case's Ladder ? The game is still playable under DosBox --- for a game you might contact John Eastwood who has also posted. And hello to anyone who remembers and played back then. Hats off to Retro.

[@BlackDragonRPGReviews]

This game was amazing back when it came out! I remember watching my dad and my uncles play this together whenever they couldn’t go play golf for real. It looked so real to me back then as a kid. Super nostalgic to see it here now. Thanks you for the great video!

[@RMCRetro]

You're welcome and thanks for watching

[@ProStar-Ghost]

so classic. banff springs, dorado beach, castle pines. i'll never forget those days of Links 386 Pro.

[@jennisonb37]

My friend and I would play this hot-seat for countless hours. It was a great game and we couldn't wait to get our hands on all the courses.

[@Bellthorian]

I will never forget picking up the box in the PX when I was in the Army. I know it looks rough by todays standard but back then it was like seeing a HDTV for the first time.

[@dropd4thewin]

Great video, entire summer breaks were spent glued to this. Loving wgt nowdayd for anyone looking for a modern equivalent that plays similar.

[@jamiehav0k62]

never played this but i recognised Chris jones aka Tex Murphy's voice instantly!

[@ZedBeeblebrox]

It was such a clever move to tie the name of the game to the then latest processor. Everyone with a 386 system wanted that game to show off its power and everyone who saw that game at a friend or neigbour wanted a 386. :)

[@TheKnackeredGolfist]

Loved this game. Loved the intro music and the helicopter flyby music for Riviera CC. Any chance of that music from Riviera being available for a KZbin video ?

[@rjhelms]

Talk about a nostalgia trip. I played this (and World Class Leader Board before it) all the time as a young 'un. I may be getting the games mixed up, but I'm pretty sure this was one that we had to have a dedicated boot disk for - on top of wanting 8MB of RAM total to run properly, it also needed a daunting amount of conventional memory free to even launch.

[@1971gtrxu1]

Many friday nights spent at mates' houses playing links386 as a group of 4 to 6 usually. Followed by pizzas and a movie or 2. Great times!

[@quincy1048]

I remember playing this and being blown away by the sound and the crickets

[@GirlsWithAbs]

Funnily enough, I was playing this on my Amiga A1200 with 8Mb RAM expansion through Shapeshifter, and it was still completely playable with the default 14Mhz CPU, just a little slower redrawing the terrain.

[@gern0tk]

You were playing the Macintosh conversion „Links Pro“. I guess that engine was optimized for 68k processors.

[@TheRetroRaven]

I didn't play Links, but I did play PGA Tour Golf on PC, often against my dad and/or uncle. Fun small casual game :)

[@willrun4fun]

I can remember playing the predecessor to this quite a big in High School. The coach also taught history and if we had extra time he put this on.

[@ashcustomworks]

My dad had this on his computer. A clear favourite! I have recurring flashbacks to a golf game that had options to change the season, which resulted in lovely autumnal colours on the trees. Was that Links 386 or WC Leaderboard Golf?

[@whatifindinteresting3067]

great video.. your subs should be growing. I have great memories of this game, as well as MS Golf. But this one was always the slightly better one. I still play LS 2000 and 2003 to this day.

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you sir!

[@JB_inks]

Quadrupling the density more like! Great video

[@RMCRetro]

Ah yes, math never was my forte! Thank you sir, and thanks for watching.

[@b33j4y]

Actually 4.8x if going from 320x200 to 640x480 :)

[@RanFuRe]

I saw quite a lot of golf games much like this (maybe even this one) when I was a kid, because my uncle liked to play 'em. Personally I never much liked golf games & when I did play them, I was much more interested in exploring the course than the actual gameplay ^^ Very nice review, though. I really like your relaxed style =)

[@RamLaska]

3:50 Oh, those redraws were so sweet! I forgot how much pleasure you could derive from something so slow ;)

[@therushden]

Lost hours to this game. A true classic.

[@andystandys]

I still love this game.

[@HarryMudd]

I remember playing that game. What a cracking experience, I loved it

[@marccaselle8108]

I have a dosbox version of this that runs on windows 7, 8, and 10.

[@darthnihiluz5305]

I played this a bunch with my father. I had a 386 33 but could never play the highest graphics levels unless you wanted to wait 20 seconds per shot.

[@jestronixhanderson9898]

I played this on my amiga 500 :) I needed the a590 and if I recall 2mb ram. I bought the a590 just to play this game! I loved the look compared to the 386 pro. Also it drew line by line the terrain.

