Power Golf (TurboGrafx-16) Review
~by tankMage (July 2024)
Score: 5.5/10 (Bad)
Looks like a hole in one, plays like a triple bogey.
I really love the TG16 and I was excited to see a golf game for it. Power Golf starts out promising with nice graphics, three characters who all play differently from one another, and a nice soundtrack. It all looks good until you get to the actual game, which sucks.
I’m not even sure where to start, because just about everything is wrong with this game. You need two controllers just to play against the computer, just about all the holes are a straight line, and the meter that controls how hard your golfer swings is way too sensitive. This game has so many faults that I struggle to find examples of things it didn’t get wrong.
The green monster is everywhere!
If you know about golf, you know about the “Green Monster” or the often woody out of bounds parts of every course. Hit your ball into the green monster and you’ll likely never see it again. This is a common feature of golf games and it serves to add some challenge to each hole.
In Power Golf, every hole is tightly hemmed by the green monster and there’s very little room for error. Factor in wind along with the overly sensitive meter and you have a situation where the slightest mistake will send the ball into the monster, costing you a stroke. This alone makes the game unpleasant.
The wicked and wild winds.
Wind is a normal part of golf games. Usually the wind behaves in a manner commensurate to real life. For example, if the wind is blowing to the northeast at the start of a hole, it will usually remain in that direction, maybe gusting or dying down every now and then. This isn’t the case in Power Golf.
The wind might be headed south on one stroke, only to shift east the next. It’s as if they programmed the game to pick a random speed and direction after every stroke, then called it a day. I’m no meteorologist, but I’m fairly certain wind does not change course so drastically, at least not where I live.
While the wind constantly changing direction does little more than break immersion and make the game slightly annoying to play, it’s the extreme effects it has on the ball that really make life miserable. A mild breeze of just three miles per hour throws the ball off course quite noticeably and you’re really going to have to compensate for higher wind speeds.
The meter is too damn sensitive.
Most titles in this genre feature a stroke meter and Power Golf is no different. An arrow will move towards the left side of the screen when you initiate a swing. Pressing the button to will stop the arrow and determine the power of the swing. Once the power is set, the arrow will start moving to the other side. A red line marks the sweet spot for getting the ball to go straight. Stopping the meter to the right or left of the red line will make the ball slice in either direction. It’s a fairly simple system that has proven itself over the years.
Power Golf’s meter is extremely finicky when it comes to slicing. If you stop the arrow even slightly to the left or right of the red bar, the ball will veer off fairly dramatically in either direction. Add in the game’s crazy wind and you will find your ball going out of bounds quite frequently. Consequently, you will have to perfectly guage slices and land the arrow exactly on the red line if you want it to travel straight. Even then, the wind will still blow the ball far off course.
I don’t mind a challenge, but the meter in this game is ridiculous, especially considering all of the other problems. It only gets harder depending on the character you choose, because the meter moves very fast for the third golfer. Maybe the sensitive meter would have worked if the rest of the game had been well designed, but it’s trash in its current form.
You need two controllers to play against the computer.
Let’s say you want to play against an opponent, but you can’t convince anyone to play Power Golf with you, which isn’t surprising. Luckily, you can play against the computer, but you’ll need two TurboGrafx 16 controllers to set up a match. That’s right, even a single player game requires two controllers. I’ve never seen this in any game let alone a golf title. In fact, some golf games allow people to share a single controller, so Power Golf really got this one ass backwards.
I usually play games very thoroughly and when it comes to golf I try to play through every mode several times to get a feel for it. After learning I needed two controllers for Power Golf, I refused to even touch the Match and Tournament Modes. Sure, I could have bought a second TG16 controller or set up an emulator to run two controllers (I often emulate to get screenshots anyway) but there was something so infuriating about the way the game goes out of its way to inconvenience players that I didn’t bother.
The User Interface hates you.
Sometimes I wonder if this game had been made out of pure spite, because just about every aspect of it is awful. This extends to the UI. Most golf games choose the appropriate club for you based on how far the ball is from the pin. The computer may not always be right, but it makes choosing your club more convenient. Of course, Power Golf hates you and does not suggest a club, so you have to cycle through the bag a lot.
To add insult to injury, the cursor that is used to aim the ball is really slow and the screen scrolls sluggishly up to the ball after every stroke. I don’t know why the UI is so bad, but it’s the worst I’ve seen in this type of game.
18 Holes of nothing.
There’s one final nail to hammer into this game’s coffin: The course sucks. Every hole is basically a straight shot from the bottom of the screen to the top. There are a few bunkers and ponds to spice things up, but every hole feels like it was slapped together in the most lazy way possible.
Also, there’s only one course. I often complain about golf games not having enough courses, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to play two or three courses of Power Golf.
Redeeming Qualities?
Ok, there’s a few things I actually like about Power Golf and it’s only right that I praise them. First of all, the graphics are nice. The color palette is very inviting and it’s interesting to see the TG16 replicate something so mundane as a golf course. The three playable golfers have decent models and animations as well, but you’re going to be staring intently at the hypersensitive meter when you swing, so I’m not sure if there’s a point to the animations.
I really enjoyed the music even though it was cheesey Japanese jazz-pop. The sound effects were also great and I would purposely hit the ball into trees sometimes just to hear the ball thunk against wood. And that’s about it as far as redeeming qualities go.
This game is despicable, don’t play it.
I don’t like giving out bad reviews and I try very hard to learn how to play a game before judging it, but this game just fails across the board. Games that were made years before it on less advanced consoles manage to put it to shame. It’s also sad that this is the only game of its kind on the TG16 (that I know of), because I really love the console.
At any rate, I don’t see any point in playing this game. It’s not even worth hate playing if you’re into bad games.
Thanks for reading my Power Golf review!
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