Thursday, March 12, 2015
Golf
The Short
Pros
- NES US launch game, and thus the first golf game on the system
- Looks decent, with interesting "3D" ball effects while its in the air
- The first golf game ever to incorporate a "power meter," which has become standard ever since
- Took all the best concepts from it and put them into NES Open Tournament Golf later
- Mario is in it
Cons
- Only eighteen holes
- No music. At all.
- Doesnt assist in picking clubs
- Boring
- Putting is extremely obnoxoius
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| Time for some regular-ass golf |
The Long
When the NES first came out in the US, it had already been around in Japan for quite a while (as was standard practice with games up until recently). So to usher in the US release, Nintendo picked the "best" games it could come up with to put out with the system, the famous "Black Box" collection. Odds are youve played at least one of these games (Read: Super Mario Bros) and maybe a few others (like Hogans Alley or Donkey Kong). But amongst this collection was also a hefty amount of mediocre games (like Gyromite or Gumshoe), and there seems to be a curse with "G" name games, because Golf is right smack dab in the "mediocre" section.
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| Its almost as boring as real golf! Ok, that was rude, I apologize. |
Lets get one thing out of the way first: I dont mind my sports games being "realistic" or "simple" or "accurate" or whatever. Hey, I love Kings of the Beach and its pretty much just regular-ass volleyball. But if you are going to keep stuff basic, you really gotta make sure you still make it fun. Golf doesnt even try on this front: its just a golf game, and thats it. So lets give a rundown, shall we?
You have three options from the menu: play by yourself, play with a friend on stroke scoring, or play a match with a friend. Honestly, I hate games where the "multiplayer" is taking turns (read: hotseat games), and this game is so bland I wouldnt want to torture any friend to play it with me. So I usually just play Golf by myself. And by "usually play" I mean "played twice so I could remember how boring the game was and write the review."
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| RIVETING. |
Golf is an eighteen hole game, and thats it. Your goal is...wait, why the heck am I explaining how golf works? Im going to assume everybody knows how the sport functions.
You can pick your direction and your club (though the game doesnt suggest one, so youd better know that "1W" means "1 Wood" and is used for driving, not sandtraps) and wind comes into play. You then get the only real innovation Golf provided, but even I have to admit its a pretty big one: the power swing. Press the button once to start an arrow moving. Press it again to set your power, and a third time (trying to catch it beneath the white bars) to see if you hook or slice. Before this, no golf games have not used a power meter (the good ones, anyway) and it only started to go away thanks to the advent of motion controls in Wii Sports (and later Kinect Sports Season 2. Ugh).
Even at this relatively solid base, Golf still isnt fun. Mostly because it just...isnt fun. Or exciting. Or interesting. Nearly everything counts as out of bounds. Oh, you thought the black area around the edge was out of bounds? Well, guess what, the trees are out of bounds too (probably because programming trees would be too hard). I swear a good chunk of my shots always went out of bounds, which is really obnoxious when you have only a tiny bit of green to aim for. The aiming is also imprecise and the putting...ok, Ill talk about that by itself in brief.
So its got that going for it, but thats about it. Thats the whole game. Wee.
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| Mario is in it, wearing normal clothes and having gained a few pounds. |
Even at this relatively solid base, Golf still isnt fun. Mostly because it just...isnt fun. Or exciting. Or interesting. Nearly everything counts as out of bounds. Oh, you thought the black area around the edge was out of bounds? Well, guess what, the trees are out of bounds too (probably because programming trees would be too hard). I swear a good chunk of my shots always went out of bounds, which is really obnoxious when you have only a tiny bit of green to aim for. The aiming is also imprecise and the putting...ok, Ill talk about that by itself in brief.
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| Ugh, the putting in this game is where I just want to quit. |
So how it works is it pans into the putting green when you get there, and then the little arrows indicate the slope and what direction. Fair enough. The problem is there is no real way to gauge exactly what you need to do to best approach the hole. You get to pick the speed of your swing at least, but I am never certain how hard exactly to hit the stupid ball.
Not to mention since I dont know how much to overcompensate for in slope, I tend to always miss. Again and again. I guess there really isnt that much to say except the putting is probably the most frustrating part of the game, right next to 90% of the screen being "out of bounds."
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| Avoid that sandtrap, fat golfer Mario |
Graphically the game is...ok. You get a nice picture of golfing Mario on the left, and an overview of the hole on the right. Its basic stuff, but suitable for the NES. The real issue is there is no music at all in the game. Seriously, golf games are already boring enough already, and then you had to not include any music? Why on earth would you do that? It only exacerbates the whole "holy cow Im going to fall asleep playing this game" thing!
All in all, there isnt much more to say about Golf. It did pave the way for future golf games with its innovative power meter, and there isnt really anything fundamentally broken with the game. It just is completely and utterly uninteresting and dull, and the limited number of holes doesnt help.
I have noticed, however, that people tend to confuse Golf with a later Nintendo released golf game, NES Open Tournament Golf. This is unfortunate because NES Open is actually a pretty awesome game, expanding on the reasonably solid groundwork Golf set in terms of gameplay and adding real Mario characters, a story, and just generally being better overall. To help with this confusion, Ive provided this handy guide, seen below:
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| Buy the one on the right, NOT the one on the left. |
Golf was certainly groundbreaking, but that doesnt make it a good game, especially today. I suggest you swiftly ignore it if you see it on a store shelf, considering how many other NES golf games were made and how the vast majority of them were better than this one.
One out of five stars.
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| And screw putting! |
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