The Intellivision 10, 2nd Edition Video Game System was one in a series of cheap plug and play systems featuring compilations of what I like to call "demastered" Intellivision games, and was actually licensed by Intellivision themselves. I don't know why they decided to go this route instead of just re-releasing some of the originals like they did later with the Intellivision Flashback. Too expensive at the time? Anyway, the systems consists of some stripped-down NES hardware, otherwise known as "Famiclone" or "NES-on-a-chip", all contained within the controller. It is not known who programmed the games on this plug and play system, although many speculate Nice Code Software had some involvement.
It's kind of weird seeing a game like Long Drive Golf on such a compilation since it doesn't really resemble much of anything the Intellivision came out with. My best guess would be that it's based on the Driving Range minigame from the Intellivision game Chip Shot: Super Pro Golf. In the original, you were driving solo towards a target in the distance. In this version, you're competing against the computer to see who can hit farther.
There were actually two versions of Long Drive Golf: the one that came out on the 2nd Edition (played here) which pits you against the computer, and the one that came out on the Intellivision X2 which lets you play against a live player.
- Aims for maximum score (# of wins only)
- Secondary goals: maximize total player yards and minimize total computer yards
- Genre: Sport
So what is the "maximum score" in this game?
Well, it'll probably vary depending on who you ask, but the generally agreed-upon definition would be to win all 11 rounds. You could also hit the longest drive possible (which is 416 yards) since the game has a special tracker for that. However, the game only explicitly calls the number of wins "SCORE" on the driving screen, so we will aim for 11 wins.
Now you might ask why not just hit 416 yards on all 11 rounds and cement yourself as the undeniable and all-powerful GOLF GOD? Well that's not very interesting. See, there's only one way to hit for 416 yards and that is to max out your swing intensity and hit the ball dead-on. It also has the longest animation time before the ball stops on the range. You then wouldn't be left with much to optimize time-wise. It gets interesting once your goal is simply to beat the computer each round. Now you're concerned with how much time your ball takes to stop on the range—a shorter distance usually means a faster stopping time. You are then left with the far more interesting goal in my opinion of just barely beating the computer each round.
Computer Behavior
The intensity of the computer's drive is easily manipulated: once the player inputs their intensity, the computer will input theirs at the very next increment. The computer's angle however, has a set value for each round. I will refer to this as "computer angle error" and quantify it as the number of increments from perfect the angle is. The computer angle errors for each of the 11 rounds are 3, 1, 1, 0, 3, 3, 3, 2, 0, 2, 2, respectively. As it turns out, the computer angle error is the main driver for time gain/loss in this TAS. Since the computer's intensity is deterministic, all we gotta do is find the optimal player intensity and angle which progresses to the next round the fastest for each of the possible computer angle errors. Here are the results:
| Computer Angle Error | Frames Until Next Round |
|---|---|
| 3 | 705 |
| 1 | 713 |
| 2 | 729 |
| 0 | 731 |
A question you might have is why not hit the balls with an extremely low intensity so they stop faster? See, if you don't input an intensity in the "red zone" on the meter, the club will not speed up on the downswing. So while the ball will stop faster on the range, things end up being slower in all because your downswing just isn't fast enough to be optimal.
Total Yardage
For the aforementioned secondary goal, the player scored 3612 total yards, while the computer scored 3379.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Well, this turned out to be quite a surprise for judging. Thanks to all involved, as we have finally put some perspective to this situation. So...everything looks good, in regards to what was presented.
Considering that this game displays the wins for each round...we will be accepting this as "maximum score". In regards to any future submission, the argument of yardage being that measurement, will be judged under "Full Completion". This makes sense, as it demonstrates everything the game has to offer.
Accepting to Standard.
nymx: I forgot one detail. This will be accepted, but we need to get that 3 frames corrected. I'll post in the thread.
nymx: Replacing with provided movie file to remove the 3 frames mentioned. Continuing on with acceptance.
despoa: Processing...