0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Actua Golf 3

        

Actua Golf 3 is a golf based sports game that was the third and final entry in the Actua Golf sub series of the Actua Sport franchise, and was released exclusively in Europe in 1999 the game as before was developed and published by Gremlin Interactive for the Playstation 1, the game received a very belated PC release in 2015 as well.

For the third and final entry into the Actua Golf series the total number of courses increased from six in the first two games up to eight for this release, in addition you can now make your own course by mixing and matching holes from the eight courses into your own course.

The game also uses a fine tuned version of Gremlins 3D engine with the game now having more enhanced visuals, better resolution, a higher frame rate and new lighting techniques for a more immersive golfing experience.

The game also features four new game modes for the player to try, Pro Tour, Quick Golf, Clock Golf and Flag Golf, the game also uses new motion capture from real life golfers, another minor but useful change was moving the wind meter away from the swing meter, the game also sees Peter Aliss and Alex Hay return as the commentary team.

Golf game no story present

We have a couple of critics review for Actua Golf 3 from Gamerankings with Absolute Playstation giving the game an impressive 91/100 sadly the review is lost in the ether with the site closing back in 2004 likewise the other review from Site Computer & Video Games UK which scored the game a fairly average 51/100 that site is no longer with us.

Moving away from critics review we head to IGN and GameFAQs for some user ratings, first to IGN where there are two user ratings averaging out at a 7.6/10, while over at GameFAQs a total of six users have given this game an average of 3.33/5 with half of them awarding this game a 3.5/5 with one user each giving the game a 2.5/5, a 3/5 and a 4/5, the average play time for two of these users is just three hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific but from a podcast I listen to and  I have heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, as you would expect with Gamedude being from California, this Europe only release is not available from them likewise eStarland.com don’t stock this game either used or new, surprisingly Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock the third edition of the game.

So moving on to Amazon.com who don’t have the game either so switching to the .co.uk version of the site where two versions of the game are available, the original version and the Zoo Classics version of the game, no difference in the games themselves and neither in price, with a good quality used copy of the game setting you back around the £2 mark which converts to $2.59 in the US in the Euro region it will cost you €2.19 and in Tajikistan it will cost you 22.79 Tajikistani somoni, a very good quality used copy of the game won’t cost much more either.

At the time of writing this the original version of the game has no new copies available the Zoo Classics version does have three new copies available on comes with free deliver on orders over £20 and is priced at £4.99, a second copy is on sale for £9.99 this also comes with a shipping cost of £1.30 so a total cost of £11.29 which converts to 128.64 Tajikistani somoni, in the EU region it will cost €12.35 and in the US it will set you back $14.60.

There is also an overpriced new copy on the market that will cost just over £40 adding in the shipping costs, please be aware you need a UK or European Playstation to play this game.

Moving onto Ebay.com where a disc only copy will set you back just $1.76 this comes with free international shipping from the UK while a copy of the disc with manual with only set you back $2.80 again this comes with free international shipping.

A complete copy of the game so with case, manual, cover and disc will only set you back $3.49 like the less complete copies this comes with free international shipping as well, this being Ebay there are several copies on sale with shipping costs well over the actual cost of the game.

Written by

P J Gibbon