World Tour Golf

"World Tour Golf" is an 1986 computer game created by Evan and Nicky Robinson and published by Electronic Arts for the Commodore 64, Amiga and PC home computers.

When the Robinsons completed work on Mail Order Monsters in 1985, they were unsure about what kind of game they wanted to develop next. Developers and producers at EA at the time were playing Nintendo Golf, and the emerging power of MS-DOS-based PC games led the two programmers to undertake an ambitious golf game that would include a sophisticated golf course editor.

Evan Robinson worked on the game play for WTG, while Nicky Robinson created the editor. In 1986 it was unusual for a game to have more than one programmer, and this gave them an easy way to neatly subdivide the work. It also allowed WTG to be a significantly larger game in scope than many contemporary titles. The editor supported the accurate (for its day) re-creation of real golf courses, as well as comical courses that were made up of a series of islands, 270-degree doglegs, etc. This followed in the spirit of Racing Destruction Set, which had been developed at EA the year before.

EA had expected the game to do reasonably well, but it became a hit and received a Software Publishers Association Gold Disk award for sales.

World Tour Golf was EA's second sports title and its second sports hit, and it represents a link in the chain that led to the founding of EA Sports. Madden NFL was already in its early stages of development when World Tour Golf shipped. Don Daglow, who produced WTG, teamed with programmer Eddie Dombrower to create hall of fame title Earl Weaver Baseball the following year. When Richard Hilleman and Scott Orr turned the initially-unsuccessful Madden franchise into a hit in 1991 the company created the separate EA Sports brand.

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