Golf

There is very little to say about Golf - it's exactly what it says on the tin. It's not exactly an impressive game, and I'm sure there are better golf games out there (not just in general, but also on the NES), but Golf is a perfectly inoffensive sports game that I'm sure you can get a bit of fun out of. A bit relaxing at times.

Golf games are typically pretty simplistic affairs. To gauge what makes a golf game great or just so-so can be a very subtle endeavor, as there's often little variance between them. For decades now, most of these games share the same basic gameplay elements. Aim your shot, take your swing using a power and accuracy meter, and then finish up with the putt. This mechanic had to start somewhere, though, as some of the more rudimentary takes on the sport such as Golf for the Atari 2600 used their own unique mechanics that weren't always entirely viable.

In comes Golf for the NES, a game with really only one purpose. Golf exists to set the ground rules for the entire genre for years to come. There are no flourishes, no extra content, no unlockables. Just you, and one eighteen hole course. The most advanced concept in the game actually is that the game allows you to change clubs at all. Between your various irons, wedges, and drivers, you have a few options, that all mostly just boil down to how far you want to hit the ball. It's not so bare bones that there's nothing else to worry about though, of course. Wind is a factor, and all the hazards you'd expect on a golf course such as water and sand traps are present.

The holes themselves are all pretty unique for the time. None of them feel too samey. One of the two biggest problems, though, is that if you hit the ball anywhere that isn't fairway or light rough, your ball is considered out of bounds, and you have the take the swing again. So if you happen to land just a pixel too far into a treeline, you're out of luck. Some of the courses are downright devilish with the amount of forestation you have to overcome as well, sometimes requiring very precise shots, lest you roll just too far past your mark. On one hand, it's understandable why this course was taken, as it would have potentially been difficult to mechanically handle balls flying out of the forest while incurring a fair gameplay penalty. I just can't help but wonder if another solution would have worked better.

Since there's no real sense of dimension in the game, putting is handled with arrows pointing in certain directions to imply slopes in the green. Your ball will lazily roll in the general direction of these arrows, but it never feels particularly insurmountable. This works fine, as one of the general standards of golf design is to make it look hard without actually being hard. Create that feeling of overcoming obstacles, even if the feeling is vaguely artificial. However, there is a second very technical issue that this game has that keeps it from being exceptional. Unlike future golf games, where you have free reign to aim your shot wherever, Golf only provides you with a few preset angles to aim at. So instead of smoothly gliding to the left and to the right, your cursor moves almost more like as if it were pointing to numbers on a clock. This makes setting up some shots very frustrating, and you often have to compromise your strategy on a hole with a sub-optimal backup plan.

The rest of the game's polish is pretty minimal. Your character takes the vague likeness of Mario, and that's about the most exciting thing about the presentation. There's no music, and the only sound effects are you hitting your ball and listening to it soar through the air. Basic effects play when sinking the ball or going out of bounds, but there's really not a lot to tantalize you throughout your experience. At the end of the day, there's nothing particularly exceptional about Golf. It's perfectly average. But it did also carry the entire genre on its laurels for decades to come, so it's still an important game despite its relative passive existence in isolation. Not a bad way to kill some time, but there are better golf games to spend time with in the present.

Jeremy Parish called this both the first and last great golf game, because it defined the gameplay formula for practically all golf games to follow: So wide was its scope that there was nothing left to add, other than quirky titles that included a more niche aproach to golf sensibilities like adding sentient balls, or character power-ups.

NES Golf is so clinically simple it can even feel morbid. The lack of music and the sparsity of the sound effects certainly does not help to this(and it's weird because every early Famicom game had at least a title jingle), but you are left with a very working system that can be adapted to any future golf game or setting. You have a choice of clubs. Your proper timing on the power meter determines not only the strength of your swing, but also the hook and slice trajectories, and you can also utilise(however weak) the wind effects to your benefit, across many interesting courses that provide challenges with a multitude of lakes, islands, and sand bunkers. That there is lack of explanation what the controls and clubs do, and that the par count is short is very stern, but don't take it to heart; The game is best played with a second who is just as clueless as you, and they should be your measurement of how good you'll find yourself in Golf. You can also try golfing in Wii Sports, as the courses in there are translated perfectly 1-to-1 from here but sure as hell makes for a more intelligible time.

Below I will explain a bit the basic principles of how the clubs and controls work.