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Golden Tee Fore! Set Off the Explosion That Turned the Golden Tee Brand into a Bar Room Staple and Pop Icon

The stage was set for an explosion.

Just before the turn of the century, a chain of circumstances was set in motion that would change the coin-op industry forever. As a country, the United States was at an all-time high. The economy was booming, leaving the American public with an excess of spendable income. In the sports world, golf was taking off as a mainstream sport thanks to the up-and-coming Tiger Woods. An 'old man's game' a few years earlier, golf was the "it" sport that had people of all demographics spending their weekends at driving ranges and golf courses. And at the same time, operators were looking for some way to tap into the bar market.

Three seemingly unrelated circumstances. But when combined, they primed the coin-op market. Everything was in place for an explosion if the right product came along to set it off.

Then in February of 2000, the powder keg was lit. Incredible Technologies (IT) released Golden Tee Fore! - a redesigned and cutting-edge version of the previous generation Golden Tee 3-D Golf. With it's revolutionary features, exciting game play, low price and link to the hot game of golf, Fore! was that product. And the shock waves it caused have yet to subside.

"It just exploded," commented IT Vice President of Marketing Scott Morrison. "Everything was just right for a game like that. And we realized pretty quickly that we had something amazing."

Over the next five years, Fore! would take the Golden Tee brand where no other coin-op brand had ever gone before. It stormed the mainstream media and went from backroom bar game to a worldwide phenomenon - a true pop-culture icon recognized by all demographics. And most importantly, it laid the foundation for the future of an industry.

The instant impact of Fore! was thanks largely in part to timing. The late 1990's saw coin-op games make vast improvements in realistic graphics and game-play. Hits like Atari's Area 51 and Midway's NFL Blitz brought fast, exciting action with state-of-the-art 3-D graphics that enthralled players. But where these games flourished in arcades, they failed to have a lasting impact in bars and pubs. Players wanted, and operators needed, a different type of game to get bar patrons off their stools. And Fore! was exactly the game they were looking for.

"Golden Tee Fore for us was the first time we ordered 75 new games at once! And what a move it was," remembers Corporate Vice President of A.H. Management Group Inc, Chris McSwain. "Fore! drove our cash boxes for the next four years. Players kept coming back for more and wanting multiple machines per tavern."

But the explosion wasn't by accident. The designers at IT made sure that Fore! was more than just a right place, right time product. Inside every cabinet were features players had never seen before - features that would eventually become mandatory for all future coin-op games. Features such as realistic, 3-D flybys of each hole and a 'Backspin' button that gave players more control. But two of the biggest were online stats tracking and tournaments.

Top 10 League Points	Points	Games
1. RONALD R. WISNIEWSKI JR.	54,227,817	17,068
2. VYTAUTAS STUKELIS	53,187,462	15,556
3. DEAN LIAKAKOS	51,166,799	12,150
4. JASON MATKOVICH	50,189,829	21,653
5. BRIAN BERNHARDT	50,148,755	13,727
6. STEVEN TIREY	42,280,879	10,946
7. JIM JOHNSEN	36,018,248	10,133
8. STEPHEN DAKIN	33,533,912	9,071
9. CHRISTOPHER PIERCE	33,406,248	12,145
10. JOSEPH A CARADONNA	32,613,406	8,145

For the first time ever, online stats tracking gave players the ability to actually see their stats and compare them against players around the world. While this is a standard in today's games, prior to Fore! this was unheard of. For the first time, players could identify themselves and others in the game through stats and personas.

Dean Liakakos

"What first got me hooked was being able to track my stats," said Dean Liakakos, a bar owner and player who is ranked in the Top 10 in almost every statistical category for Fore! including No. 1 in career holes-in-one. "As a competitor you love to look at and compare stats. So when I could compare mine to other people across the country and see how I stacked up it made the game that much more fun. It was almost a competition. And no other game had anything like that."

The International Tournament System (ITS) took that competition to a whole new level. A three-tier system set for players of different skill levels, the ITS allowed players to compete in 9-hole events every month for the chance at cash prizes. Fore! also saw the explosion of live tournaments such as the World Championships, National Championships, Tournament of Champions and Player of the Year Championship. Never before had the video game industry seen events of the size and magnitude of Fore!'s live tournaments. They were the perfect combination of video games, sports and competition - and the players drew to them like moths to a flame. From across the globe, players came out to not only prove themselves, but to meet other players and form a close knit community.

