Zany Golf

Original Release: 1.00.
This game reminds me of one of those old
Spectrum games where you could just see the
shoddy worksmanship, because the game was
written half in BASIC and half in Z80
assembler, or it reused BASIC drawing routines
and you had to wait for the circles to be
drawn.

On the Genesis, it's less obvious, but here are
some clues. The game has low FPS (it feels like
10 FPS). There are slow loading times, probably
due to the decompression they use, and the fact
that they store pointers in little endian on a
big endian machine). It takes about 3 seconds
just to open the pause screen. There is always
input delay. As an example, take the pinball
level and see how much it takes from when you
press A and the flippers activate.

The game is ported from another platform.
Wikipedia says it was initially released for
the Apple IIGS. It is unclear which version is
ported to the Genesis. There is a secret level,
called Knock-out Nightmare. I believe that in
this port, it is not secret anymore. If you try
to access it via putting in the mouse hole on
the Energy Enigma level, when the mouse eyes
are red, you get a "Nice try!" message. It
comes right after the Ambling Ant Hill level.
Also, there is a Magic Carpet level that is
missing in the Genesis version. See the
GiantBomb page for more details (links below).

The gameplay is not bad, and the music is
decent. The instruments are mediocre, and no
PCM samples are used to enhance the sound.
There are very few in-game sound effects.

There was no sound test, so to get to all the
songs, I had to use GameGenie cheats to skip
levels. The songs do not loop, but there is a
'Repeat' option in the menu. But that only
starts the song again, after a silence of a few
seconds.

They seem to have made their own sound driver.
With help from Valley Bell, we figured out a
way to get the songs to play in the level
opening screen (write 0x01 at 0xFFE28C).
This helped rip the song for Chaotic Castle,
which has an alert sound playing intermittently
during the level (for when the castle gate
opens). Interestingly, if you write 0x00 at
0xFFE28C, the notes finish playing at their
designated time. We also found the music files
inside the ROM, in SMUS format. Info about the
SMUS format can be found here, for anyone
seeking more details:

http://www.textfiles.com/computers/smus

It is probably possible to extract the SMUS
songs and convert them to MIDI. Some of the
songs are compressed. It's possibly something
LZ-like.

Each song has an internal name. In the ROM, as
well as in RAM, their positions are stored in
little-endian.

The value list at 0x005CAA is really the size
of the decompressed songs. If the value is 0,
the song is uncompressed and read directly from
ROM. Else it's decompressed to FF80E8.

Song locations in ROM:
021400  score6v
022392  singles6v
02A722  marquee6v
032F46~ windmill6
03E78C  hamburger6v
043CCA~ walls6v
04C186~ pinball6v
0585C2  fans6
060644~ castle6
06819C~ anthill6v
06E68E~ secret6
07D79A  energy6
~ means compressed

Level BGM Pointer List:    005C82
(4-byte littleendian pointers)

Level BGM Pointers:
CA3C0400    043CCA    walls6v
44060600    060644    castle6
8EE60600    06E68E    secret6
462F0300    032F46    windmill6
C2850500    0585C2    fans6
462F0300    032F46    windmill6
9AD70700    07D79A    energy6
9C810600    06819C    anthill6v
8CE70300    03E78C    hamburger6v
86C10400    04C186    pinball6v

Pause Music Trigger:    FFE28C
(00 - paused, 01-FF - playing)
current BGM Number:     FFEB7A
Level Load Routine:     005D12

Game credits:
Zany Golf Copyright (c) 1990 Will Harvey
Licensed to Electronic Arts
Licensed by Sega Enterprises Ltd.
Electronic Arts presents
A Sandcastle production
Written by
    Will Harvey
    Jim Nitchals
    Ian Gooding
    Doug Fulton
Sega version by
    Brett G. Durett

I believe the credits are as follows:
Programming & design: Will Harvey
Programming: Jim Nitchals
Art: Ian Gooding
Music: Doug Fulton

External links:
GameFAQs: http://goo.gl/3nZJK8
SegaRetro: http://goo.gl/swcKzS
GiantBomb: http://goo.gl/cdggGV
Wikipedia: http://goo.gl/KgP3Hk
Guardiana: http://goo.gl/XVcHYZ
MobyGames: http://goo.gl/LAIIHJ
TheGamesDB: http://goo.gl/zOyJ7R
GameBase Megadrivemania GA_Id: 1089
-vampirefrog

— vampirefrog

Source: VGMRips