Baseball (NES Review) Arcade Archives: Vs. Baseball (Switch Review)

August 30, 2025 by 6 Comments

Baseball
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom
Released December 7, 1983
Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Arcade Archives: Vs. Baseball
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Original Platform: Arcade
Released June 19, 2020
Arcade Release: April, 1984
Originally Developed by Nintendo
Re-Release Published by Hamster
$7.99 struck out in the making of this review.

No infield fly rule. That’s just peachy.

“Seriously, Cathy?” Yep, seriously. Hey, I’m sporty! And by that I mean I watch sports. Play? Hah. I actually had to stop and think if I’ve even run once in the entire 21st century. Running? That sh*t looks positively exhausting! I used to golf. You know, the sport where you’re allowed to bypass the overwhelming majority of the “moving around” part of the game and instead drive a motorized carriage right up to the ball. Or, if you’re especially lazy, pay someone to drive the cart for you (thumbs up). Really, I’m only doing Nintendo’s 1983 baseball game because it was designed by Big Shiggy Style and it’s probably his worst game ever. I mean, it has to be, right? I’ve heard people say Baseball was good for its time. Was it, though? I wouldn’t be born for another five-and-a-half years after it came out so I’m just guessing over here, but I can’t imagine people in 1983 would be fine with how this plays. This is pretty frick’n horrendous.

Exclusively on the coin-op, the defense changes camera angles. The NES/Famicom version doesn’t do this. BTW, this is the only game I won of Vs. Baseball. Every time I scored a run, the next batter the CPU got immediately hit a dinger on the first playable pitch I gave. Okay, not every time but it felt like it.

The one thing that kinda, sorta feels okay..ish? The batting. It’s fine, really! I’m guessing the majority of video baseball games from the golden age focused on batting, and I could see how maybe in 1983, this felt like a close approximation of America’s pastime. You can scoot around the batter’s box and there’s a nice crack when you make contact. It feels appropriately impactful. So, that’s nice. Nothing else is even in the ballpark, though. Like base running? The AI runners are woefully stupid and heavily unresponsive. See these two screenshots where I got what should be an extra bases hit? Well, for whatever reason, even after the ball hit the ground, the runners tagged back to the bases during a live ball then sat there and stared like dumb sh*ts while the fielder limped to the ball, ignoring my “RUN MOTHER F*CKERS!” command that I was giving the entire time. What should have scored the runner on second base ended up instead being a double play for the other team. If players pulled that sh*t in real life, any manger would have rushed the field and murdered them with a bat. No jury would convict them.

Another example of the brain dead base running: if there’s a man on first and second and the batter hits a ball that IMMEDIATELY touches the ground in front of home plate, the runners will tag-up before running. This is a force-out situation, so why the goddamn f*ck is the first instinct of the runners to tag-up before they start to run to the next base? It’s not humanly possible to react fast enough to give the command not to do this. This is basic, BASIC baseball stuff that has to work every single time, and it doesn’t. I don’t even know why they bothered with running controls because, half the time, the runners don’t listen. They certainly don’t when it comes to sending them to specific bases. They seemed more likely to listen when I gave the “all runners advance” sign. Even then, OBVIOUS ROUTINE doubles and even triples were ignored by the base runners, or even worse: they’d literally run the other way, back to the base they were on and tag up first. Mother f*cker, it’s a base hit! RUN! Little kids playing tee-ball aren’t this inept at the sport! By the way, the CPU opponent’s runners DO NOT have this base running problem. They know when it’s safe to run. That proves it can be done, even in 1983.

There’s no cap on the amount of times the CPU can attempt to pick-off a guy on base, even if you’re not doing anything. I literally pressed no buttons, but it’s baseball and guys step off the base. You would think the arcade game would have a peppier speed, but actually, I think Vs. Baseball tries to pick off runners even more. How many times in a row? I counted nine consecutive attempts four separate times. That’s nine times where not a single button was pressed but the CPU did something besides throw the next pitch. You know Hamster, maybe you shouldn’t have included the five minute caravan mode. It’s not really suitable for it.

