the #1 Technology & Entertainment Soft fan site is S & B Soft

[boojiboy7]

If you’ve been paying attention to the golf thread, or my various ravings about Hydlide 3, or some of the times we have spent on Megadrive Monday plumbing the depths of Psy-O-Blade, you might have come to terms with the idea that this site might be the biggest grouping of T&E fans in the English speaking world (I have no idea if they have a Japanese following). So hey, here is a thread about them, and I will probably post further stuff from their games here. Join in. Bevome a part of this tiny thriving community.

Who is T&E Soft?

T&E was founded by two brothers, Toshiro and Eiji Yokoyama (aka T&E, though they later claimed it stood for Technology and Entertainment), in 1982. There’s not a ton of English info on the internet on them, but you can tell one thing about these two bros: they fucking love golf. One of their first published games is 3D Golf Simulation for the MSX.

This was something of a decent seller for them, it seems, though who knows exactly what that means in 1983 MSX sales. They developed one or two other MSX games that nobody really talks about before they hit the jackpot with Hydlide. I’ll probably post more about that later, though fellow T&E Softie @lonelyfrontier also is a big Hydlide fan. Hell yeah.

They went on to release all sorts of other games, from the difficult shooter series Laydock, the brutally hard shooter UndeadLine, the adventure game/visual sci-fi novel Psy-O-Blade, some RPGs based on Sword World (the long running TTRPG in Japan that was birthed from Lodoss War), and even some Lode Runner games. And the whole time, GOLF. Lots and lots of Golf.

The company eventually split into some other companies, and most of the T&E assets ended up being bought by D4, who run the EGG service, and have done a pretty good job of putting them out for the EGGCONSOLE releases in the US, so yeah, check those out if you want.

Game List

Because I haven’t been able to find a good one (like even the MobyGames listing is far from complete, I started building this list below. It’s probably still not complete, but it is an improvement, so yeah.

A Listing of Every T&E Soft game before the company split

Year	Title	System
1983	Pyramid Drop	MSX
1983	3-D Golf Simulation	MSX, Sharp X1, FM-7, Toshiba Pasopia, Casio FP-1000, PC-88
1984	3-D Golf Simulation	PC Booter, Sharp MZ-80K/700/800/1500, Hitachi S1, PC-98
1984	Cosmo Mutar	PC-8000, PC-88
1984	Battleship Clapton II	MSX
1984	Hydlide	PC-88
1985	Hydlide	MSX, PC-98, PC-6001, FM-7, Sharp X1, Sharp MZ-80B/2000/2500
1985	Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness	PC-88, Sharp X1
1986	Hydlide	NES
1986	Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness	MSX, FM-7, Sharp MZ-80B/2000/2500
1986	Laydock	MSX, FM-7, Sharp MZ-80B/2000/2500
1986	Daiva Story 6: Imperial of Nirsartia	NES
1987	Daiva Story 3: Trial of Nirvana	Sharp X1
1987	Daiva Story 4 - Asura’s Bloodfeud	MSX
1987	Daiva Story 5 - The Cup of Soma	MSX2
1987	Daiva Story 2 - Memory in Durga	FM-7
1987	Daiva Story 1 - Flames of Vlitra	PC-88
1987	Hydlide 3 - The Space Memories	MSX, PC-88
1987	Super Laydock: Mission Striker	MSX, Sharp X1
1988	Hydlide 3 - The Space Memories	Sharp X1
1988	Daiva Story 7 - Light of Kali Yuga	PC-98
1988	Psy-O-Blade	MSX, Sharp X1, PC-88, FM-7
1988	Laydock 2: Last Attack	MSX
1989	Psy-O-Blade	PC-98
1989	Hydlide 3: Yami kara no Hōmonsha	Famicom (Japan only)
1989	Super Hydlide	Megadrive
1989	Undead Line	MSX
1989	Hydlide 3 Special Version	PC-98
1989	New 3D Golf Simulation - Harukanaru Augusta	PC-98
1990	Undead Line	Sharp X68000
1990	Hydlide 3 Special Version	Sharp X68000
1990	Psy-O-Blade	Megadrive
1990	New 3D Golf Simulation - Harukanaru Augusta	FM Towns
1991	Undead Line	Megadrive
1991	New 3D Golf Simulation - Harukanaru Augusta	Super Famicom (Japan only), Sharp X68000
1991	New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki	PC-98, Super Famicom (Japan)
1991	True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club	SNES
1992	New 3D Golf Simulation: Pebble Beach no Hatō	PC-98, Super Famicom (Japan)
1992	True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links	SNES
1992	New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil’s Course	PC-98
1992	Sword World PC	PC-98
1992	Chikyu Kaiho Gun ZAS	Gameboy (Japan)
1993	New 3D Golf Simulation: Pebble Beach no Hatō	Megadrive (Japan)
1993	New 3D Golf Simulation - Harukanaru Augusta	Megadrive (Japan only)
1993	Pebble Beach Golf Links	Genesis
1993	New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil’s Course	Super Famicom (Japan)
1993	True Golf Classics: Wicked 18	SNES
1993	Sword World SFC	Super Famicom (Japan)
1993	Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2	Super Famicom (Japan)
1994	New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil’s Course	Megadrive (Japan)
1994	True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club	3DO
1994	New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki	Megadrive (Japan)
1994	Sword World SFC 2 Inishie no Kyojin Densetsu	Super Famicom (Japan)
1994	Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2	PC-98
1994	Pebble Beach Golf Links	3DO
1994	Lode Runner Twin: Justy to Liberty no Daibouken	Super Famicom (Japan)
1994	Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 3	3DO
1995	The Hyper Golf : Devil’s Course	Saturn (Japan)
1995	Valora Valley Golf	Saturn (US)
1995	Pebble Beach Golf Links	Saturn
1995	Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 3	Saturn (Japan)
1995	True Golf Classics: Wicked 18	3DO
1995	Virtual Hydlide	Saturn
1995	Red Alarm	Virtual Boy
1995	Golf	Virtual Boy
1995	Harukanaru Augusta 3: Masters - New	Super Famicom (Japan)
1996	Floating Runner: Quest for the 7 Crystals	PSX (US)
1996	Floating Runner: 7-tsu no Suishou no Monogatari	PSX (Japan)
1996	3-D Tetris	Virtual Boy
1996	Masters: Shin Harukanaru Augusta	PSX (Japan)
1999	Hydlide	Windows
2002	Hydlide 3 - The Space Memories	Windows
2002	Laydock 2: Last Attack	Windows

