Golf (Nintendo Entertainment System) Review
Play golf as retired Mario.
~by tankMage (July 2024)
Score: 78/100 (Decent)
On paper, Golf for the NES looks really bad. Players only get one character (who looks suspiciously like an older version of Mario), there’s only one course, and the game modes are extremely basic. Though lacking in many areas, Golf is still a joy to play. It’s one of those games you can pick up and goof around with for a while without having to worry about intricate mechanics. The devs also got just about everything right as far as course design and user interface go. Simplicity has its virtues.
A good beer and pretzels game.
A friend of mine used to refer to casual arcade style titles as “Beer and pretzels games”, which I think is an appropriate description of Golf. It’s nothing fancy, yet it’s still fun and engrossing.
As I said, gameplay is Golf’s core virtue. All 18 holes are well designed and will test your golfing skills. Pretty much everything you’d expect to see in a real golf course is included with each hole and the devs threw in some devious tricks to trip players up.
All of the holes are fairly simple, but they can be tricky. Wind is an especially insidious foe for anyone trying to improve their score. Tricky shots around bunkers or trees are not uncommon and the putting green can be tough in its own right due to slopes. The game also expects you to be able to pick the appropriate club for every shot, so it’s important to know the difference between a 3 Wood and a 5 Iron. The aforementioned wind also plays a role in every course and I’m fairly sure its direction and speed is chosen semi-randomly. A strong head wind can make a hole you’ve aced in the past a lot more difficult.
The only thing that really hurts the experience is a lack of variety. There’s only one golf course and it gets old after a few plays. Playing with a friend can squeeze some more life out of the course, but only so much.
Being one of the earliest NES releases, Golf does not look great. That said, the graphics are appealing in their own right, especially if you’re nostalgic for those early NES days. One thing I really like about the graphics is that they do a good job of displaying the contours of the putting green using arrow shapes that mimic grass texture. They probably would have been able to do the job better with lines and shading, but I think the arrow aesthetic fits the mood of the game very nicely.
The controls are just about perfect. You can aim the ball with Left and Right on the D-Pad, and select a club by pressing Up or Down. Pressing the A Button will make your golfer (Mario?) swing his club, which is represented by a meter near the bottom of screen. Tapping A once determines the power of the swing and hitting it a second time will determine which way you slice depending on where the meter stops. The system is simple and really effective.
Golf doesn’t have any music whatsoever and uses minimal sound effects. Most of the sounds aren’t much more than stock beeps and the woosh of the ball. I could complain, but does a game like this really need a sound track?
You can do worse than Golf.
Golf may be extremely basic, but it’s one of the better golf titles on the NES. This is mostly due to it being so simple that you can jump into it with a friend or by yourself any time. Despite being bare bones, Golf is challenging enough to have replay value. It also has the charm of a bygone era. That said, I wouldn’t pay a lot of money for it, though that’s not an issue since you can get a copy of it for a few bucks as of when this review was written.
Thankyou for reading my review for Golf on the NES!
RetroMaggedon.com ©2024