With the players firmly behind the game, the explosion only gained strength. Within a year of release, the Golden Tee brand's buzz was starting to reach mainstream media. By 2002, it was nationally recognized by publications such as Sports Illustrated as the sports game to play. Then it really began to gain speed.

Steven Sobe

"I've been around Golden Tee since it first was released," commented three-time Golden Tee National Champion Steven Sobe. "But right around 2003 was when I started seeing it everywhere. And as an avid player, that was a very cool thing. I was meeting more people from more places than ever before. I had to buy a new cell phone just so I could store all my friends phone numbers from all over the world."

Eventually Golden Tee and its name were synonymous with bars as much as pool tables and jukeboxes. The name and game were used in shoe ads for Asics and there was a famous Saturday Night Live skit. Carson Daly even spoke about the game on The Late Show with David Letterman. It garnered ink in such publications as the New York Times and GQ Magazine. And in the world of popular culture, the Golden Tee brand was up there with the likes of Pac Man and Legos.

"Fore! just skyrocketed," Morrison remembers. "It was everywhere. That's when the Golden Tee brand really took off and became what it is today - a pop-icon."

LIVE_logo Eight years after it's release, the explosion of Fore! is still reverberating throughout coin-op. Golden Tee LIVE, IT's latest generation of the Golden Tee franchise, has built off of the standards set by Fore! and taken them to the next level both technologically and nationally.

A quantum leap in the coin-op industry, LIVE has set the standard in online coin-op gaming. Improving on the ITS pioneered in Fore!, LIVE features international tournaments all day, everyday. And live tournaments have grown from events featuring a couple dozen players, to mega-competitions featuring hundreds of players. The 2007 Regional Championships alone saw over 500 players come together over three events.

It's impossible to compare the graphics of Fore! (above) to the ultra-realistic ones featured in LIVE (below).

The game itself has also come a long way from the days of Fore! Compared to the pixilated look of Fore!, LIVE's graphics are as real as you'll find in any video out there. LIVE's players are transported to a virtual world where the sun moves with the hours, leaves swirl in a strong breeze, ponds ice over and greens react as they would in real life. The courses themselves have also been upgraded both in locations and challenges. From New York's Central Park to the Yukon Territory, LIVE's courses provide a scenic yet daunting task. And even with all these improvements, LIVE never forgets its audience. With a new 'Casual Mode' and a 'Skill Bracket' system for online tournaments, players of any skill level can step up to a game and enjoy themselves.

On a national scale, LIVE has only expanded on what Fore! started. The ink in national publications has increased with exposure most recently in Maxim magazine and USA Today. And the Golden Tee brand is getting stronger with promotional deals with Callaway Golf, the Chicago Rush and the Illinois Lottery. All of this is unparalleled success. And all of it can be traced back to Fore!.

"Golden Tee Fore! was one of those rare products that clicked on so many levels that it is almost mind boggling," said IT Vice President of Product Development Larry Hodgson. "Fore was different; it was special from the first day that we started to sell it. Operators embraced it. Players loved it. The mass-market media covered it. You couldn’t walk into a bar and not find it. How does it feel to have been a part of creating such a hit? It feels great!"

Yet come the end of 2007 the explosion will finally subside. Though the last online Fore! tournament officially closed on October 21, 2005, players around the world have still been able to track their stats. But come 2008, IT will officially close that chapter of its history by discontinuing the ITNet services for all Fore!'s.

If it's true that all good things must come to an end, then it’s also true that the memories we have can last a lifetime. Few could ever have dreamed what Fore! accomplished. It revolutionized an industry, it turned a brand into an icon and paved the way for the game players see today. Just like it's "!" would suggest, Fore! was a force - one whose explosive flame will never burn out.

"Golden Tee Fore! entertained millions of people for more than seven years," commented Hodgson. "It took the entire coin-op industry to get behind the product and make our work available to the players. So, when the last day comes for Fore! to be on-line, I’ll probably grab a beer and toast to my Incredible Technologies partners, our players, and to the industry that made the magic happen for all of us. So as the sun sets in the west over Golden Tee Fore! it’s time we all turn to the east and get ready for tomorrow’s sun rise."

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