[Nukester10]

About a year ago at this time I was playing Hot Shots Golf 2 for the PS1.I was 3/4 through finishing the golf courses when I noticed the game started to freeze up.Say for example right now most of the time it will freeze when you have your player getting ready to take a shot.Btw,this game is 3rd person if you've never played it before.

Well of course the first thing I did was to take the disc out and clean it properly,which I did.Nope that didn't work.So basically,I set the disc aside and played some of the other PS1 titles I own,like,Dark Stone,Tomb Raider The Last Revelation or most Recently,MDK,I love that game.

You know that's the funny part,these other titles I have, play without a hitch but yet when it comes to HotShots Golf 2 the game freezes up on me.

One day,I went down to a local Flea Market and they have this store that sells mostly refurbished systems,you name it and they probably have it.These electronic wizards make a business out of taking old scrapped systems,even handhelds and they fix them up in the back room to put out in the store and make money off of. It's good there are still noncommercial businesses doing this kind of thing nowadays.Anyhow,I told the guy at the counter this story and he said,

"Nah,it's probably the disc,the way the laser hits the info inside it,just a simple scratch can cause the laser to missfire off to the side and much needed information in the game will be lost and the game will not function properly".

I haven't brought the disc in yet but sooner or later I might.But to be honest with you I don't think that's what the
problem is.I also told this guy about how I was attempting to do the "SwapDisc"trick,but it wasn't until later on that I found out,this will not work Unless you have Your PS1 modded out first.So basically,I said,"maybe what happened is that by me attempting to "SwapDisc"40 or 50 times in a row without success,it caused the PS1'S MotorDrive to become weakened somehow but that still doesn't explain why it would play 30 other PS1 games I have without any problem at all!? In the end, the clerk still stuck with the scratched disc theory.

I could be wrong on this but I'm not buying it.I think it's the way Sony Entertainment programmed the game to begin with.

Why do I say this?Because,in at least most PS1 games, the motherboard tells the motordrive to spin very fast."One Time"In order to load a game.For example,if you finish a level in, "MDK" you will see the Loadbar load up right in front of you so as to load the next level in the game for you.You can even hear the motordrive spinning while it's loading the next level. Once you start the next level,that's it as far as I can tell, you won't hear the motordrive loading/spinning again until you reach the end of the level you're on.

Yes,I know that the motordrive for the PS1 runs at different speeds for different animations now and then,I don't know about HotShots Golf 1 because I've never played it before but for 2 the PS1'S motordrive runs like a racehorse.Probably something to do with the high resolution graphics they had at the time for this game.It's like the programming is pushing the system to it's limits.Btw this game was released in the same year the,PS2 was released.I'm only guessing here but could it have been that Sony was experimenting with what the PS1 could do while developing code for HotShots Golf 2 for the PS2?

Now as far as HotShots Golf 2 goes,they programmed this a bit different.After each level of the game is finished you will hear the game load up BUT it will also load an animation of your character in the game swinging the club at the golfball just as soon as you press the button to swing away,YOU CAN HEAR IT LOADING/THE DISC SPINNING.

Did Sony's programmers have to program the game in this way?No probably not and I wish they didn't because I really like this game,it can be a lot of fun and if you think about it,if they didn't program it this way,I wouldn't even have written this post.Then again,maybe they're could be something to learn from this.

In summation,I'd just like to point out to anyone who's into retro,like myself,If you have a New PS1 and you pick up a copy of HotShots Golf 2,cheap.Don't ever try the SwapDisc trick and expect that you're not going to have any problems with this game down the road,because I believe for this game to run at 100% Your PS1 will have to run at 100% as well.

[Mr.Deviance]

Why don't you pop the cd into your dvdrom and make an iso and try it with a ps1 emulator to see if it does the same thing?
I am pretty sure it's the disc, I have a ps1 and a psone and I've played on them almost everything and I had the psone modded too.
I know the ps1 and psone inside out, I even discovered the swap trick on my own without anybody telling me.
It's definitely the disk. Or if the cd is pirated it could be poorly burned.
I have a hacked psp and I find it the perfect platform to natively run playstation isos these days, if you have one too you could try that and get esult very fast.
In case you don't have a psp or you don't want to hack it, then download a ps1 emulator.
The ps1 emulators give you much higher graphics for the games than the real hardware anyway...

So to put it short.
Either run your game on the psp or on a ps1 emulator and you will find out if it's the disc or your ps1 laser.

[wayskobfssae]

Did they perhaps program it the same way they programmed their internet security measures?

[Nukester10]

I'd like to do an update on this post.About five or six weeks ago I decided to give this game a go around once again.
So after removing it from the jewelcase I held it up to a lamp to examine it.Upon further examination the disk looked
almost like new.What I mean is that there where only very,very light hairline scratches upon the surface,barely visible
to the naked eye and there always was because when I purchased it,it was used to begin with,still though you could
immediately tell it was either handled with extra care by the previous owner or they rarely ever played the game.

LOL! I could have showed you a LOTR game disc for the PS2 that played flawlessly yet had so many
light and heavy surface scratches on it,not to mention all of the scuff marks covering the whole thing,it was
a miracle the credits even came up at all! How that PS2 laser managed to get past all of that without
screwing up was just simply amazing! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Getting back to the Hotshots 2 game for the PS1

So anyhow what I decided to do was to clean the disc again.
Some might ask,"why would you try to clean a disc that looks like it doesn't need to be cleaned to begin with!?"
And my answer would be,"So that the game would have a better chance of possibly working.....again."

