![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammerFor my own amusement, I’ve tracked down and played every single Game Boy era golf game I can find: 7 games for Game Boy, 6 for Game Boy Color, and 6 for Game Boy Advance. Yes, the OG GB really had the most. And since I went to all that effort, I went ahead and rated them. Even limited to one-paragraph quick-takes, rating them all makes for a long-ass post, thus the cuts.
Almost all of these use a 3-button-press mechanic for swinging the club, done as one continuous action: press to start the swing, as the power meter rises press to set the power, as the meter falls to zero press to set the accuracy of your shot. This naturally mimics the stages of a physical golf swing, a comparison some games make visually explicit. In most games, you can apply a couple modifiers (I call them “buffs”) to give the shot draw/fade and top-/backspin—it varies whether you set them before or during the shot.
If you want a TL,DR, the last is the best.
Game Boy:
Golf - A Nintendo release that’s basically a first draft of Mario Golf. The branding is teased: the overalled mustache guy is on the box cover, facing away, and if you squint your avatar (the only character available) looks like his badly rendered sprite. The play mechanics are very similar to the later games, but it’s missing a few critical features, the worst being there’s no indication how far a given club can hit, leaving you to guess from experience how much power to use for a Sand Wedge when you’re 67y to the hole, nor is there any indication of the effects of the terrain of your lie (that is, how much shooting in rough or a bunker reduces power and/or accuracy). Also, there’s no draw/fade/spin buffs. Putting works well, at least. 2/5
Golf Classic - This is basically a first draft of the next two PGA games (done by the same developers), and the shot mechanic is similar for all three. The power and accuracy phases in this one, though, don’t display the power/accuracy bars until after the fact: you set how hard you’re swinging by watching the animated avatar pull the club back, and have to snap it when the club reaches the ball. Nice touch. (Also, this one’s a 2-button mechanic: the first two steps are press-and-hold and release, rather than separate button presses.) The continually shifting wind is also a nice touch, but the way it’s displayed is annoying to interpret. More of a problem, judging the strength of your putt is a pain. Four possible characters to play, two of them women, yay. 3/5
PGA Tour 96 - Similar mechanic to the previous, but more polished, including a power bar as you shoot. Your character is shown from the side as you swing, instead of the typical behind, which is fine, but the animation’s kinda janky. Applying draw/fade/spin buffs is a bit tricky, and there’s only two characters, both men, boo. 3.5/5
PGA European Tour - Exactly the same as the previous, released a couple months later, only with courses from Europe instead of America. Same game, same score: 3.5/5
Jack Nicklaus Golf - This was unexpected: there’s no overhead perspective here. You can examine the hole map before you shoot, but after that, your only view as you aim and shoot is just above and behind your avatar, giving you a golfer’s perspective the whole time. I liked that. Judging the slope of greens is a bear, though, and unlike most games, putting is also a 3-button mechanic (most are just 2), making short putts really hard. Having Nicklaus’s own comments on various holes from around the world is interesting fanbait. 4/5
Pocket Golf - A Japan-only release, with not even a fan translation in sight. The general mechanics are pretty easy to figure out, though, if you’ve played a few of these. The sprites are way prettier than any of the above American-developed games. Aiming your shot, though, is annoying: the pointer is very short, which makes aiming both difficult and (given pixel sizes) imprecise. Decent but not outstanding. 3/5
Ultra Golf - A Konami game, which means also nice art, if not as pretty as Pocket Golf. The power bar is, this time, a circle arcing around your character as he swings his club (there’s only one character, a dude, boo). Same aiming issue as Pocket Golf, but draw/fade/spin buffs are easily set beforehand. 3/5
Game Boy Color:
Hole in One Golf - Ugh. No character choice, shoddy art, same low-res aiming as the previous two, and the accuracy mechanic is annoying as hell. Hard to believe it’s Japanese developed, actually. 1/5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 - Next iteration on the PGA series. The shooting mechanic has been refreshed to be more standard, but changing any shot setting, even your club, is awkward as hell. You can play as or against any of several PGA players of the time (including Woods) or a single random woman. The art and character sprites are ugly enough to make playing unpleasant. 2/5
