New (Old) 3D Golf: Porting PC-9801 and Virtual Boy to Mega Drive
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According to Hacker News, developer Matt Sephton spent weeks reverse-engineering T&E SOFT's 1993 golf games for the Mega Drive. By disassembling the ROM and understanding the course data format, he discovered that the same course structure was used across PC-9801, Virtual Boy, and Mega Drive versions—meaning courses from other platforms could be ported across. He successfully extracted three courses never released on Mega Drive: T&E Selection and Eight Lakes G.C. from PC-9801 add-ons, and Papillon C.C. from Virtual Boy. Along the way, he found clever engineering choices: a cup that grabs balls from triple-normal distance, pre-sorted polygons to work around the lack of a depth buffer, and backspin that can reverse a putt's direction. Through interviews with original developers and old Japanese gaming magazines, he learned that T&E's 3-D engine originally shipped in other games, and that one programmer, Eiji Kato, drove much of the series design.
Source: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/06/19/new-old-3d-gol...
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