What’s with the points you see on the Vs. Baseball screenshots? It’s how the game decides when a player needs to pay to continue. You don’t get a full game per quarter, but instead of having you pay every three innings (which would make sense) every single action in the game (except an attempt at a pick-off) eats up points, on both offense and defense. Are you playing defense and throwing a ball to a base to prevent advancement? That’ll cost you points. On offense and swinging the bat? That takes points too. Foul balls? Yep, both offensively and defensively. So does running the bases, while you get 30 points back for scoring a runner. Then again, you lose a lot more than 30 points when the other team hits a bomb out of the park. I gave up a two-run homer and it deducted 90 points.

There’s no license but the uniforms actually match the colors of six MLB teams (NES) or six Japanese baseball teams (Famicom), including the Chunichi Dragons, who I recognize from Mr. Baseball, a genuinely underrated sports film. If you can find it, check it out. The funny thing is, I don’t LOVE baseball (it’s fine) but I love baseball movies. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told people that the ending of A League of Their Own makes zero sense. The climatic game, I mean. There’s two outs, two on, and up to the plate steps Dotty Henson, the best hitter in the league. Yeah, she gets walked. 100% of the time, especially since the Peaches’ second best hitter, Marla Hooch, got married and didn’t play in the post season. They needed to create a situation where Dotty’s sister Kit, the plucky pitcher who got traded from the Peaches, almost gave up the game to her sister. But having Dotty blast an empty-bases homer would have been better than what they actually did, because what they wrote, simply put, would NEVER HAPPEN! Dotty would never ever ever get pitched to in that situation. They would have juiced the bases to create a force-out situation at every corner. I might have wrote this review just to have an excuse to talk about that on my blog.

If you were playing this on a real cabinet, it would take about a dollar to finish, and after a certain benchmark, the points go away and it lets you finish the game. To put it in perspective how STUPID this system is, right before going to press I played one last game using Arcade Archives’ Hi-Score mode (default settings, no pausing allowed, cheating impossible). On the literal first pitch I was given, I hit an inside-the-park home run. I might have scored a run, but I still had less points (238) than I started with (250) when the first batter stepped up to the plate. Dumb.

Note: In this clip of the inside-the-park homer, you can also see the lengthy pauses at each base. I’m LITERALLY giving the go sign the entire time. The runner should never have stopped! I was waving them forward right from the start!

While the base running and unresponsiveness is enough to assure a NO! by itself, the defense would have earned it too. All the fielding is done automatically. All you have to do is throw the ball. That’s fine with me, actually. I did the same thing when I played Ken Griffey Slugfest on my N64 as a kid. But, because the field is built to scale, the fielders run like they have each foot caught in a bear trap. Okay, I get it. They’re trying to simulate their approximate location if it were a full-sized baseball diamond. I’d be fine with that if the defense was reliable. It’s not. The defense’s judgement in general is pretty bad, so even something as routine as a pop fly could be dropped. The foul line is especially dangerous, as players often have to move up and and down to line up with the ball. This is where the slow speed of the fielding really screws you. However, unlike base running, this one works both ways. The CPU drops fly balls all the time too, and when it happens, it’s almost like they lose track of where the ball is in the sky. At least the pitching is fine. There’s four pitches, all controlled with the d-pad, though I couldn’t get screwballs across the plate. I’d prefer a little more room to mess with the ball, but eh, the base running is what kills Baseball. The runners are constantly tagging-up when they don’t need to, and there is literally no basis for this in baseball. I’ve never seen any game at any level that looks like this. They could have done better, even in 1983.

For whatever reason, I hit a LOT more home runs in Vs. Baseball than I did standard NES/Famicom Baseball.

