Tiger Woods PGA Tour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
Tiger Woods PGA Tour is a series of video games developed and published by Electronic Arts featuring professional golfer Tiger Woods.
[edit] History
EA has had three golf series in its history:
- World Tour Golf (1986)
- PGA Tour series (1990-98)
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf (1998-Present)
When EA Sports signed Tiger to work with their design teams on golf games in 1998, they planned a transition so that the PGA Tour Golf series would take on the "Tiger Woods" name. The evolution of the series has been continual since 1990 (as opposed to starting from scratch for the first Tiger product), so the gaming roots of the franchise are 15 years old. World Tour Golf had been a hit for EA in the mid-80's, but pre-dated the company's annual-update sports franchise strategy.
The early versions of Tiger Woods Golf were executive produced by Richard Hilleman (one of the key figures in the creation of EA Sports) and Jon Horsley, and produced by pioneering Activision game programmer Steve Cartwright.
The first version of the game to bear Tiger's name was Tiger Woods '99, released in 1998. The title of the game was subsequently changed in 1999 to Tiger Woods PGA Tour X, with X being the year of the season the game corresponds to (generally the year after the year of the title's release). Currently eight games have been released under the Woods license. Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf is the title of the first game in the series made for the Game Boy Advance, and corresponds with the 2003 version of the game. Tiger Woods PGA Tour denotes the first game in the series made for both the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable, and both correspond to the 2005 version of the game.
Although most games in the series have been developed internally at EA studios, some SKU's have come from outside developers, such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001 for PS1, which was developed by Stormfront Studios.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 is the only modern video game to feature a game screenshot on the front cover.
A more arcade-style golf game called CyberTiger was released for the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Color systems in 2000. This is similar to the PGA series only in that both use Tiger Woods' name.
[edit] Gameplay
All games in the series allow the player to play the game with a variety of professional golfers on numerous authentic courses. Most of the games have challenges and tournaments, which when won reward the player's character with gains in experience and skill. Players are also given the opportunity to purchase and own fantasy courses, some even custom built by the player. The series is also notable for popularizing the "analog" method of swinging the club, using the controller's thumbsticks to adjust the amount of backswing applied to each shot (prior to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000, most golf games featured a moving "power meter" that players used to regulate the amount of power on each swing). The addition of legendary golfers of the past like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer to the game's roster of pros in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 was another breakthrough for golf video games, but these were removed after Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006, as was that year's "Tiger Proofing" feature, which allowed players to customize the difficulty of courses by growing the rough longer, deepening bunkers, narrowing fairways, and tweaking other aspects of a course's design.
Since Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, the games have featured a PGA Tour Career mode, allowing players to play through tournaments yearly in a career similar to a real-life professional golfer's would be, the addition of Real-Time Events was also added in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, a set of events which were played on different days of the year, determined by the console's internal clock.
[edit] Games in the series
| Title | Year | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Tiger Woods '99 | 1998 | PC, PlayStation |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 | 1999 | PC, PlayStation, Game Boy Color |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001 | 2000 | PC, PS2, PlayStation |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 | 2001 | PC, PS2 |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 | 2002 | PC, Xbox, GameCube, PS2, Mac OS, Game Boy Advance (As Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf) |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 | 2003 | PC, Xbox, GameCube, N-Gage, Game Boy Advance, PS2 |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 | 2004 | PC, Xbox, GameCube, Nintendo DS (as Tiger Woods PGA Tour), PS2, Mac OS |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour | 2005 | PSP |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 | 2005 | PC, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 | 2006 | PC, Wii ,Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, PS3 |
[edit] External links
- Official Links
- Articles
