Let’s go over the review of what is currently happening in the world of Minna no Golf. Game was announced two years ago that it was going to be in production for release this year 2016, however during this year’s Tokyo Game Show, it was revealed that they are releasing it in the summer of next year. [Which roughly reads as August 31st 2017.]

9/16　15:00（つまり今）
TGS2016　公式ニコ生放送で
「ＮｅｗみんなのＧＯＬＦ」が放送されます（されています！）
15:00～15:40（予定）https://t.co/K3B8IOp0iG pic.twitter.com/Gy2kc5siyv

— ClapHanz (@Clap_Hanz) September 16, 2016

According to the event plans, First Public Day of the Tokyo Game Show was scheduled to be Team Battle Demo. The Last Public Day is just a normal demo where you can try out the game in the open course setting.

As a bonus for attending the event, you register your PSN account at the event and you will receive the PlayStation Booth Companion Costume for use with the game when it is released.

There was also a special New Mingol Event on stage during the first public day. It was broadcast and recorded on the day on YouTube. Here is the video starting at about 30 minutes into the clip:

I can actually see myself in this video… Anyway that onto the report, since there wasn’t anything else that officially happened for New Mingol.

Tokyo Game Show Day One:

I caught up with a couple of Mingol friends, and we went to test the game out. Maronpafe actually went all out and registered to try it through PlayStation Plus and turned up with a Tokyo Game Show Supporters ticket which gives you access to certain parts of the event earlier than other people. Because of this Maron actually was able to try out the Team Battle mode.

Sadly while I was there fairly early too, with standard ticket when my turn came around I noticed that they were not doing the Team Battle Mode anymore. Regardless I was able to test the demo completely and see what the fuss is all about.

So what did we learn from the Demo:

• There is no other shot modes at the moment except for Traditional 3 Click.
• Just/Perfect Impact is now a big deal to progress for the game:
  • Putts now require you to set impact.
  • Increases your status for certain attributes which require you to Just/Perfect Impact.
• Points system seems to have changed but since we were not able to make any special shots likely due to not enough stats or not implemented, we weren’t completely sure what was changed.
• Successfully making a long putt over 3m distance will increase Kuru Kuru / Backdoor shot status.
• Hitting a long drive, or probably out distancing your longest drive will increase the Power Stats.
• Near Pin, Just/Perfect Impact will increase your Control Stats.
• Performing a successful spin shot will increase Spin or Side Spin Stats:
  • This may be a problem in game design later down so I would probably hope they put caps for character stats.
  • What happens to players who enjoy playing with low shot hitters? Naturally over time their character becomes  a High hitter?
  • How about players who enjoy having/playing with characters with Natural Fade/Draw?
  • There are some shots in this game that you wish for certain statistics in order to make a shot, so having too much of a status can hinder the performance of specific shots.
• Shot height for approach mode is now higher again similar to that of Mingol 5, but the game appears to be performing with a hybrid branch of Mingol 5 and 6 physics in the engine.
• Since the courses are now 9 Holes connected together we can once again tee off to other fairways and take risky shortcuts. In the Demo you can do this on the Par 5 to make an Eagle using a single power shot to the alternate fairway of the L shaped fairway.
• Team Battle from what we saw was just 4 vs 4 but without a personal experience I have no comment on this at the moment.
• So far the progression system seems to be on the right track, but some of the points I mentioned now makes me wonder where it will all go when we reach end game.

Non-golf related things in the Demo:

• Golf Cart Driving was cool, but you sort of miss the ridiculous running speed that is associated with the crazy Caddies in the older versions of Mingol.
  • It is also a annoying to drive around when you happen to hit something and the cart stops completely. I drove along a bridge designed for the Golf Cart but there was some really strange collision detection going on making the experience not very satisfying.
  • If they are going to make the cart driving something interesting, maybe rather than make it a simulator make it actually fun to drive. It really felt like I would just pop in and out of it for the increased Speed to travel around the course, but if the only bonus is the speed feels like wasted development. Maybe a Speed Golf Mode that requires you to race other players while using your golf carts would make good use of the feature.
• Fishing… I really don’t know what to say about this feature.
  • In the Demo, it appears fishing required you to talk to the NPC to begin but this could be just for introducing the feature to players trying the Demo.
  • Fishing also has it’s own status or progression bar.
  • There appears to be a competition mode for fishing also where you can fish against other players to see who catches the biggest fish. This is also shown in the presentation.
• Character Customization… should have been something that was shown but it was not.
  • Demo machines were set with character designs already set, but I think with the low amount of content being shown it would have been a good distraction to show us the character set up options.
  • You can see the TGS Booth Companion Costume on the machines that were supposed to be used by the companions. The blue team during the presentation event also used the costumes for their characters.

