Why pointless? Hot Shots is a great game franchise.

Same here, it's gonna be great, I thought the first Hot Shots was a great game

I can't wait to it's released

So... yeah. I went for the import. Thanks to the baffling drought of good PSP games this past month, and my anxiety about when it will arrive here, I bit the bullet.

Man, this game is like crack. I am completely addicted... which is both a good AND bad thing-- sometimes I find myself playing when I don't even really WANT to But I gotta get that next outfit or haircut or... well, people who've played the original know what I'm talking about.

I'm actually sick right now, so I don't have much eloquence in my thoughts... instead, I'll point you to this review for more indepth information:

http://mingol.shihiko.net/?page_id=26

Just a few things off the top of my head:

-12 courses this time (can be mirrored as well): all the courses from the first game are back, along with a few new ones.

-10 new characters -- I think there's a way to be able to play the characters from the first game, but I'm not sure... while you play on the courses, you'll notice some shiny/flashing spots. If you zoom to them, you might find an outfit, a haircut, accessory, club, ball, OR a character who will ask you to do something for them (I just found this out from the person who did the review above). It sounds like that you can win these characters if you do the thing they ask of you... but I have no idea how.

Just like last time, the more you play with the characters, the more "loyalty" you generate. This time, you have 10 levels of loyalty before it maxes out. As you go up in levels, you're allowed extra features-- like being able to wear a 2nd accessory, or the ability to change between a skinny/normal/fat version of each character.

-speaking of stuff to collect, I guess there are over 300 items available. All of the items from the original game appear to be back, plus new ones. This time out, the items all have POWERUP potential... so a particular haircut might give you a plus 1 to power, etc. Certain items work better with certain characters, and complete "outfits" (matching hair, clothes, accessories) work together to create bigger bonuses. Kind cool, although it does sort of lead to min/maxing characters instead of just choosing which items you think LOOK best.

Oh...almost forgot. This time around, you don't know which item you're playing for. when you win an event, you're allowed to pick either 1 or 2 (depending on how well you did, I think) "random" cards, each of which represents an item. In order to unlock the "boss" battle for each level, you must clear a certain number of cards (not really all that different than last time, other than the random aspect).

-Online play: I haven't gotten too far into this yet, but you can join in a tournament, go for match play, and apparently search for and design the games you want to play. You can also password protect the rooms if you just want to play with friends. So far, I've been playing with random Japanese people. 16 players can appear in each tournament, and how it works is that everyone goes at the same time-- you'll see 15 other golf balls (in orange) flying off towards the cup while you're sizing up the shot. You can go through it as quickly as you want, but there's a time limit per hole (90 seconds, I think). After you finish, you go into the leaderboard screen where you can select from about 100 pre-canned chat phrases (in japanese, of course). I recognize a few, but I usually just keep my mouth shut.

who you play with depends on which character you're chosen (all the characters are broken into 3 tiers of "advanced-ness"). Theoretically, this should even the playing field, but since you're allowed to play with your own characters, some are going to be much more tricked out than others. On top of that, these japanese players are nuts! If you don't birdie (or better) every hole, good luck keeping pace. I have yet to do better than 3rd or 4th in a tournament.

Another incentive to play online? After each round, you're allowed to pick a toy (sort of like in Shenmue) which contains an outfit. Not sure if these are ONLY available online, but it looks like it so far. The crappy thing is, they repeat... so like me, you could end up playing three rounds in a row and getting the SAME... DAMN... ITEM... arg

I'm sure there's more, but my brain is hurting...

The japanese and US versions of the PSP Hot Shots Golf are more or less identical, AFAIK.

Besides that, the original (and the 2nd) are two of the best portable games ever.

Aw crap! I didn't expect a demo. I'll grab this asap but I'm all but certain I'll buy this regardless. Thanks Matt!

HSG is much more arcadey than LINKS or TW... but it's one of the best games on the PSP. HSG 2 is due out sometime in June, I believe, but you can buy HSG 1 at the Playstation store right now for $10.95. I highly recommend it... or, you could just wait until HSG 2 comes out. Better still, download the demos linked to above and see what you think.

NO to voice chat (at least there wasn't any in the Japanese release of the game, and NO to bluetooth because... well, because the PSP doesn't support it ). The game offers a large menu of "quicktext" phrases you can select between matches, although unfortunately none of them said anything like "you've been pwned, beeyotch!"

To tell you the truth, I don't know how deep the online play goes yet... there were a lot of options, but I couldn't really decipher all of the Japanese menus. I know you can set up rooms and password protect them, etc. I also don't know all the online modes that are available... I only played in the big tournament modes, which allowed up to 16 people playing at the same time.

I found the first one cheap at Gamestop and it looks great. Played the new Demo (beginner) and again, what a good looking game. And apparantly deep. How the ball lies affects shot. Wind. Wish it had hot seat tho', I(at least I didn't see it available. My wife saw it and was ready to take me on:>) You can put different types of spin on the ball. Ball flight physics and such looked very good. Reading greens important (although the cup seemed pretty forgiven, but maybe that was because I was in training mode or some rookie status).I only played a few holes, but got excited about it. (and the PSP is an amazing piece of technology. My wife has a DS and ...well I won't start anything here, but I like my PSP (plus more game types I enjoy. Picked up a cheap SOCOM: Tactical Strike. AND of course MLB08: The Show(!!) (although I wish I could darken it a bit, the grass seems so light, but saw no way in game and I'm not sure do anything with the PSP's brightness would help).

Anyway, back to the HSG. Need to find me a cheap wireless router to use as a 'access point' (?) on my wired router and hopefully easy hook-up to PSP to be ready to play a league with you folks.

Game is due at retail tomorrow (6/3/08).

ANYone with a PSP needs to buy this game ASAP... we'll be organizing some online tournaments soon.

Trading in Lost Odyssey and a couple of bucks should be enough for you to participate in the sticky golfy goodness.

That online tournament room is getting awfully lonely...

YES, it came out... and NO, there isn't any voice chat...

I was looking forward to playing, but my down and dirty wireless connection did not work, so I'm out. HSG 1 sure looks nice and I have to say, 2 doesn't look all that better. But perhaps lots of additional functionality that 1 didn't have. Would of been fun I'm sure. Have good times in the league folks.

Yep, that's the issue. I'm just not in the mood to disrupt my wired set-up right. I know it's probably easy sailing to do (and as I understand it, most wireless routers have several wired ports too), but I seem to always have problems in one way or another and I am a bit gun shy to fool with something that is working fine right now (although my initial intent of getting a PSP was to play a sports game on-line. Oh well, best laid plans and all that).

I'm not bothering with this since i'm still playing through HotShots 5 on the PS3. Kind of a bummer this doesn't have some connectivity witht he PS3 version they just came out with. Hell even having the same game on both platforms but allowing me to continue upgrading my characters on the go would have been great.