Okay, so this review MIGHT seem silly to have done. But $7.99 is not an insignificant amount of money. You can buy a LOT of games for under $8 on the eShop these days. If Hamster had bundled it with Tennis, Soccer, and maybe even Golf, that would be one thing. $8 for THIS? And one of the special modes doesn’t REALLY work because the CPU might guzzle most of the five minutes trying to catch a runner stealing. You can’t stop the runners from getting leads, so there’s really no way to prevent getting caught in an agonizing cycle of pick off attempts. Both it and hi-score mode are certainly luck-based. It’s kind of nauseating. I know that the real goal with Baseball was simply to look and play better than any home video baseball did in 1983. Okay, MAYBE mission accomplished there. For that reason, some would say it’s unfair to call this Miyamoto’s worst game. It’s not an invalid argument. And for what it’s worth, I’m not calling this Nintendo’s worst game. The batting works fine. That raises it just out of the WOAT discussion all by itself. I’d rather play THIS than Ice Climber.

In Vs. Baseball, getting beaned is labeled “DEAD.” Jeez, how hard was that ball thrown? Only one person has ever been killed by getting hit by a pitch in major league history. His name was Ray Chapman. I can’t believe I know that guy’s name off the top of my head but I can’t tell you any of my nieces or nephew’s middle names.

The only reason I think Baseball is fair game in the “worst Nintendo game” discussion is because Nintendo keeps re-releasing it, which is a constant reminder that this is a BAD game of video baseball. Slow. Unresponsive. The behavior from the CPU fielding or base running doesn’t resemble what you expect from people who are in baseball uniforms. That’s what kills it for me. I might have joked about it earlier, but all my longtime readers know I legitimately love sports. The reason is simple: I love seeing athletes compete at the highest level. For whatever reason, it captures my imagination. That’s why, for me to really enjoy video sports, I need the fundamentals perfect. The GAME doesn’t have to be perfect, but the basics do. There’s no fantasy without that. No immersion. With Nintendo’s famous Baseball? I can’t suspend my disbelief, unless I’m pretending this is a celebrity softball game played with a three drink minimum. Hell, even then I think the players ought to be able to tell the difference between a line drive base hit and a pop fly.
Verdict: NO! and NO!

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight (1984 Arcade Review)

January 12, 2023 by 6 Comments

Owwww. Ow ow ow ow ow. Owwie. My hands. My beautiful, bony hands. What the hell were they thinking with this one? Look, I’ve never been the biggest Balloon Fight fan in the world. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of Joust, either. So here’s a warning to fans: maybe take this review with a grain of salt. Balloon Fight has never been for me. But, it could be with enough twists to the formula, which is why Vs. Balloon Fight got my attention. Of all the Nintendo Vs. System coin-ops, Balloon Fight has the most profound change to the NES counterpart. Well, besides Vs. Duck Hunt, where you can shoot the dog in bonus rounds (though you’re not supposed to). It’s the same concept: flap your arms to fly, and then come crashing down on top of enemies to pop their balloons. After that, you then can hit them a second time as they parachute down, or kick them off the ledge once they land, Mario Bros.-style. So, yea, in a nutshell, Balloon Fight is really just Joust with an extra hit-point and parachutes instead of eggs. The big difference over its NES counterpart, besides having a lot more levels, is that Vs. Balloon Fight is not a single-screen game. In the coin-op, the size of the playfield is doubled vertically and you have to scroll the screen upwards. It makes for a more exciting, intense experience. Enemies might come flying out of nowhere (especially when bumpers are added after six stages) creating a chaotic atmosphere that somehow never feels cheap because you ought to know better than to leave yourself wide open from the unseen menaces above. It should be great!

Sigh.

Here comes the “but..” Like the Starks say: nothing counts before the “but.”

