A downloadable game for Windows

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In 1999, Michael Wilson (founder of NO2 Games and more recently Ponywolf) built his first game with his college roommate, Ed Brown (of Popcap, Casual Labs and creator of the wonderful Paint it Back.) They called it Miniverse, an arcade-style miniature golf simulation featuring an isometric user perspective, 3D rendered scrolling play-fields, and an advanced (for its time) physics engine. 

Miniverse Logo

The conceit was that the planets of Miniverse have been terraformed into challenging courses. Imagining a universe of lush worlds lovingly adapted into the most challenging miniature golf courses ever.

It went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies under various names (Minigolf Master, eGames Minigolf, Mini Golf 2) and was a staple of the compilation CD-ROMs that lined the isles of Frys, Circuit City and Walmart in the early 2000s.

Every now and again I get emails asking where to get a copy for nostalgia's sake and itch.io seems like the right place for it.

So, love it or not. Here's a working copy of Miniverse Minigolf.

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars
(4 total ratings)
AuthorPonywolf
GenreSports
Tags1999, abandonware, cd-rom, minigolf

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Miniverse Minigolf 105 MB

Development log

Comments

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(1 edit)

The Citizen Kane of Minigolf games :D
Thanks for the childhood memories. The art is absolutely beautiful and still holds up today

Thanks! You are the rosebud of reviewers 

Can it run on win11?

I'd download it first and try it. It does run on my Win11 setup, but it's pretty old code.

Thank you so much for re-releasing this game, it is such a treat seeing developers remember their old games and giving them such a lovely treatment, and you have knocked it out of the ball park! The game runs wonderfully on windows 10, just how I remember it with everything intact. Gotta say, nothing beats those charming, late 90s/early 00s era of cgi backgrounds, they are an absolute delight to look at.

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Hey thanks! Not much changed code-wise... Windows then, windows now. :) 

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...Well, the same except for 16-bit apps, like half of my collection of cd-rom games. Sigh... one of these days, I will find the right configuration of virtual machine to get you playable again, 3D Ultra Lionel Traintown...

But yeah, this game worked out-of-the-box on Win10 64-bit. You might want to put a reminder, though, that widescreen aspect ratios are one thing that old games definitely don't agree with, and to manually adjust main screen res accordingly before launching. Other than that, it's the same game I remember from 3rd grade! ...Haven't gotten any better at minigolf since 3rd grade, either...

Thanks for the high praise!

Hi, do you do any setting on it? I cannot run it on win11

Amazing! I used to play the demo of this all the time on the eGames demo CD I got from Burger King and even that seemed like a ton of content! Glad I can finally see what the rest of the game has.

You are the second BK person on this board. Glad you found us and hope you like it!

Seeing this, downloading it, and playing it again gives me such warm feelings inside. I grew up with the eGames Minigolf version of this only 18 holes, so playing this full version is mindblowing to me! I had no idea there was more to it.

Thanks a trillion for reuploading this, hope you're doing well these days.

Thanks! Glad it's bringing back some memories!

OMFG THIS WAS MY CHILDHOOD... i remember i got a CD from burgerking with a bunch of games but i played this one the most i was like 10-12 somewhere around that... its been so much years since i played yet i still remember the sounds of this game.

I had totally forgotten that we did a deal with “The King.” I have one of those Burger King CD-ROMs somewhere. I should post a bunch of pictures. 

yes please

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Oh my juggling cactus! 

I remember this game as a kid. I was like 5? Wow, memories, I loved this small golfing game, even though I never figured out the concept until like, 12. I would go to my grandmas house, which was next door but still a every once in awhile thing, and play it on top of a bunch of others.
Nice to know it still exists, thanks for putting this up and bringing some good childhood memories back. 

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That made my day. Thanks for posting!

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No, No my good sir, Thank you  putting this beautiful creation on the internet.

I'd be curious if you could gather copies of Bowling Mania and Let's Go Fishing as well...I had them years ago, in a case with a download of Miniverse Minigolf as well on a "Greatest Hits" CD.

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I think I could. I always thought Bowling Mania would make for a good mobile game, but never got around to porting it.

Hey is there a longer version of the theme song?

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That's a good question. There is, but I'll have to go digging to find it.

I wrote that song in the Summer of 1999 using samples from NASA recordings of one of the Apollo launches. If I can find it, I'll post it here. 

Okay thank you!

You weren't able to find it right? It was an awesome little track! I posted the song to youtube with a reference to Bart Howard and Kaye Ballard's "Fly me to the Moon" a while back and people were happy to have found it after all these years:

Wow that's great. Yeah, I could not find the original. It was a combination of FruityLoops and ACID Pro and it's probably on a CD somewhere.

Thanks for the memories!

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Wow! This is great. Lots of good nostalgic vibes here and it ran perfectly for me.

@NinjasSciborg I didn't see a way to get to 1080p, perhaps the youtuber upsacled the video?

Too kind!

Hello. Do you know of a way of playing it in higher resolutions? I remember seeing footage on Youtube of someone playing it at 1080p. Also, thanks a million for bringing this back. I was disappointed when I couldn't get my old copy to work on Windows 7 or 10. My siblings and I grew up playing this and loved it. 

I'm sure it was just up-scaled from 1024x768

Thanks to everyone who pointed out issues. I was able to get pretty much everything working, but again YMMV so give it a download and make sure it works for you if you are planning on supporting it.

Full details here...

https://ponywolf.itch.io/miniverse/devlog/95924/fixed-hopefully

(+2)

So glad to find this game again after so many years! As silly as it sounds, as a kid I used to boot this game up just to appreciate its environments and sound design. It may not be a big deal these days, but back then ambient sounds were pretty rare (for the games I played anyway) and really made this game stand out in memory. The sci-fi atmosphere also added to the experience, and I'm sure this game at least partially shaped my interests today. So once again, thanks for uploading this, it actually means a lot!

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Thanks! I do get email all the time from people who remember playing the game as kids. Ed and I weren’t much older when me made it, a few years out of college at most.

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I asked if this was a full version of the original miniverse game.  You replied that it was.  It is not.  There is only 4 holes for each type of playing field. I expect it is no use to ask for my money back.

I have the same problem here,have you found a way around it?

Hey. I’m just now seeing this, I don’t know what is going on, but I will look into it. The files for the game are all there, so it’s got to be another issue. 

Yeah i also noticed that all the files are there so i assumed it was some error or something,anyways i hope you can fix it since i cant find this game anywhere else

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I am so sorry. Somehow I missed this comment... Let me look into what’s going on. Maybe there’s an an issue with the build... if it doesn’t work, happy to refund whatever you paid for this “pay what you want” game. 

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Posted a new version. Fixed a missing file that was making the game think it was the demo version. Give it a shot again...

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Works prefectly,thanks <3

Awesome!

Question:  Is this the full, complete miniverse  golf game?!  At 99MB I would expect another partial game.

Yep... It's the whole thing. The graphics/music on the original CD-ROM were uncompressed, so it shrunk nicely.

Windows 7, after starting turned screen black and it stayed that way until I restarted computer. Ctrl+Alt+Del didn't help. It's probably something to do with resolution.

Bummer.

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I would totally recommend downloading it before you donate anything to make sure it works with your setup. This game hasn't be re-compiled since 2004  :)