Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Sports – Golf
I have never actually played the sport of golf. I’d like to try sometime – I understand that playing golf is a prerequisite for a career requiring any degree of PR – but I just haven’t ever had the opportunity. I once hit a golf ball with a golf club and, in an impressive feat of pure beginners luck, hit the post I was told to aim for.
But I’m skeptical of video games that try to take an already relaxing and generally unathletic* activity and turn it into a relaxing and generally unathletic game experience.
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_J4XgF_x2D0/TXps5uMO8mI/AAAAAAAAABY/7ql2sd6Z5eQ/s1600/Golf+%2528PC10%2529_001.png)
I think that it’s a pretty significant oversight to remove the ability to aim precisely from a game that revolves, in part, around precisely aiming. Perhaps that’s just me, but I like to be able to win when a game presents conditions for winning. Just saying.Now, here’s where the trouble comes in: in this golf game, you can’t aim precisely until you’re putting. At first, I presumed that the game was automatically choosing the optimum angle for me – “hit it perfectly in this direction, and you’ll sink it.” No. No it was not. I hit it all kinds of perfect and ended right next to the cup on numerous occasions.
![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-uRGfMy8V2cY/TXpycA6fKUI/AAAAAAAAABc/S9tWlzdzP08/s1600/Golf+%2528PC10%2529_003.png)
See that screen cap at the left? Do you notice where that arrow is pointing? If I could put it just a bit further left, I could land it on that island on the left, but the only further it’ll go in that direction aims directly into than bunker. To the right, I can shoot exactly straight ahead, which doesn’t optimize the amount of island I could hit. See that little almost-bay right there? That’s where my ball will go on a perfect shot.
John’s Rating: I give this a 2.0 out of 5.0, but I want to reiterate that I didn’t rate this down because I think that golf games are inherently unfun (although, those on Nintendo might prove to be) but because I think that THIS golf game is genuinely flawed. On a side note: for those of you who have played Wii Sports Golf, you may well note than a number of the layouts used in this game were recycled for those purposes. I guess everything that’s old is new again.