Vs. Balloon Fight has absolutely brutal gravity. The amount of flapping it requires is completely unreasonable by any standard. The NES version allows you to maneuver with a steady pulse of tapping the button. But, for a game that you’re expected to pay two bits per session, that won’t do at all. You have to absolutely button-mash to maintain your flight, Track ‘n Field-style. I’m not having a pity-party for myself here, but I literally physically cannot button mash to this degree anymore. Thankfully, my family, including my 12-year-old sister, also couldn’t believe how furiously you had to tap the buttons to maintain your flight. Again, I’m not a fan of the NES version, but I think I’d remember if this was one of the reasons why. Just to make sure, I threw on the home version on Switch Online, and it took me only a few seconds to verify the gravity for the arcade version isn’t like the NES version at all. The worst part of this whole issue with Vs. Balloon Fight is, if you start to come down, the gravity seems to further intensify, requiring even faster flapping to regain your momentum. Maybe that’s more “realistic” but it’s a frick’n video game about a guy in a balloon dueling to the death with birds using balloons themselves. To hell with realism! And why the heck didn’t anyone care this much about realistic gravity when it was Pinball? The gravity especially affected me in the wide-open bonus stages, which require you to chase down balloons that rise out four chimneys. I would inevitably lose my strength, and any attempt at recovery was hopeless and I’d crash pathetically to the ground with balloons still rising.

In addition to the crushing gravity, the walls and ceilings seem to have a lot more bounce to them. This can be problematic near the water. The enemies tend to do what I call “ride the current” and drift across a straight line, going through one side of the screen and coming out the other, and this will likely include one that hovers just above the water line, where the big fish will jump up to snatch you. Since there’s often platforms right above you, I tended to bounce off them and make myself hover too close to the water. I lost more lives to falling in the drink than I did to the enemies, easily. Well, partial credit for the bumpers. Those things ought to have warning signs. And yes, the fish will eat the enemies too, and it’s ALWAYS hilarious when it happens!

On the NES, you can hold the B-Button to autoflap. Thankfully, Arcade Archives games almost always have an option on the button mapping menu to turn-on autofire. Even better is that you can set the speed, and this is one of those games where that matters greatly. In fact, I took advantage of it and set a different flap speed to each face button (kinky, right?). It works great! Hey, the game’s now completely playable, and you get to appreciate what is actually a massive improvement on the Joust formula. Fun characters. Lots of charm. The combat has weight and my beloved OOMPH and it feels impactful to crash a balloon, complete with satisfying POP sound! It always brought a smile to my face seeing the sad look of an enemy as it slowly drifted to its potential doom. Of course, they can turn the tables on you if you wait too long, pumping a new balloon and upgrading to a more aggressive level of AI. There were also moments I got sadistic glee out of. Like having a stage with lots of bumpers, and I’m at the top of the level and suddenly I hear the fish jumping up and down, and then a few seconds later a bonus bubble starts to rise onto the screen, meaning an enemy just got eaten off-screen. Side note: I’d like to think that the bubbles are the enemy souls going to Heaven and bursting them sends them straight to Hell. Or maybe it stops them from being resurrected. Either way is bliss!

I did NOT die from this. When you take too much time to finish a stage, the clouds tap three mountains and cast Ball Lightning at you. It bounces around the stage and is an instakill even if you have two balloons. But, right here, more than half of it hit my body and I survived. That might be the most generous collision box I’ve seen in an arcade game.

Now, here’s why the gravity should be a deal breaker: because in the two modes designed specifically to compete for online high scores, you can’t turn on autofire. Yes, there’s online leaderboards in the main mode too, but you can cheat like you’ve been made an honorary Houston Astro in those. In addition to all scores counting no matter what adjustments you make to the game’s default settings (including giving yourself extra lives), you can use the interrupt save state feature. Until you game over, you can keep returning to the main menu and restarting from where you last saved. I used this to put myself 4th on the all-time leaderboard, because screw it, why not? Meanwhile, if you so much as pause the game in Hi-Score or the five minute Caravan mode, the game is over. You can’t just continue and must restart the game. While future releases of Arcade Archives would allow autofire in Hi-Score/Caravan, since it makes no sense to ban them when everyone has the option to turn them on and thus it’s a level playfield, they’re disabled here. So, 66% of the game requires you to mash buttons more than any game not based around the Olympics should, and those are that have protection from cheating. I figured this was an easy NO! Well, no, because it’s not 66% of the package where autofire is disabled. It’s 50% of it.

Let’s talk about co-op.

My promise to my readers in 2023: I will make a good faith effort to take the multiplayer for a test drive in games more often.

