It’s that time of year again, where the leaves begin to fall in various locations across the Northern Hemisphere and the newest version of Golden Tee makes it way to various locations around the world.
Thus is is no surprise that Golden Tee 2014 is here, including content and features from previous years starting in 2007, while adding 5 new courses. Kits and upgrades are already shipping now and any new purchases from IT for the commercial version will be the 2014. According to the company, they have been data-mining to get feedback about what players do and don’t like to tweak the game for a broader appeal. That has not involved any “dramatic changes” to the game such as major new features. It sounds like evolutionary fine-tuning.
There is one change with 2014 that can make a difference however, as far as the hardware under the hood goes. Incredible Technologies does have code names for their hardware (which is something the industry used to be big on when custom hardware was standard) and the “Nighthawk” configuration is getting an update. With the addition of a an nVidia-powered Zotac GT640 (they sell for about $100 on Newegg), operators can now get 1080p output from the game as opposed to the 720P resolution GTs have been running at for a while now. Looking carefully at the screenshots it looks like they’ve also added some more detailed foliage/shrubbery/plants, some extra bump-mapping and they changed the HUD. We’ll have to see it in person to see how the jump to 1080p looks for the game in comparison. Still, perhaps they have decided not to take full advantage of the GT640 to give time for operators to get the card. It’s not the most powerful card on the market but there is a lot of pushing that could be done on it judging by these small enhancements. We’ll know for sure once GT2015 is available.
(Click to engorge)
As far as I am aware, it is only Golden Tee 2014 LIVE that is available as of today. For what they used to called the “unplugged” version, i.e. the offline commercial or the non-coin home editions, I believe those will be available at a later date. This gives the commercial locations a little time to recoup the investment.
