The message to Incredible Technologies carried a desperate plea - from Antarctica. Need help. Urgent. Golden Tee machine is broken.
That's paraphrasing, but the researchers and staff at McMurdo Station, Antarctica - the United States' research facility on the frozen continent - were very serious about getting their Golden Tee 2005 arcade machine repaired.
A favorite pastime in the break room, GT 2005 suddenly went dark earlier this year, and a faulty hard drive was to blame. A check of the supply flight schedule running up close to the beginning of Antarctica's eminently dangerous winter determined that it would be 5 to 6 months before a replacement drive could be flown in. There was no way they could wait that long.
McMurdo's recreation staff reached out to Incredible Technologies, maker of the immensely popular golf game, for a workaround. IT graciously made Golden Tee 2005's data available on its FTP site for McMurdo engineers to access. Then they formatted a spare drive, installed it, and poof, Golden Tee was saved.
"We want to thank everyone at Incredible Technologies for assisting us in getting our Golden Tee up and running again," Mike Santos, recreation supervisor at McMurdo Station, said in a news item posted by Incredible Technologies. "The game truly is important to many of us and to get it fixed so quickly really is a testament to IT's ingenuity."
Golden Tee is the world's most popular coin-operated video game, and has been played in some pretty exotic locations, including the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. But down in the basement of the world seems to qualify this Golden Tee 2005 machine as the most remote arcade game on Earth.
The Most Remote Golden Tee Game On The Planet [Incredible Technologies]