Golf Ou - An untranslated Japan-only release with the name helpfully explained by its English subtitle: The King of Golf. Really pretty, good choice of characters, and the caddy (you get a caddy in this one) has lots of useful advice … in Japanese. Solid standard mechanic (including draw/fade/spin buffs). However, I’m knocking a full point off my rating because there’s no visual indicator of the greens’ slope (there are caddy notes … in Japanese), the perspective of greens is jacked, and your putting power is hard to gauge. Putting is almost half the game, dammit. 3.5/5
Pocket Golf! (different from the GB Pocket Golf) - Even better sprites, and a solid standard mechanic (including draw/fade/spin buffs set dynamically as you shoot). The way the landscape is heavily dithered keeps me from calling it actually pretty, but I appreciate the animated ball landings in three-quarters view (instead of staying top-down). Nice character choices, including equal numbers of gals and guys. 3.5/5
Mario Golf - Such a great game after all the previous. Solid mechanic, expansive gameplay and world, great characters, great RPG-esque leveling system. This was created by the same devs as Mario Golf 64 and released at almost the same time, and while the displays are completely different, given MG64 is fully 3D, the gameplay is almost identical (though with fewer IP characters). One nice detail: an indication of how much the lie will reduce your power—it’s a numeric range, which means how much power to use takes some arithmetic, but still useful. Given all this, it’s odd that the art and sprites are so clunky, making it look like an early Game Boy RPG that’s been colorized with an oversaturated palette. 4.5/5
Mobile Golf - A Japan-only game that’s basically Mario Golf 2—just with different courses and characters, and no story mode. There’s a fan translation patch that is perfectly serviceable, as long as mixing yards and meters doesn’t make your OCD twitch. The addition of two mini-golf courses makes up for losing the story. 4.5/5
Game Boy Advance:
Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf - Next iteration in the series, and this time the mechanic was made so much worse: the power gauge is a circle again, that’s small and moves too fast. The 3D landscape is rendered with bland textures, the buffs mechanic is janky, the slope markings on the green are jacked, and possibly worst of all, you can only play as Woods himself. 1/5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - At least EA learned from the previous mistake and completely revamped, well, everything. This is the other game with a 2-button one shot mechanic, but instead of the A/B buttons it uses the d-pad—and it’s janky as fuck: you have to precisely time switching from up to down, and do it instantaneously. You can play as a handful of PGA players or a single woman (who at least is an LPGA player this time), plus there’s more you can unlock. The sprites try for 3D realistism but are low-res enough they’re in that uncanny valley that so many GBA games have. One thing I will give it: this has the best tutorial of all these. 2/5
ESPN Final Round Golf / JGTO Kounin Golf Master Mobile: Japan Golf Tour Game - At the core, these are the same thing, at least as far as hitting the ball and the courses—the former was made by reskinning the latter. However, the adaptation changed the overall gameplay so much, I think of them as different games. The shot mechanic is standard, if a little awkward. Golf Master has good sprites and a choice of two characters, boy and girl, who play against a progression of JPT players of the time, making for a fun story mode. Final Round ditches any story, replacing it with playing as any of a dozen PGA players, all dudes, boo, all rendered in that uncanny faux realism further weakened by bland animations, yuck. One amusing detail (in both) is the 3D flyover of each hole before teeing up: it’s animated using 2D sprites and such a short render distance that it glitches so, so hard it’s almost charming. Final Round: 3/5 / Kounin Golf Master: 4/5
Kurohige no Golf Shiyou yo (Kurohige’s Let’s Golf) - Holy shit, it’s a fully 3D game for GBA. It manages this by using very large polygons for the landscape, but it’s fully and dynamically 3D. The very pretty sprites are 2D, pasted over that low-res world, but peoples, it’s still damn cool. The gameplay is not as expansive as the Mario Golfs, but there’s still a lot there, and the shot mechanic is solid. Note this was a Japan-only release, with no translation. Kurohige (“Blackbeard”) is a character from a minor franchise known in English as Pop-Up Pirate, and if they used character designs from the anime, that would explain their quality. 5/5
Mario Golf Advance Tour - Takes everything good about Mario Golf and improves it, with the art and sprites being only the most obvious. There’s a dynamic indication of where you’re aiming, given your current settings. The power bar is no longer just visual, and it adjusts based on the lie (so much less arithmetic). Same four courses as Mario Golf, but with most holes revamped (a few are unchanged), and the bonus course is ridiculous and a total hoot. This is, quite simply, the best golf retro game I know—only Neo Turf Masters and the PSP versions of Everybody’s Golf come close. 5/5, no notes
Not that I ever get obsessive or anything.
---L.
