Golden Tee Golf - Major Injury Hazard

Thanks to TheWhig.com for their local news report discussing the massive popularity of U.S. arcade game Golden Tee Golf. According to the piece, "Since Golden Tee was released in 1996, at least 100,000 machines have popped up in bars and restaurants across North America." Unsurprisingly, the game developers suggest: "I think you'll find many players who say they're better after three or four beers." But drinking and golfing leads to danger, since the control method is "..a track ball that is half submerged in the machine.. the faster the ball spins, the further the shot flies. Sometimes, eager golfers put a little too much oomph on their drives. The Brass, a popular Golden Tee hangout on Princess Street, has had three players accidentally smash their hands through the video screens on both of the bar's machines."

Drinking and gaming

[gl4ss]

Definetely worth trying, especially car games. Teaches you that reflexes and motorics do get fucked up, and is major fun too. Big screen, some distilled products and a driving wheel = fun.

Drinking much

[skinnedmink]

Gamers arn't as think as you drunk they are.

Actually

[M3wThr33]

After a couple heinekens, my friend was able to full combo World Tour on DDR Extreme.
(In non-ddr talk: While drunk, he never missed a single one of 2500 steps in 12 minutes)

Re:Actually

[Allison Geode]

I've had a similar experience with a pump it up machine. my guess: alcohol loosens ya up, lowers inhibitions, and you're not as worried about looking like a spaz, so you shake that groove thing, have a good time./

Re:Actually

[reiggin]

After a couple heinekens, my friend was able to full combo World Tour on DDR Extreme. (In non-ddr talk: While drunk, he never missed a single one of 2500 steps in 12 minutes)

If your friend got drunk after two heinekens, he needs to stay on the kiddie arcade games and away from the bar. Seriously. It's bad enough that he's drinking yuppie beer. It's just tragic that he gets drunk off a couple and then heads for the "computer dance floor."

Friends don't let friends dance drunk... and/or drink Heineken.

Re:Actually

[M3wThr33]

Well, I wouldn't say really drunk, but before the drinks, he was doing really poorly, and after he came back his inhibitions were much lower.

Golden Tee Injuries

[Hedonist123]

I think it's pretty well known that you can do damage to yourself playing golden tee. About ten minutes of hammering that ball on the drives will give almost anyone a wicked bruise. Luckily, thanks to many many many hours of bar time I've built up those rugged golden tee hands. But, I digress, the machines all have a speel written on them about inuries. I think that focuses on loose screws in the ball itself though, not punching through the screen (which I think I've been close to doing). I've always w

Re:Golden Tee Injuries

[grammar nazi]

That's funny that so many people hit the ball. I find I can hit just as far, yet with much more contol if I put both hands on either side of the ball and use both thumbs to snap the ball. This works even if I've been drinking.

Re:Golden Tee Injuries

[vitaflo]

I have a few friends that play this way, and they usually out drive the people who just jam their hand on the machine. I started trying it that way, but I found I kept getting my thumbs pinched in the groove between the trackball and the housing. Ouch. So there's still the risk of injury of some sort.

Re:Golden Tee Injuries

[XO]

I guarantee with a good hit, I can out drive anyone that thumbs the ball. The trick a lot of people miss is that it's not the DOWNFORCE that you put on the trackball that gets the ball farther, it's the ROLLING force.. most people just smack the shit out of the ball, but it's mostly downwards into the machine, rather than spinning the ball.

I've been trying to teach myself away from that, and have been popping off anywhere from 330 - 395 yard drives very consistently ever since...

Re:Golden Tee Injuries

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly question. Of course you can sue.

Whether you can actually win the lawsuit is the question.

I'm of the opinion that the safest product in the world can be unsafe, all it takes is a drunkhas abusing it long enough.

If I drunkenly stumble into the fence surrounding your hard and impale myself on part of it, does that mean you should be liable for my poor judgement? I know a friend of a friend who won a very similar lawsuit under similar circumstances, and it only served to drop my opinion of that slacker

Now imagine if there was a club involved...

[TripleA]

Something to swing over a sensor maybe. THAT would cause injuries.

Major?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Major Injury Hazard

3/100,000? .00003%? And that's only the machines - if you figure 100 users per machine, that's a .0000003% injury rate. Real golf is more hazzardous. Actually, the drinking is probably the most hazardous part of the arrangement. If you have ten million drinkers, odds are somebody's going to be killed on the way home from drunk driving.

