Zany Golf (1990) is a pretty cool/unique miniature golf game by Will Harvey. You may already know of his games through
The Immortal and
Marble Madness. This game is more like Marble Madness. The style is similar, but the gameplay is almost the opposite. In MM you control the ball, but here you have minimal control of the ball but you can control various aspects of the course which makes it quite interesting from a TAS perspective. Note that the frame rate in this game is incredibly slow which makes some of the movements jerkier than they would be at 60fps.
The latter holes of this game are notoriously difficult (beating Knockout Nightmare with enough strokes left to beat Energy Enigma is very nasty). Golf games haven't done too well on the workbench in the past, so I was hesitant to submit this, but I feel that this game has enough quirks etc. to set it apart from other monotonous stuff in the genre. I like the music in this game.
Wacky Windmill: Probably the only typical hole in the game. A standard windmill affair. You need to through the windmill to get a hole in one. Going under the windmill brings you out at the lighthouse on the left which is slower.
Hamburger Hill: In this hole a hamburger covers the hole. By tapping the A button the burger can be bounced up and down. This is necessary to get the ball in and is responsible for the slight delay at the start of the level.
Will's Walls: This hole has moving walls and the shot must be timed to get the best deflection. The walls rise from the ground which explains the small delay at the start.
Pinball Palace: In this level the hole at the top left of the table must be unlocked by playing the pinball machine. To unlock it you must hit the switches on the left and right and then the triangle in the middle. You can't tilt the table or anything so I don't have as much control over the ball as you would expect which is why my 'route' looks a little long winded. It was, however, the fastest method I could find.
Frantic Fans: In this level you must move the ball through the level by rotating the fans. It is possible to get a hole in one, but the extensive use of the fans turned out slower. Allowing the ball to come to rest and strike it again saves a bit of time. For some reason moving the ball into the centre tee was ~20 frames faster than the default start.
Chaotic Castle: Putting the ball through the main door causes a small cutscene to play. This costs about three seconds. I instead putt the ball through the side hole to skip it. However this makes it impossible (as far as I could see) to get a hole in one.
Amblin Ant Hill: In this level the hole moves around on a plateau and you can use bumpers to move the ball around. However, I'm able to hit the ball so quickly that it gets to the hole before it moves.
Knock-Out Nightmare: Probably my favorite hole. This is in the style of Breakout/Arkanoid. To unlock the hole to take me to the green I must hit all the blocks. The last part of my block breaking may look suboptimal, but going across the top of the table was the only way that I could find to get rid of the blocks quickly (moving one pixel to the left or right can cause degrees of difference greater than the width of a block). On the green only certain blocks can be putted across otherwise you are warped back to the start. I am able to avoid this by using some fast motion abuse. Unfortunately, this gives me too much speed to land in the hole, therefore to pull it off the cursor position has to be very precise which is why it takes a little longer to set up.
Energy Enigma: To unlock the pipe to the upper floor I must hit the two buttons on the computer.
- Aims for Fastest Time
- Genre: Sport
EDIT: THIS ISN'T A PUBLISHABLE ENCODE, GRUNT FOUND A MISTAKE.