Subject quote from Espresso, Sabrina Carpenter.
Almost all of these use a 3-button-press mechanic for swinging the club, done as one continuous action: press to start the swing, as the power meter rises press to set the power, as the meter falls to zero press to set the accuracy of your shot. This naturally mimics the stages of a physical golf swing, a comparison some games make visually explicit. In most games, you can apply a couple modifiers (I call them “buffs”) to give the shot draw/fade and top-/backspin—it varies whether you set them before or during the shot.
If you want a TL,DR, the last is the best.
Game Boy:
Golf - A Nintendo release that’s basically a first draft of Mario Golf. The branding is teased: the overalled mustache guy is on the box cover, facing away, and if you squint your avatar (the only character available) looks like his badly rendered sprite. The play mechanics are very similar to the later games, but it’s missing a few critical features, the worst being there’s no indication how far a given club can hit, leaving you to guess from experience how much power to use for a Sand Wedge when you’re 67y to the hole, nor is there any indication of the effects of the terrain of your lie (that is, how much shooting in rough or a bunker reduces power and/or accuracy). Also, there’s no draw/fade/spin buffs. Putting works well, at least. 2/5
Golf Classic - This is basically a first draft of the next two PGA games (done by the same developers), and the shot mechanic is similar for all three. The power and accuracy phases in this one, though, don’t display the power/accuracy bars until after the fact: you set how hard you’re swinging by watching the animated avatar pull the club back, and have to snap it when the club reaches the ball. Nice touch. (Also, this one’s a 2-button mechanic: the first two steps are press-and-hold and release, rather than separate button presses.) The continually shifting wind is also a nice touch, but the way it’s displayed is annoying to interpret. More of a problem, judging the strength of your putt is a pain. Four possible characters to play, two of them women, yay. 3/5
PGA Tour 96 - Similar mechanic to the previous, but more polished, including a power bar as you shoot. Your character is shown from the side as you swing, instead of the typical behind, which is fine, but the animation’s kinda janky. Applying draw/fade/spin buffs is a bit tricky, and there’s only two characters, both men, boo. 3.5/5
PGA European Tour - Exactly the same as the previous, released a couple months later, only with courses from Europe instead of America. Same game, same score: 3.5/5
Jack Nicklaus Golf - This was unexpected: there’s no overhead perspective here. You can examine the hole map before you shoot, but after that, your only view as you aim and shoot is just above and behind your avatar, giving you a golfer’s perspective the whole time. I liked that. Judging the slope of greens is a bear, though, and unlike most games, putting is also a 3-button mechanic (most are just 2), making short putts really hard. Having Nicklaus’s own comments on various holes from around the world is interesting fanbait. 4/5
Pocket Golf - A Japan-only release, with not even a fan translation in sight. The general mechanics are pretty easy to figure out, though, if you’ve played a few of these. The sprites are way prettier than any of the above American-developed games. Aiming your shot, though, is annoying: the pointer is very short, which makes aiming both difficult and (given pixel sizes) imprecise. Decent but not outstanding. 3/5
Ultra Golf - A Konami game, which means also nice art, if not as pretty as Pocket Golf. The power bar is, this time, a circle arcing around your character as he swings his club (there’s only one character, a dude, boo). Same aiming issue as Pocket Golf, but draw/fade/spin buffs are easily set beforehand. 3/5
Game Boy Color:
Hole in One Golf - Ugh. No character choice, shoddy art, same low-res aiming as the previous two, and the accuracy mechanic is annoying as hell. Hard to believe it’s Japanese developed, actually. 1/5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 - Next iteration on the PGA series. The shooting mechanic has been refreshed to be more standard, but changing any shot setting, even your club, is awkward as hell. You can play as or against any of several PGA players of the time (including Woods) or a single random woman. The art and character sprites are ugly enough to make playing unpleasant. 2/5
Golf Ou - An untranslated Japan-only release with the name helpfully explained by its English subtitle: The King of Golf. Really pretty, good choice of characters, and the caddy (you get a caddy in this one) has lots of useful advice … in Japanese. Solid standard mechanic (including draw/fade/spin buffs). However, I’m knocking a full point off my rating because there’s no visual indicator of the greens’ slope (there are caddy notes … in Japanese), the perspective of greens is jacked, and your putting power is hard to gauge. Putting is almost half the game, dammit. 3.5/5
