Valora Valley Golf (Saturn) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
92A playthrough of Vic Tokai's 1996 golf game for the Sega Saturn, Valora Valley Golf.
Played through the tournament mode.
Valora Valley Golf may have one of the most generic titles imaginable for a golf game, but don't dismiss it at yet another typical golf simulation - it has a few neat quirks to it that make it worth playing a few rounds.
The big draw (har har) of this particular title is the design of the golf course. It's a fantasy course loaded with cliffs, pillars, floating platforms, lava beds, and all sorts of other unexpected obstacles that will challenge you to rethink your conventional approaches. The concept is really cool, and it certainly makes for a challenging game.
To balance out the increased dangers on the course, you also get access to a selection of hyper shots. These provide you with a number of advantages - the warping and the mind-controlled shots are particularly useful and can give you a solid upper hand. Activating these powers requires a perfect 100% power meter and some precision timing on the backswing triggers, so if you screw up as you're attempting to fire one off, you'll probably end up with a terrible lie or going out of bounds, but this risk-versus-reward balance will prevent you from strolling through the game challenge-free. I loved the feature, and I appreciated how much effort was put into maintaining the game's balance with these powers in play.
Anyone that has played a 90s T&E Soft golf game will feel immediately at home with Valora. It uses a slightly improved version of the engine found in Pebble Beach Golf Links (yes, the awesome Craig Stadler one!), and it has all the same features. The course is rendered entirely in 3D, the players are all sprites digitized from chroma-keyed video footage, FMV caddies pop-up to comment on your performance - all the cheesy hallmarks of 32-bit era T&E are here.
If all of this sounds familiar, you might be interested to know that, like many of T&E's golf games, this is a remake of an older title. It was known as True Golf Classics: Wicked 18 on the SNES and the 3DO.
Valora Valley Golf is a significant upgrade to the older games, though. The 3D engine is much faster and cleaner looking, and though the prerendered backgrounds are static, they have far more detail than earlier editions. The FMV adds a lot to the game's overall appeal, and the music is an odd-yet-appealing bit of midi that bounces between rock and funfair. It's totally at odds with the action half the time, but the campiness suits the game to a T.
I loved Valora Valley Golf. It's just as good a game as Pebble Beach Golf Links was, and the substantial improvements made in the jump to 32-bit make it a far better experience than the SNES could've ever hoped to provide. If you like virtual golf, this is an easy recommendation.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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