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Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational developer Clap Hanz will release extra courses and characters as DLC on March 19, and the game's PlayStation 3 port will be released outside Japan this summer, publisher Sony Computer Entertainment announced today.
Three new DLC characters and three extra courses are coming March 19. Kat, the protagonist of the PlayStation Vita title Gravity Rush, will be available for purchase along with Erika and Gloria. Mt. Sakura and Northern Fox Country Club are both returning from the 2003 PlayStation 2 title Hot Shots Golf Fore!, while Mar Cielo (Spanish for "Ocean Sky") is a completely new course.
Each character will cost $0.99, while each course will sell for $2.99. A bundle with all of the content will be available for $11.99; it will be discounted by 25 percent to $8.99 for PlayStation Plus members. You can check out images of the DLC in the gallery below.
Clap Hanz also released the v1.05 patch recently. It added a Turn-Based Challenge mode, allowing players to run up to 20 concurrent head-to-head games played asynchronously on a hole-by-hole basis. Stroke Mode, which Clap Hanz added last July, is now available for four players to enjoy in multiplayer rooms. The studio also tweaked the lobby interface and game balance, and added a slot machine-style handicap system "to keep the game interesting in case there is an imbalance between player skills," said Tsubasa Inaba, senior producer at Sony.
Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational was a PlayStation Vita launch title in North America last February; it is also available on PS3, but only in Japan. According to a comment from Fred Dutton, manager of the European PlayStation Blog, Sony is "currently targeting a summer launch" outside of Japan for the PS3 port. We've reached out to Sony for more information, and will update this article if we receive any details.
Update: A representative for Sony Computer Entertainment America told Polygon, "We have no announcements to make at this time regarding a North American release of Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational," so Dutton may have been referring to a Europe-only release of the game's PS3 port.