Don't have to kill it

[AutumnLeaf]

Many of the shots in golden tee do not require a 'smasher hit' every time. Rather, a good 'double-thumb' flip of the ball wil often be just what you need. Even off the tee-box, I'm often not smashin the ball.

Some Golden Tee cabinets have screw heads in the vicinity of the ball, and if they get loose catching your skin on them and cutting oneself is a risk. The bigger risks are from comming in too low or two high on the smasher hit. Too low - you catch the edge of the cabinet with your hand. Too high and you hit the ball with a down force. The ball has no give, and it results in bruising in the hand - it's quite uncomfortable.

As for golden tee's gameplay, it is the best golf game I've played. I have to say I liked the 2003 courses much more than the 2004 courses though.

I've never understood why...

[still_sick]

...People insist on smashing the thing every time. All the people I know play like that and I just don't get it. For fuck sake's people, just use one higher club and give it nice solid but relaxed hit - you'll go just as far as the lower club and a smasher. ... Of course knowing the people I play with, I suspect that half of it is just to prove they can get x distance out of y club, but come on... Other than driving on a really far hole there's no reason to kill it.

New genre of games: Mainstream games

[Krellan]

I played Golden Tee a few times, and found it to be an OK game. It didn't hold my interest. This was even when the machine was on free play, so I could experiment with it as much as I wanted. It just didn't entertain me.

It is clear that Golden Tee is part of a new genre of games, like Deer Hunter, that were often criticized by the gamer community but surprised everybody by how incredibly well they sold. They make money hand over fist. The reason they sell well is because they are targeted to non-gamers.

Golden Tee is often found in bars, not arcades. I've never seen an arcade with a Golden Tee, but I rarely see a bar without one. Like those countertop touchscreen games, it is designed to be played by people who don't often play what we think of as normal games. People who don't really like or use computers that much. In other words, Joe Sixpack.

These games form a new genre: mainstream games. They should be classified as such, and not sports games. Even though they may feature sports content, the target audience is completely different, and the overall feel of the game is completely different from a conventional sports game.

For instance, because it's targeted at people with little or no experience with standard video games, these mainstream games play very slowly and often don't take any action at all unless the player initiates the action. For instance, Golden Tee will just sit there until you roll the trackball.

You probably already have a mainstream game installed on a Windows computer near you: Solitare. My partner's aunt, who hates computers and detests using them, loves to play Solitare in spite of what she normally thinks about computer games. Solitare is clearly reaching its intended audience. I'd consider that a mainstream game!

Re:New genre of games: Mainstream games

[bhtooefr]

I said SLIGHTLY OT. I should have quoted parent. Here's the quote:

You probably already have a mainstream game installed on a Windows computer near you: Solitare. My partner's aunt, who hates computers and detests using them, loves to play Solitare in spite of what she normally thinks about computer games. Solitare is clearly reaching its intended audience. I'd consider that a mainstream game!

And I was simply stating that it wasn't meant to be a mainstream game, it was meant to teach you how to use the m

Re:New genre of games: Mainstream games

[AutumnLeaf]

I think your point about the market for Golden Tee is a good one. At the same time, I disagree that its gameplay value should be dismissed (which you sort of imply but don't say explicitly).

Joe-Sixpack can indeed enjoy a game of golf on golden tee. However, the game is in fact designed to appeal to those who are gamers. What opened my eyes to the gameplay in Golden Tee was playing it with people who really knew the courses. I learned there were some sneaky paths to the green that could shave a stroke o

Saw this happen... Twice...

[Hank Reardon]

I used to go to a tavern quite often where they had three of these machines. My friend and I would play one of them for hours on end.

One evening, a rather drunk foresome (heh) was doing the old "smash-the-shit-out-of-the-game" routine and one of the guys slipped forward a bit too much. With a rather large crash, he shattered the glass above the monitor and sliced the crap out of his hand. Naturally, hilarity insued and nobody could stop laughing. It seems that alchohol makes blood funny.

After getting cleaned up and bandaged with a bar towel, one of the bartenders came out to sweep the floor. Meanwhile, the extremely drunk foresome moved to the next machine.

Mr. Bloody-stump proceded to use his uncut hand for another brilliant stroke -- obviously thinking that since it's happened once, it can't happen again -- and smashes his other hand into the screen cover with similar results.

When we spoke to the bartenders about this after last call, the said it happens about every two weeks.

The next week, all of the protective covers were Lexan.