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 it's 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.
- Doesn't assist in picking clubs
- Boring
- Putting is extremely obnoxoius

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 you've played at least one of these games (Read: Super Mario Bros) and maybe a few others (like Hogan's 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.

It's almost as boring as real golf! Ok, that was rude, I apologize. 

Let's get one thing out of the way first: I don't mind my sports games being "realistic" or "simple" or "accurate" or whatever. Hey, I love Kings of the Beach and it's 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 doesn't even try on this front: it's just a golf game, and that's it. So let's 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 wouldn't 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."

RIVETING.

Golf is an eighteen hole game, and that's it. Your goal is...wait, why the heck am I explaining how golf works? I'm going to assume everybody knows how the sport functions.

You can pick your direction and your club (though the game doesn't suggest one, so you'd 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 it's 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).

So it's got that going for it, but that's about it. That's the whole game. Wee.

Mario is in it, wearing normal clothes and having gained a few pounds. 

Even at this relatively solid base, Golf still isn't fun. Mostly because it just...isn't 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, I'll talk about that by itself in brief. 

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 don't know how much to overcompensate for in slope, I tend to always miss. Again and again. I guess there really isn't 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."

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. It's 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 I'm going to fall asleep playing this game" thing!

All in all, there isn't much more to say about Golf. It did pave the way for future golf games with its innovative power meter, and there isn't really anything fundamentally broken with the game. It just is completely and utterly uninteresting and dull, and the limited number of holes doesn't 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, I've provided this handy guide, seen below:

Buy the one on the right, NOT the one on the left. 

Golf was certainly groundbreaking, but that doesn't 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. 

And screw putting!