Being a Nintendo Vs. System release, a real Vs. Balloon Fight has two screens, which allows for two separate games to be played at once OR for a two-screened co-op experience. On a single Nintendo Switch, this is represented by two side-by-side mini-screens. Or, if you each own a separate copy of Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight, each player can have their own screen with one of the players hosting a game. I wasn’t willing to spend $16 on this, so Angela and me played on one screen “cooperatively” in quotation marks that feel ashamed to be associated with such an obvious lie. The only cooperation we showed was our mutual understanding that the two of us would be spending the next hour trying to assassinate each-other. Oh sure, we were bound to kill a few enemies would die along the way too. You know, in the crossfire. But really, once the game started with me immediately making a beeline for her and popping one of her balloons, sh*t was on. And guess what? It was a lot of fun, but it also further exposed some obvious weaknesses in Vs. Balloon Fight.

YOU MURDERER!

If a player runs out of lives, they can’t just re-up without issue. When either player has a game over, the action pauses and goes to the continue screen. If a player continues, the level restarts from the beginning. Since the other player was likely to be on their last life, we took to just feeding ourselves to the fish as soon as the game restarted so that we’d both have full lives to continue the fratricide. I get that it was 1984 and jump-in continues weren’t the commonplace practice yet, but it really hurts the flow of the multiplayer mode, especially when you’re having a blast killing each-other. It also sort of renders competing for points completely pointless. If you’re losing, pull a Tonya Harding and whack the other player. Your score resets to zero if you die. If you got a high score, too bad. That’s fine though. We had a jolly good time playing aggressively against each-other while also dealing with the enemies. We came to appreciate a comically well-timed betrayal when one of us was actually dealing with the baddies.

We’d actually work together best during bonus stages. I credit the cheerful music. Also, just so we’re clear: there’s no Balloon Trip mode in this. With the gravity it has, it’d basically be impossible anyway.

Even my parents got in on the action, and watching my Mom avenge me by taking out Angela about three seconds after Angela respawned from the previous murder will go down as an early highlight of 2023 for me. So, was this multiplayer mode enough to save Vs. Balloon Fight? Surprisingly.. yea! Barely, but barely counts. While I’m still pretty peeved that the modes I cared most about going into this are basically unplayable by me, fun is fun, and with autofire and a second player, Vs. Balloon Fight is a lot of fun. It could be more fun with some adjustments, like letting players reload without the level restarting. Especially since you’ll be draining each-other’s lives. Or, if you want to legitimately cooperate, that’s also fun. Of course it is! Trying to make homicide look like an accident is always fun.

Angela: “I KNEW IT!” Oh, like you weren’t doing it too!

Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight is Chick-Approved

Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 burst your bubble in the making of this review.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Arcade Archives: Golf (1984 Nintendo Arcade Review)

January 9, 2023 by 2 Comments

I used to golf quite a lot. I grew up literally right next to a country club that we were members of, but we never went next door to do anything but eat. Then my father had a mild heart attack and the doctor suggested he needed to take better care of himself and take-up a nice, relaxing physical hobby. Guess what he chose? Heh. Yea, because golf has NEVER been known to cause stress, right? I was 11-years old and, content that my father was on the mend and not, you know.. dead.. I went back to my normal routine of staring blankly at the screen while playing video games. I was on my brand-spanking-new PlayStation 2 when my Dad said I was coming with him to take-up golfing too. I refused, and he threatened to repurpose all my disc-based games as drink coasters. I said “you wouldn’t do that” and turned around to find my copy of Eternal Ring sitting under his mug. So, bitching and complaining the entire walk over to the clubhouse, I took-up the sport with my old man. Like most middle aged men suffering a midlife crisis, Dad overdid it with all the best equipment money could buy and lessons from the club pro, and whatever he bought for himself, he bought for me too out of guilt. It didn’t help him at all. His swing is such a disaster that I wanted to learn to play the violin and strum out Nearer, My God, to Thee after every tee-off. “It’s been a pleasure playing with you, Pops.”

