Posted March 22, 2015 by FrizzleFried in Current Lineup 8038

Golden Tee Live 2014 | Silver Strike X | Power Putt | Target Toss Pro: Bags

Game Produced by Incredible Technologies (c)2007, 2018, 2014, 2019

Condition When Purchased:	A-
Current Condition:	A-

I picked up a home use only Golden Tee Fore 2005 a few years back for a very decent price. It’s not the crappy little “clubhouse edition” that was sold via retail channels (that one had a 13″ monitor and was made from very thin material), but rather the professional home use model that was sold my the Arcade Game Superstore around 2004-2005 or so. It’s “almost” the same size as the arcade version, made from 3/4″ MDF material, has a 27″ Tri-Res resolution monitor but only one blank coin door. When I picked it up, it was in very nice shape with only one scuff mark on the right side to speak of. It was having monitor issues when I first purchased it. Unfortunately the first time I re-capped it, it didn’t work still. Being a Wells-Gardner D9200 chassis, and knowing that these particular chassis are notorious for having cold solder joints, back to the bench it went. After going over the chassis with a fine tooth comb and re-flowing a number of solder points, I managed to get the monitor to work.

After owning the game for a couple months I upgraded it to Golden Tee Fore; Complete, which has 27 courses versus the 6 or 7 courses the original game that came with it had. A year or so after that I picked up a Silver Strike Bowling 2007: Bowler’s Club “computer” as well as the official Incredible Technologies “switcher” unit they called the “Perfect Solution” kit and wired the system to play both games. The only caveat to doing so is that the Silver Strike Bowling game, which can run in EGA mode and VGA mode, has to run in EGA mode in order to hook both games up via the switcher. Being I already had a couple of marquee boxes I’d purchased from Bob Roberts a couple years earlier, I decided to install the Silver Strike Bowling marquee in one of them and mount it to the cabinet. You can switch between the games “on the fly” with two buttons that I mounted on the front of the control panel.

This game is, easily, one of the most popular games in the garagecade. You would be hard pressed to find a better “drinking” game than Golden Tee or Silver Strike Bowling. Oddly enough, these two games are also my 5 year old sons favorite games. He tends to prefer Silver Strike Bowling, but he’ll play Golden Tee Fore as well… though with that game he tends to like to hit the balls in to the water just to hear the funny reactions from the announcers. 🙂 Silver Strike Bowling, on the other hand, he’s getting pretty good at. He’s managed to pull off scores in the 160-180 range and has even beat me once AUTHENTICALLY (I didn’t cut him any slack what so ever… he really did beat me).

One day I would like to upgrade the Golden Tee Fore: Complete to Golden Tee Live. If I ever manage to source the PCB (computer) at a reasonable cost I will surely do so. If I do, I will also be able to run Silver Strike Bowling in VGA mode as Golden Tee Live supports hi-res. As it stands though, I am plenty happy with the game as is. Golden Tee and/or Silver Strike Bowling make a great addition to any gameroom, especially if you like to play drinking games with you buddies. It comes highly recommended.

UPDATE 04/05/19: Silver Strike Bowling Upgraded

Silver Strike Bowling 2007 has been “upgraded” to Silver Strike Bowling 2009. The reason I use quotes around upgraded is because, to be 100% honest, it’s not much of an upgrade. You get a new ‘survivor’ mode … which essentially has you throwing strikes/spares over and over … but at the cost of the 1/2-assed implementation of the “Vegas” mode that non-online folks got with 2007 (basically you got the cards, but that’s it … nothing else … but it still provided for yet another thing to bet on!). Oddly, the scores for Vegas mode show up, but the mode itself isn’t available offline. Bummer. There are a number of new bowlers/balls to choose from as well… and the graphics have a change here and there. Vocally and audibly it’s just about identical to 2007. It took a bit of internal debate but ultimately I decided to keep it in. Now it’s time to looking at upgrading Golden Tee Fore to Live and moving everything over to VGA versus medium resolution…

UPDATE 10/28/21: Major Upgrade Complete

It was mid 2020 that I came across some information on how I can run multiple Nighthawk games in the same cabinet. A trade happened. Some hardware was purchased. Some hardware was sold. The end result is a cabinet that will play Golden Tee Live 2014, Silver Strike X, Power Putt Mini Golf and Target Toss Pro: Bags. I am still on the fence with the Golden Tee upgrade… sure, it’s not a “downgrade” by any stretch, but I am just not sure if I prefer the true 3d environment versus the pseudo-3d environment of the GT Fore series… I’m still on the fence with this one. Silver Strike X is a massive upgrade from Silver Strike 2009. Gone is the stutter that drove me crazy with the older series. The graphics are improved… the game play is improved… there are more options including different skins, 3 different lanes to bowl on, etc. I love it! Power Putt is a decently entertaining mini-golf game. It’s an OK game … a decent change up from time to time but easily the weakest of the four games. Target Toss Pro (Lawn Darts and other lawn-target-type games) is a good time! I’d never played the game until recently.. and was pleasantly surprised at just how fun some of the games are. Overall, I am thrilled with the latest update. I’m guessing I won’t be updating this cabinet from here as the next step upward would require a wide-screen LCD monitor…. I’m totally happy with where this cabinet stands… it won’t be leaving the collection any time soon!