Tea Break

Enjoy the chill sounds of the Pebble Beach Tea Break as a moment to just hang out. It happens halfway through a round of golf, but I just put it here because it should be here.

Daiva Story

If you look at that list, you might notice a whole series called Daiva Story, which was the kind of crazy idea that doesn’t really happen too often. Daiva Story was a 7 part space opera, except that each part released for a different system, including one game for the Famicom (which Nintendo confusingly put out untranslated on their Switch online service). So basically no one could afford to play every one of them. The person behind this would go on to say that it was his attempt to get people with different systems to talk to each other more, which sure, but also what? Thankfully, D4 has put out a compilation with all of them packaged with individual emulators for each, but only one of the games has ever been fanslated (the Famicom one, 6), so yeah, not gonna get a lot there.

Virtual Boy

Did you know that, after Nintendo, T&E Soft were the most prolific developers for the Virtual Boy. It’s only 3 games (of course one of them is GOLF), but still. Huh.

So yeah, play some T&E games. Post about them here. Thanks. If you find any more games I haven’t listed above, let me know and I will add them.

[SLUGGER]

for reasons beyond me my family owned a virtual boy in the 90s. I spent considerable time eating shit in red alarm bc I could not parse depth or really anything going on on the screen in that game, though I don’t think that really interfered w my enjoyment of it. thank you t&e soft!

[smbhax]

Trivia bit I stumbled across:

Bell (credits) - GDRI :: Game Developer Research Institute - checking MobyGames, some of the Pinball Graffiti (SAT) programmers had worked on early–FM Towns, PC98, etc–T&E Soft golf games. (Tip-off from Making sure you're not a bot! : “[Bell Co., Ltd.] included former T&E Soft staff and primarily developed games for the Sega Saturn.”

[matt]

In this 1989 article introducing New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta, the interviewer asks about the POLYSYS system (3D topology, sprites for trees) and floats the idea that it would be cool to make an RPG with the technology.

In 1995 Virtual Hydlide was released on Sega Saturn, which did exactly that.

マイコンBASICマガジン 1989年11月号 : 電波新聞社 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming :...

[Victor]

Checking in.

[AutomaticTiger]

Ironic the Virtual Boy never got Virtual Hydelide

[smbhax]

New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta (4/05/1991)

Their first Super Famicom golf game and it’s significantly jankier than the later ones. No music while playing (and the little riffs that play after you complete a hole for instance are turkey-in-the-straw-level terrible ; D). The space around the green in particular feels not rendered particularly accurately and the greens can be downright wild:

[boojiboy7]

The soundtracks are so much less fun on the SNES, even when they are fully present.

[Father.Torque]

Is that a green or a trampoline?

[smbhax]

Personally I prefer the music in the SFC versions : ); I guess I play these to kinda chill and that’s easier for me with the smoother tones on the SFC vs the spikier MD renditions.

Going through T&E’s SFC golf releases, this first one–New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta (04/05/1991)–is the only one without music during play. T&E revisited Augusta on SFC two more times: Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2 (09/22/1993) and Masters New: Harukanaru Augusta 3 (07/09/1994) (3 adds the SA1 (“Super Accelerator 1”) chip).

The Mega Drive Augusta–New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta (12/17/1993) appears to correspond–in terms of release date, UI, and musical composition–to 2 on the SFC.