Ok, so how was I going to clean the disc if I didn't have any disc cleaner?
Well I don't own a SkipDoctor yet but I do have an ALLSOP hand operated cleaner,it came with a bottle of
fluid that ran out some while back.Being that I'm the type of person who generally makes it a rule not to double,using
CD or DVD roms as Frisbees,I felt having to get a replacement bottle of disc cleaner liquid wasn't really at the top of
the shopping list.

Anyhow,I finally did get the disk working again and without using any disc cleaner at all and this is how I did it,

First looking over the surface for even the smallest traces possible for anything that wasn't supposed to be there,the routine kind of thing,I inspected closer towards the centerpost hole of the disc.Why? In case no ever told you or you never read it in a book anywhere before,Lasers read the CD's and DVD roms information from the center of the disc moving away towards the outer edge of the disc NOT from the outside of the disc working towards the middle,like for example just the opposite of how a stereo reads the information off of an LP phonographic record.So basically all I did was just,using my thumb and the natural oils in it,on it,whatever,btw everyone's skin excretes oil as a way to naturally keep you're skin softer then it would obviously be if this miracle of nature never occurred.If you want to test this theory,rub your fingertip across a CD rom and see for yourself,it will look like you just smeared some oil on the surface but of course it might be a better idea to try this first BEFORE washing you're hands in the sink.

Anyhow that's pretty much how I got the game going except for the fact that I also used the ALLSOP to spread
or how I like to say swirl the oil over the disc in a way that the PS1 laser could make an excellent interpretation of what's on the disc to begin with.

Basically for example,starting right next to the centerpost hole of the disc I used my thumb,I don't know,I guess because it's larger then the other fingers and it might contain more oil and I started moving slowly in a tight counter clockwise motion until I reached the outer edge of the disc.

Oh yeah,now I remember,after doing that I simply just grabbed the ALLSOP.Popped the disc in,laser read side up
so that the pad could create it's own swirls on it.Anyhow,after spinning it for about 10 seconds or less I removed it
then again looking at the side of the disc the laser is going to obviously read,being super careful and just holding
the outer edges of the disc,I inserted it back into the PS1 from which it hadn't been placed in for months.

It did work,it still works very well and yes once again I did notice the pad on the ALLSOP did create these sort of
swirls on it's own like you'd expect the SkipDoctor to do.I don't know if this was a coincidence the pad did this but
I'm glad it did anyhow.

In final,Iam now convinced that it actually was surface scratches that caused the disk and the PS1 to act up if you
will,the way they did and NOT how Sony may have coded this game.

But yet Iam still not entirely convinced the game is 100% playable.I'm going to strong guess it is but I haven't decided
just yet.Let me explain,when I was having problems with the game last time around before it ended up back in the
jewelcase and planted on the shelf for a good while,I was playing in VS MODE.The game didn't really start to act
up until I unlocked all of the unlockable characters in VS MODE and I got to the last golf course then all the
problems began.Right now,I haven't been having any problems at all with the character MEL and I've already
just about unlocked all of the golf course's and all of the extras in the game.Just a reminder,I haven't
started VS MODE as of yet to see how this goes this time around so once again,there cannot
be a final conclusion until this test is finished.

So like I said at the beginning of this post,this was just an update.

One final thing,I've never heard of anyone using just the natural oil's from they're fingertips to get their
scratched disc going once again,I've heard of just about everything else though,from mayo to cooking oil to butter and I've tried every single one of those things and still couldn't get the game to run properly,So without being
bold at all,unless someone else states on here they've done the exact same thing before,I'm going to have
to assume that this idea of mine is a new one.

[RoyBatty]

Here's a rundown of stuff about CD's, and PSX games. First of all, light scratches can cause PSX games to work incorrectly. Why is that? Because they are Mode 2 Form 1 discs (you can look up this spec, in ECMA-130) What that means is, they only have 1 level of error correction based on CIRC (which is too complicated to go into here), while most discs use Mode 1 Form 1, which has addition EDC/ECC error correction codes. Now, why did sony did this you ask? Well first off, They were very difficult to copy correctly at the time and 2nd, this allowed the disc to hold about 100 megs more data. Also, the worst kinds of scratches are the ones which follow the circular rotation of the disc, these kind of scratches will make LONG area's of unreadable data, where ones which CROSS the grain are usually dealt with easily by the drives error correction routines.

Also do note that Sony released firmware updates for the playstation on disc, and if you have an older PSX, it's firmware may be incompatible with your game especially the SCPH-1001 (first released unit).

2nd, you may see no scratches on the bottom, but the most important thing... are there any scratches on the TOP label side. This is the side of the disc which is very thin, covering the data layer. If this becomes scratched, then the disc will be rendered useless. ALSO, discs can get Laser burn holes in them, if the drive motor fails on the unit playing them. As the machine turns on the laser, but the disc does not spin, and this burns a hole in the data layer of the disc which is VERY hard to see on a playstation game because the protective bottom layer is black(ish) plastic. Why are the discs black? Well this was done to make them a bit more reliable if they DO get scratches on the bottom as the black plastic refracts the laser less.

Now... DO NOT EVER USE SCRATCH REPAIR MACHINES by disc doctor, allsop etc. THEY ARE ABSOLUTE JUNK and will likely RUIN the disc! Also units made by JF are pretty crap too, although seemingly better, they have no cooling and can overheat the disc and break it or warp it. Take the disc to a shop which has a professional repair machine made by Azuradisc or Dischek. You can also mail the discs to companies which repair discs and have these types of PROFESSIONAL disc resurfacing machines.

The gimmicks you find on youtube, like toothpaste, brasso and other junk are horrible ideas and can also ruin a disc. The disc must also remain perfectly flat or the laser will get refracted at strange angles and cause read errors also, even if the surface appears scratch free.