The high demand for the Wii continues in large part because of Nintendo’s inspired decision to include Wii Sports in the package, a polished game that makes a compelling sales pitch for the Wii’s motion controls. Nintendo’s breakout hit is just the latest in a long lineage of sports simulations. In this series, Geek Out New York looks at the 8-bit progenitors of Wii Sports. Are the modern Wii games really so much more fun than the sports titles we played “back in the day”? Yes, yes they are.

Today: Golf.

Of the games in the Wii Sports lineup, golf gets the least attention. Tennis and boxing show up at award shows and on late-night television, baseball’s legendary TV-smashing abilities have inspired commercial parodies, and bowling seems to be the choice of old people. Quiet and cerebral, golf lacks the sweaty, media-friendly suspense of the other games, but it’s still a good time—especially if you have two players. The controls require a nuanced touch, just as in real golf, and my only complaint is that the course selection (nine holes) is too limited.

Even NES Golf, originally released in 1984, offers a full 18 holes, which you attack with a character who looks like Mario’s old, grizzled uncle. He smokes Camel lights, likes biker chicks, and did some stuff he’s not too proud of in the ’70s, but that’s all behind us now, so are we gonna play some golf here or what? [Hacking cough.]

The Golf course designers didn’t bother with the concepts of “fringe” or “rough.” In this game, you either hit your drive down the fairway (light green) or you land out of bounds (trees). In the latter case, a humiliating BOOP…BOOP…BOOP sound effect alerts you that you will have to re-hit your shot, you pathetic duffer.

As if the margin for error weren’t already thin enough, the game also features a course design from Mephistopheles’ sketchbook. The general unfairness is exemplified by the hole above, in which you will get wet.¹

Realism plays more of a role in Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf, the 1989 cartridge that…I’m sorry, I’m a little winded from that title. I think I need to sit down for a second.

Whew, OK, I’m back. I hope you enjoyed the wait, because JNGEHOMCG is all about waiting. Back in ’89, the crack staff at Accolade² surveyed the golf games on the market and said, “You know what our competitors forgot to include in their golf simulations? Long moments of boredom.”

So after each shot, you have to sit through an interminable loading screen while the game renders the scenery in quasi-3D. Most NES games would just throw up a default “water” or “sandtrap” background to move things along, but JNGEHOMCG strives for realism, and as you see above, it’s well worth the wait. Just look at those trees! And that brown-ish stuff!

My favorite moments come when pro golfer and apparent burn victim Jack Nicklaus appears to tell you why the upcoming hole made his top-18 list. At first, Jack’s explanations are pretty gripping—the most dangerous tee shot in all of golf!—but toward the end, his comments get more esoteric, like Hole #16’s blurb, “Most difficult second shot on a straightaway par four.” Wow…?

The reverent tone of JNGEHOMCG stands in contrast to its contemporary, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf. As noted previously in these pages, this game features absolutely no fighting, but the game does offer you the opportunity to choose from one of four colorful characters.

They all play pretty much the same, except for Miracle Chosuke. As with most Japanese characters in games of that era, Chosuke is far superior to his lazy Western compatriots. The game is near-unplayable with the other three, even Trevino himself, “Super Mex.”

Unlike the original Nintendo Golf, Fighting Golf has rough around its fairways. In fact, rough is the signature feature of the game’s two courses. Every hole is pockmarked with black “Super Rough™,” which looks and plays like a greenside tar pit. Here’s me (as Miracle Chosuke, naturally) stuck in a patch of the stuff on my way to a septuple bogey.

Wii baseball may get all the attention, but I’m betting that Fighting Golf was responsible for a few hurled controllers in its time, too. It just goes to show, the more things change, the more Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf is a terrible game that you should not play, ever.

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1. The course in Wii Sports golf comprises nine 3D revisions of holes from NES Golf, so in this case there is a direct “lineage.” ↑

2. I know the Jack Nicklaus title screen says “Konami,” but the game was originally programmed by Accolade, and I want my imaginary anecdote to be as accurate as possible. ↑