Tokyo Game Show Day Two:

Most of the experimenting was done during the first day, but I returned on the second day to help a friend with shopping and also get a T-shirt from Final Fantasy XIV battle challenges. During then I had a discussion with my Mingol friends and we came to the conclusion that the reason why Team Battle was no longer shown during the first day and the presentation for it was changed/cut short was that there was an issue with the system. Many questions were still left unanswered but some of us got a hold of one of the three producers… yeah Three Producers.

• Most information seems to be kept under wraps, they wouldn’t even disclose if there would be support for Advanced Shot or any of the other shot styles.
• Talking to the Associate Producer from Sony, I received confirmation that the Team Battle Mode was having issues hence the mode was discontinued on the first day and the presentation for the game was slightly modified.
  • In the video/presentation you will see that fishing and running around doing random things seems to have taken up quite a bit of time.
  • During Team Battle, the rules of the game was changed so that it was more about who finished all three holes first instead of the actual Team Battle system. It was a shame because we all wanted to see the girls beat the guys right?

Since ClapHanz has been advertising nearly every single day for the last year or two I had a little talk with the Associate Producer to see if I could help them out. If their issue is about how to make the right Mingol Game, think I would be able to help. If it is about the lack of people working on the game… Then that would be a different issue. Well that ball is in Sony/ClapHanz Court now, so let’s see what happens!

What do you all think will happen? Will we end up with someone who is passionate about the game for most of their life working on the game or will the success of New Mingol be clouded in mystery?

So the PlayStation Press Event happened yesterday, and there was yet another New Minna no Golf Trailer that announces the delay until Japan Summer 2017.

Next year will be the 20th Anniversary of Minna no Golf series. Once again things don’t look good… Tokyo Game Show 2017 this weekend, I will be going to check out the demo on both days.

In other news, Minna no Tennis which was made on PS2 will be coming to PS4. That is still a good game, at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if Minna no Tennis ends up inside the Minna no Golf world, with all the fishing and cart driving going down and delays…

The developers need to hold back on the feature creeping and release something and communicate with their player base to see where to move their series so that it is a longer lasting game. Let’s hope we get more than 3 extra courses after release.

Hello Everyone,

It’s been awhile since I logged into my own site, I guess things haven’t been that interesting for me to feel the need to make any posts about the New Minna no Golf. Well seems like lately there are some articles being written and they don’t seem to be planning to change the release date of being within this year… So maybe we will be seeing the New Minna no Golf this year on the PS4.

With news of a possible PS4 Neo, I feel that the game would likely run smoother on PS4 neo and with a possible integration of the PlayStation VR… since we know that is what happens to all Mingol games in the past few titles.

That said, Keith [Kdoll] has recently contacted me here and emailed me a copy of the latest article issue on Famitsu for the New Minna no Golf game.

I have translated it for those those who are interested in what the article contained though I didn’t bother translating the title text because the information explains the titles anyway, but I have also seen that PlayStation’s official Mingol website has been updated [with horrible coding for the parallax effect for some reason. Sony needs to hire better programmers.] So those articles I will probably be looking over again and posting a rough translation over the next few days or couple of weeks depending on my work schedule.

Hello Everyone,

Well this year will be interesting… Here right now a few days before public entry into Tokyo Game show 2015. We have received a new trailer, but things aren’t looking so Mingol as we are used to it seems.

Who likes the song used in the trailer?

I don’t know if they are mocking fans with that song… It doesn’t look like there will be anything actually playable at TGS this year. Also anyone else think the models look like the Microsoft Avatars?

Set to be released in 2016, game will feature creatable avatars and an open world. This is the same thing as what they mentioned last year before TGS… Still probably no prototype or game play trailer available to show us at TGS this year. With the daily Clap Hanz recruitment continuing on Twitter, it is hard to tell what the real story behind the up coming title is currently.

