Key information
In November 2012, Keith of Keith's Arcade discovered a motionless, pixelated body lying in the woods near the green on hole seven of the Aspen Lake course in Golden Tee '99. Beneath the figure sat a pool of blood, creating a bizarre Easter egg that went largely uninvestigated for years.
Following leads through industry contacts, the investigation reached course designer and co-creator Jim Zielinski via software engineer Tino Kalafatis. Zielinski confirmed he cheekily placed the pixelated corpse as a goof for players hitting errant shots, revealing the graphic was a digitized photograph of himself lying outside his office.
Curiously, examining the game via the platform Steam within the Golden Tee Arcade Classics collection revealed that the body remained present, but the pool of blood was missing. When compilation developer Digital Eclipse did not answer inquiries about the missing blood, checking MAME emulation via the Internet Archive showed the blood puddle intact.
Further cross-referencing via the Arcade Database uncovered that Incredible Technologies originally released two separate revisions for Golden Tee '99, designated v1.00 and v1.00S. Loading the v1.00S ROM into MAME displayed both Zielinski's body and the blood, leaving the exact reason for the variant versions and other hidden course details open-ended.
