#53 - Bandai Golf: Challenge Pebble Beach

Just your average white 80s guy hittin' the links!



Don't let the game's rugged old-school charm fool you.

As soon as I busted this game out and the unassuming intro music blared through my speakers, my wife declared, "Oh, that looks like fun." Such a sarcastic statement pretty much sums up this game in a nutshell. I have little desire to play a hardcore golfing simulation for my Nintendo, but I will, as this Quest requires - nay, demands - it from me. But when a sports simulation's menu system is unnavigable and the game itself is nigh unplayable, I have no choice but to stop playing and start scathing.

Let me make this clear, Bandai: a golf game, even a simulation, should not be a slogfest. Getting bogged down in menu semantics and "what's the best club for this particular hole," etc. is all wrong; especially when we're dealing with our awesome, but technologically limited friend, the Nintendo. I may be - well, no, I definitely am - overexaggerating a tad, but seriously, when you pick up a golf game for the Nintendo, don't you want to just start clubbing balls? Let me look at the wind direction and velocity, let me look at a list of clubs, give me a Mario lookalike as my golfer and a meter that determines my clubbing strength, and then let me hit that sucker. It sounds simple enough because it is. Don't put a random mishmash of statistics and choices at the top of the screen hoping the player will just "work it out."

Yes, I finally got to a place in the game where I could hit the ball, but even that couldn't be a simple affair. Trying to describe the action and effort it takes to hit the ball is simply beyond my skill as a writer at this point. This isn't a joke, this is the honest-to-God truth. I will say this: the timing you are required to have to hit your golf ball doesn't make any sense. When you set up the meter for a shot, and your poorly pixelated human winds up to hit the ball, you think he should hit it at a different spot than he actually does. A sin against mankind? I think, yes.

The technical aspects of this game are sub-par (YES I DID GO THERE). Graphics: uninspiring. Music: cheery and unsettling. Controls: Can't say as I didn't really 'control' anything in the game. Give me a few years and some golf lessons and I'll probably end up rewriting this review, but I highly doubt the game will suck any less. Meanwhile, life as we know it continues.

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