Source: Famitsu TGS New Mingol. PlayStation Japan

Hello Everyone,

Looks like they have announced pre-TGS that there is a New Mingol Project underway. More details will come when TGS begins, but the game probably will be something that comes around late next year. Knowing Claphanz they are pretty slow…

本日のSCEJA Press Conference 2014にてＳＣＥワールドワイドスタジオの吉田修平さんより「NEW　MINGOL　PROJECT」の発表がありました！まだ詳細な情報はお伝えできません。続報（来春）をお待ちください! http://t.co/7jJIfoUsJT

— ClapHanz (@Clap_Hanz) September 1, 2014

As population continues to dwindle in the Mingol world, patches of changes to the system seem to be more frequent. Not sure why they continue to beat the dead horse… You know what the answer is to this problem? Sure the game engine doesn’t foster skill and competition any more, but I bet if they grabbed a bunch of their old courses from old games, retouched them for the current game engine people would fork out cash for it in a heart beat.

Well onto the changes in the latest patch. I should probably download it so I can log online and chat with people…

Update 1.16

• Daily Tournament History display has now been changed to a period of as far back as 1 year.
• Number of Chip in Lobby Golf Balls obtainable from 18H regulation tournaments has been increased.
• Grade 4 rank has been abolished. Upon entering lobby as G4 will promote you to G3.
• Changes will be applied once you log into the lobby for the first time after the Feburary 17th Maintenance.
• Bug Fixes.

Anyone ever get tired that they mention bug fixes in the update notes? It doesn’t mean anything to us if we don’t know which bugs were fixed right?

Nope still don’t feel it. Well at least this update is doing something to improve their new feature.

Update 1.15

• Chip in Lobby Golf balls can now be obtained through Grade Free Tournaments.
• Rare Character List changed to now display.
• Fixed the Chip in Lobby Golf Ranking display bug.
• Other bug fixes.

I haven’t been logging on so there is no details on the size of the patches which I usually list next to the update version.

So there will be a small Toro themed event for daily coming up. Since it features Toro to participate you would likely have to purchase Toro to play it… tough luck to the Asian version holders?

Prizes included for participating for 2 days or more is a Toro T-Shirt Yellow lobby part and a Toro Flag accessory lobby part.

Participating for 5 days or more will net you a Toro Umbrella T-Shirt and Kamo the little duck lobby pet.

Source: 「みんなといっしょオープン」

So today there was an update that brings back the Lobby Golf feature by fixing a bug that was wrong with it during it’s original release late last year.

Due to the grief this may have caused for players they have included 20 free Lobby Golf balls for players who login between the 16th and the 20th of January 2014.

How does Lobby Golf work?

For starters it is a special lobby you can access by selecting the other club house. Each lobby on each floor appears to be a different course with it’s own score ranking board. You can quick view each ranking board from the floor by pressing square on the lobby.

Once you enter the lobby you will be introduced with some instructions. Summary of the instructions is basically how to operate the lobby and how it all works.

• Number of balls is limited:
  Your balls are obtained from playing Real Tournaments, so for those who have been wondering what they have been accumulating at the end of their tournaments it is just extra balls to use for lobby golf.
• Distance to chip results in more points:
  Just like normal chip-ins the distance is equal to the score you get for your chip in. There is no special shots as the chip-ins are just your basic roll and sinks.
• Lobby Spells can be unlocked through playing Lobby Golf:
  However after closer inspection the spells are activated through chat commands. So if you cannot type Japanese it may not be possible to use them.
• Controls are simple:
  First you need golf balls, next you can start from anywhere you want that isn’t unplayable space. Press confirm and it will go into swing mode.
  Most of it looks and feels the same as normal golf except that you’re basically playing with the Minna no Club deal where you don’t need to press impact.

Overall it’s a nice touch but not really adding to the game since they’ve destroyed any competitiveness the game ever had… I’ll update this post later with screens once I get my image processing done.

So it looks like they are doing the Christmas and new years thing again for those who have missed out on previous years.

New post under the latest news on the players information website mentions that due to the bugs experienced with the Chip in Lobby they are unable to bring it back for this year. Will have to wait until a later date for them to bring it back… Anyway the game has gone pretty sour now by the looks of things. If you just want a fun game go for it, but if you’re looking for competition you’re probably better off looking elsewhere.

I have a feeling they know it is pretty messed up now and just making it worse and milking it with whatever they can because the PS4 is out and any little bit of money they get will help fund the next game.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Celebration~!