Birdie Try

Birdie Try is an arcade golf machine that Data East sent into the arcades in 1988, licensed to I-Vics for the American market. Data East was churning out loud action games at the time — and this is the same coin-op instinct applied to a quiet sport.

You look down on the holes from a bird's-eye view. The second button cycles through your clubs on the fly, the joystick sets your aim, and the first button commits the stroke with a timing press. Wind is shown not as a number but as clouds drifting across the screen — their direction and speed tell you everything you need. It is a smart, wordless interface you grasp within a single hole, exactly what an arcade cabinet requires.

The courses themselves would never pass a real golf club's committee: holes run across cliffs, rock formations and stands of trees, and the terrain keeps shifting under your feet. That bolder architecture is what keeps the game alive — every stroke is a small wager, and the coin-op pacing pushes you on to the next hole for as long as your credits hold.

In all honesty, next to later golf games Birdie Try is a simple affair: no career, no player upgrades, just holes, wind and a score. As a ten-minute breather, though, it works beautifully, and it shows how well Data East could wrap an ordinary sport into a brisk, readable machine that wanted nothing from you but one more coin.

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