Good game for a little gadget-- Tiger Woods for
Palm
by Alan Zisman
(c) 2000. First
published in Toronto Computes,
February
2000
Tiger Woords PGA Tour Golf for Palm Computing
Organizers
Electronic Arts Sports
http://www.easports.com/handhelds/tigerpalm.html
about $45
requires: Palm Pilot Professional, Palm III or better
with 500K,
Pentium 133 or higher PC or PowerPC-Mac
You know when you?ve got a real computing platform
when there are games
for it.
In the dreary dark days of the soul for Apple, for
instance, no one
bothered producing games for the platform. You knew that Steve Jobs?
company
was on the way back when they started having new games to show off the
new hardware. One of the selling points for Linux has been that users
could
play Doom on it, almost from day one.
And with an estimated 85% of the growing handheld
platform, Palm users
are finally starting to be taken seriously by game developers. Oh,
there
have been games before for the popular little computers?go to
www.download.com,
for instance, and you can take your pick of 170 shareware game
downloads.
But it?s something else when one of the world?s biggest gaming
companies
chooses to develop for the Palm.
Now, try and imagine who it is that spends $300-700 on
a little device
that?s basically designed to store phone numbers, appointments, and
to-do
lists. What sort of game would you design for a Palm owner? I?m sure
some
Palm owners would enjoy the action of a good hockey game, or a 1st
person,
3D shooter. But I suspect that EA Sports took a good look at the Palm
owner
demographics in deciding to make their first game for the platform
Tiger
Woods PGA Tour Golf.
You?re a little limited in what you can put on a
couple of hundred pixels
of black and white screen?so don?t expect the lush colour and realistic
vistas of the golf games that EA and others have developed for larger
PCs.
And remember, there?s no hard drive storage?everything has to fit into
the Palm?s strictly limited RAM. As it is, you?ll need at least 500kb
of
available storage RAM on your Palm. Still, considering the limitations,
the game looks pretty good.
As well, since the software ships on CD, you?ll need
to be able to connect
your handheld to a PC or Mac, in order to download the game to your
Palm
device.
Once you?re up and running, you can play as Tiger, as
one of seven other
PGA pros, or as yourself, on your choice of three replica 18-hole PGA
courses:
Sumerlin, Sawgrass, or Badlands. You?ve got three modes of play?Stroke
Play simply lets you pick a hole and play on through to the end of the
course. Tournament Play lets up to four real or virtual players
compete,
which in Fast Play mode, you?re in the role of Tiger Woods trying to
finish
18 holes in under 30 minutes.
You?ll need to account for weather, and pick the right
club for the
shot. You can try to control your backswing, downswing and accuracy,
while
choosing to slice, chip, or hook. All in all, a lot of control for a
little
gadget!
Note that EA is trying to control piracy on this new
platform?in order
to enable the game, you need to register it online, typing in both a
serial
number from the CD and a Palm User ID # that appears onscreen when you
install it?until you register, you?re limited to the same single-hole
play
as the downloadable demo.
Can we expect something similar (perhaps in colour)
for Microsoft?s
competing Windows CE handhelds? Don?t hold your breath!