Pocket Golf! (different from the GB Pocket Golf) - Even better sprites, and a solid standard mechanic (including draw/fade/spin buffs set dynamically as you shoot). The way the landscape is heavily dithered keeps me from calling it actually pretty, but I appreciate the animated ball landings in three-quarters view (instead of staying top-down). Nice character choices, including equal numbers of gals and guys. 3.5/5
Mario Golf - Such a great game after all the previous. Solid mechanic, expansive gameplay and world, great characters, great RPG-esque leveling system. This was created by the same devs as Mario Golf 64 and released at almost the same time, and while the displays are completely different, given MG64 is fully 3D, the gameplay is almost identical (though with fewer IP characters). One nice detail: an indication of how much the lie will reduce your power—it’s a numeric range, which means how much power to use takes some arithmetic, but still useful. Given all this, it’s odd that the art and sprites are so clunky, making it look like an early Game Boy RPG that’s been colorized with an oversaturated palette. 4.5/5
Mobile Golf - A Japan-only game that’s basically Mario Golf 2—just with different courses and characters, and no story mode. There’s a fan translation patch that is perfectly serviceable, as long as mixing yards and meters doesn’t make your OCD twitch. The addition of two mini-golf courses makes up for losing the story. 4.5/5
Game Boy Advance:
Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf - Next iteration in the series, and this time the mechanic was made so much worse: the power gauge is a circle again, that’s small and moves too fast. The 3D landscape is rendered with bland textures, the buffs mechanic is janky, the slope markings on the green are jacked, and possibly worst of all, you can only play as Woods himself. 1/5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - At least EA learned from the previous mistake and completely revamped, well, everything. This is the other game with a 2-button one shot mechanic, but instead of the A/B buttons it uses the d-pad—and it’s janky as fuck: you have to precisely time switching from up to down, and do it instantaneously. You can play as a handful of PGA players or a single woman (who at least is an LPGA player this time), plus there’s more you can unlock. The sprites try for 3D realistism but are low-res enough they’re in that uncanny valley that so many GBA games have. One thing I will give it: this has the best tutorial of all these. 2/5
ESPN Final Round Golf / JGTO Kounin Golf Master Mobile: Japan Golf Tour Game - At the core, these are the same thing, at least as far as hitting the ball and the courses—the former was made by reskinning the latter. However, the adaptation changed the overall gameplay so much, I think of them as different games. The shot mechanic is standard, if a little awkward. Golf Master has good sprites and a choice of two characters, boy and girl, who play against a progression of JPT players of the time, making for a fun story mode. Final Round ditches any story, replacing it with playing as any of a dozen PGA players, all dudes, boo, all rendered in that uncanny faux realism further weakened by bland animations, yuck. One amusing detail (in both) is the 3D flyover of each hole before teeing up: it’s animated using 2D sprites and such a short render distance that it glitches so, so hard it’s almost charming. Final Round: 3/5 / Kounin Golf Master: 4/5
Kurohige no Golf Shiyou yo (Kurohige’s Let’s Golf) - Holy shit, it’s a fully 3D game for GBA. It manages this by using very large polygons for the landscape, but it’s fully and dynamically 3D. The very pretty sprites are 2D, pasted over that low-res world, but peoples, it’s still damn cool. The gameplay is not as expansive as the Mario Golfs, but there’s still a lot there, and the shot mechanic is solid. Note this was a Japan-only release, with no translation. Kurohige (“Blackbeard”) is a character from a minor franchise known in English as Pop-Up Pirate, and if they used character designs from the anime, that would explain their quality. 5/5
Mario Golf Advance Tour - Takes everything good about Mario Golf and improves it, with the art and sprites being only the most obvious. There’s a dynamic indication of where you’re aiming, given your current settings. The power bar is no longer just visual, and it adjusts based on the lie (so much less arithmetic). Same four courses as Mario Golf, but with most holes revamped (a few are unchanged), and the bonus course is ridiculous and a total hoot. This is, quite simply, the best golf retro game I know—only Neo Turf Masters and the PSP versions of Everybody’s Golf come close. 5/5, no notes
Not that I ever get obsessive or anything.
---L.
Subject quote from Espresso, Sabrina Carpenter.
no subject
Date: 8 August 2025 12:21 pm (UTC)Somehow this makes me picture Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, but with golf.
no subject
Date: 8 August 2025 12:50 pm (UTC)That’s not entirely wrong. It’s a common game structure, and the rival matches parts of the Mario Golf games use it too.