[@johneastwood2109]

Hi, I helped run Dolinks and the Regular Tour during the 1990s. There are two of us left - we play Linkspro every week :) - The whole set up - works well on either Windows 10 or Linux :)

[@johneastwood2109]

Thanks for the comment - just to add - both of us play at the same time - we connect on Skype - and comment on play. Indeed we had four rounds today!

[@erichkohl9317]

This was the first game I bought for my 486.

[@kube86]

Ahhh the deep stuff. Remember that too well.

[@Andrew-x7q8c]

I loved PGA tour golf 1991 on the Amiga!

[@DJPsyq]

Golf games basically still work like this today.

[@wabbit234]

I'm assuming this series went on to become Microsoft Golf as they look very similar. Nice chill video by the way.

[@RMCRetro]

Wabbit sure did. Microsoft bought Access and released Golf

[@DubiousEngineering]

Oh wow! .. it renders really quickly... and has digital speech! ... on a 386!

[@DubiousEngineering]

OMG it was all in assembly ! ... LDA#10

[@georgehilty3561]

the front of the box looks like it's staring at me, lol

[@Mr76Pontiac]

Wwwwooooowwwww... I had that game. 386sx/16 w/4meg of memory. I remember how slow it was to render the screen. I wonder how it'd run on my i5???

[@kennethmcgeechan604]

You missed saying the ball on the box was actually dimpled just like a golf ball.

[@garry12gg]

I guess MS Golf 2 used the same sounds.

[@RMCRetro]

Microsoft bought Access. MS Golf was Links repackaged for Windows. They kept the Links name going for a few more games but eventually dropped it, so that will be why it looks/sounds the same :)

[@garry12gg]

RetroManCave Yup.

[@MichaelGGarry]

Got to say, I preferred PGA Tour Golf myself!

[@itzatravist2755]

Looks like I hit the tree, Jim...

[@jonahfalcon1970]

Links 386 Pro, the only game that made people CHANGE THEIR MOTHERBOARD to play.

[@ralfvanbogaert3451]

Best PC game of 1993? What about Doom?

[@RMCRetro]

Ralf Van Bogaert I don't write the magazine :) but it's a good point yes

[@ralfvanbogaert3451]

Great channel by the way. I really enjoy the relaxed vibe.

[@RMCRetro]

Ralf Van Bogaert Thank you sir.!

[@TheRetroRaven]

To be fair, Doom came late in 1993 , as far as I remember. So probably Doom got the title in '94 ;) Before Doom, people were playing Wolfenstein 3D, and that was "Game of the year" in 1992 (most probably, although I can't confirm).

[@pelgervampireduck]

even if you don't include doom, in 93 there were a lot of good games, I'm watching this like "golf? really? a GOLF game was important?". only watching paint dry is more boring than golf! hahaha

[@RamLaska]

I remember thinking about how slick and polished the game was. I had a demo or something.

[@RamLaska]

1:35 Amiga (Motorola 680x0) and PC (Intel 80x86) processor clock speeds were not comparable. Motorola's chips were much faster than Intel until the early mid 90s. Intel started catching up around the time the 486 became popular (and definitely by the time of the Pentium I), mainly because both companies had HQs in Austin, TX, and Intel relentlessly poached Motorola's best engineers. That's the story I remember hearing at the time, anyway. (I lived in Austin through the 90s)

[@RamLaska]

(Also, I love how they stole the Chicago system font from Macs of that era ^_^ )

[@marybergquist8017]

I've always found golf games absolutely red-rag-to-a-bull infuriating for some reason. I remember getting so pissed at this one I smashed onto the keyboard hard enough to knock a cap off. No other video game or even real golf has managed to get me as mad as hearing goddamn Tex Murphy chide me for fucking up a putt.

[@MarquisDeSang]

Assembly programming master race beating the lazy and stupid high-level languages programmers that have no clues of what they are actually doing. PS : web programmers are not programmers, they are scripters (their code never compile) and object oriented programming causes more problems than it solved.

[@pelgervampireduck]

what surprises me is that a golf game was a hit, I am like "really? golf? am I watching something from a parallell universe???, it must be one of the most boring things in the world and a game about it wins an award???" hahahaha. I remember in 93 we all wanted a 386 to play doom and mortal kombat. we all talked about day of the tentacle, monkey island 2, flashback, prince of persia 2... I don't remember anybody saying "gee, I wish i had a 386 to play a golf game!" :D hahahaha

[@RMCRetro]

Oh I enjoyed those games too, but 3D golf sims were like flight sims, a way to push your hardware to the absolute limit and see what it was capable of, and that, like running 3DMark today, was fun 😁

[@ProStar-Ghost]

out of those games you mention, i might...might play Doom. that's about it.

[@marccilliers4808]

This game is so lame that it plays itself.