[matt]

The difference between 1 and 3 is huge

[matt]

Cross post w/ weird golf thread!

I documented my foray into reversing T&E GOLF games (yes, I own all the games I involved in this endeavour)

New (Old) 3D Golf: porting PC-9801 & Virtual Boy to Mega Drive...

[km]

I see only one, two lakes max on 8-nèe-7 lakes, I wonder why it was renamed

[matt]

My personal hunch is that they drew the map and then counted the lakes to find they were off by one LOL

Or maybe they realised Eight Lakes (1+1 syllables) sounded better Seven Lakes (2+1 syllables)

…we may never know.

[matt]

Another few gems I recently dug out.

pg 12

• POLYSYS predates Augusta — development began ~2 years earlier and it was already used a little in T&E’s DAIVA STORY 7: Light of Kali Yuga and Psy-O-Blade. (Edit: I only see it in the intro which have 3D logos?)
• They first tried trees as real polygons (individual leaves and all) but a single tree took as long to draw as a whole Augusta screen, so they abandoned it for sprites.
• The earlier “3D Golf Simulation” (~6½ years prior, BASIC) computed coordinates but had no terrain undulation at all, and on the slow X1 a single 18-hole round took half a day.
• Lead programmer: 加藤英治 (Eiji Kato)

pg 13

• T&E signed an official contract with Augusta National and got the real course blueprints; staff actually visited. They didn’t play, but “rubbed their cheeks on the grass.”
• Augusta sent back ~60 corrections on the work-in-progress: pines too short and too spread out, flowers too pink (should be redder), wrong bunker-sand colour…
• No replays in Augusta, by design: you can save mid-round, but loading erases the disk save, deliberately stopping you re-doing holes to inflate your score.
• The most memorable note: the dev build had 4 female caddies, but Augusta said all their caddies are male. So the final game made them male.

One more:

• POLYSYS took ~3 years and was “born” July 1989, sacrificing several other product projects; it needs a 16-bit-or-better CPU to exploit fully.

From this image I found many years ago on an old closed auction listing:

[boojiboy7]

So oh shit, I just managed to come in second at Pebble Beach on the US Genesis version with 5 under par. This is my best score on that game by like 7 strokes. Fuck yeah.

---

Yesterday I found another addition for my T&E Soft collection for 13 bucks in a game store in almost the middle of nowhere Ohio:

It even has the sweepstakes entry form still included. But also, man, T&E remain ever the optimists about their odds in the US:

They would get a release of Devil’s Course out for the SNES in the US (called Wicked 18), but I don’t know if it was marked “Volume 2”. (Edit: did some research and…no it was not)

I should get a pic of the whole collection at some point.

[smbhax]

Oh yeah heck I guess I should get my photos in here. Mostly it’s this shot of all the Japanese Super Famicom, Saturn, and PS1 T&E Soft golf games

and then thanks to an article by @matt pointing out the US Genesis release doesn’t have dithering on the ground like the Japanese versions (my eyeballs have trouble focusing on the dithered ground pattern), I picked up that one too, which came with the snap case (but not the manual)–the cart sticker is about as plain as can be but ah well ; ):

CHALLENGE THE WORLD
FAMOUS PEBBLE BEACH
GOLF LINKS

Also I’m going to cross-post this mag shot by @meauxdal of T&E Soft’s N64 Waialae Country Club charting

videogame things you think about a lot lot lot lot

waialae country club n64 probably did pretty OK [image]

That version went on to sell 1M worldwide: https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_64

[SLUGGER]

small update: I’m watching castration movie pt 1 and a video of red alarm (among other virtual boy games) is playing in the background in one scene. the legacy of t&e soft…

[boojiboy7]

Sorry for the not great lighting but here is the current collection

Yes, that is four copies of Super Hydlide: 2 cartridge only, 1 US CIB and 1 JPN CIB. Also a CIB (including the stickers) copy of Hydlide 3 for the NES. Also the recent Undead Line rerelease, Pebble Beach for the Genesis (CIB), Waialae for the SNES (CIB), a Waialae N64 cart, a Hydlide NES cart, and a CIB copy of Psy-O-Blade.

[matt]

Interestingly, the order of volumes differs between final build and release:

Vol	Title	Japanese	ROM build	Retail release
1	Pebble Beach no Hatou	ペブルビーチの波濤	1993-07	1993-10-29
2	Devil’s Course	デビルズコース	1993-08	1994-01-28
3	Harukanaru Augusta	遙かなるオーガスタ	1993-09	1993-12-17
4	Waialae no Kiseki	ワイアラエの奇蹟	1993-09	1994-02-25

---

@smbhax

US Genesis release doesn’t have dithering on the ground like the Japanese versions

The USA version also has an easier shot meter (up-down-repeat vs up-zero-repeat), and as such removes the special perfect shot power boost (you know about that in the Japanese versions? I should write about how it’s calculated). I’ll look at my notes to see if there are any other differences.