Like Satan himself, this goes under many names. It could be called just Golf. It could be Vs. Golf. It could be Stroke & Match Golf. Hell, there’s even a re-sprited version with women called Vs. Ladies Golf that has different holes. Why wasn’t that included in this set? Because it’ll be an extra $7.99 when it inevitably lands on Nintendo Switch. Duh!

Meanwhile, given my size, strength, and complete lack of coordination and athletic ability, I wasn’t too bad a golfer. At my best, I was a 14 handicap. Which, for you non-duffers out there, that means if I were to play a full eighteen hole round of golf with a score of -14 to start, you would expect that I’d finish the round at 0, or even par. In essence, I got good enough where you wouldn’t expect me to bogey every hole. Dad was a 29 handicap. He couldn’t even get halfway to me, and if you don’t think I didn’t take a moment to rub that in his face every single time we hit the links, you don’t know me. None of that has anything to do with golf video games, but what do you want? They’re usually games about stopping a meter on time. YOU try to make it interesting! Really, the only reason to put all this here is to make it clear: I know my golf, and even though I consider myself a mediocre-at-best video game player, I usually annihilate golf games. I played Mario Golf on Switch Online a few months ago, a game I played a lot as a kid, and it was like putting on a comfy pair of old shoes. After a brief warm-up period, I was draining eagles and holes in one like there was no tomorrow. I even had an elusive albatross! It was like no time had passed at all. Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 shockingly holds up very well to the test of time. I wish the same could be said about the one that started it all.

If some of these holes seem eerily familiar, they should. If you played golf on Wii Sports, you played these holes too. They just took the NES/Arcade Golf course and made it 3D. Yep, really.

Golf was one of the most successful of Nintendo’s Vs. System arcade games, so much so that they had one in the country club before I was born. I’ve heard from people who bought an NES just to have it. So, this is a little more historically big than I thought. And man, talk about a pedigree! Golf was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, directed by Kenji Miki (who also directed NES Open Golf and Wario Woods before going on to be a very prolific producer at Nintendo), and programmed solely by Satoru Iwata. Apparently, Miki got deeply into golf during the Japanese golf boom of the 80s. You wouldn’t know it from this. I know a lot of my readers get annoyed when I talk about the dribblty-ball or other assorted sportsballs, but this is where I have to let the sports nerd in me come out. Because this is a golf game that basically does one thing right, and everything else horribly wrong. And, by the way, if you don’t know anything about golf, you’re going to need time to read the manual and memorize the max shot length. There’s no computer assistance with choosing your club, nor anything on-screen that tells you how much yardage you get out of each. If you don’t know the difference between a 3 Wood and a 6 Iron, you’re on your own to figure it out. There IS a chart in the instruction manual but you have to pause the game for it (which will automatically end your game if you’re playing Caravan or Hi-Score mode), but still, it’s not the most user-friendly golf game. You also always default to the driver at the start of every new hole, even if it’s not a hole where you’d want to bring the thunder. This is golf played exactly like everyone who steps onto the links for the first time: hammer always in hand.

One of the golden rules of golf is it’s better to undershoot than overshoot. A wise man once said you’re not likely to hit a parked car by undershooting.

So, here’s the thing about golf that matters most: any idiot can do a tee shot with a solid 80% accuracy if they practice it enough. It’s not even that much practice you need to learn to drive well enough to not embarrass yourself. In golf, real or video, it’s the short game that makes or breaks you, and Match & Stroke Golf has a pretty abysmal short game. Especially troublesome is chipping. In real life, if you ask any professional golfer what’s the most important club in their bag besides the putter, they’ll almost all agree it’s the pitching wedge. In Vs. Golf, the club is just not calculated right and it makes it unsuitable for chipping and other assorted short-distance shots. In fact, they seem to have designed it to play like a lob wedge, which is not the same thing. A lob wedge is designed to make high-arcing drop-shots that have less bounce and roll. They also allow for more control over the spin if you want to angle it. In Vs. Golf, the wedgie launches the ball high into the air with a tall arc, even if you chip. In a game where there’s no topography outside of the green and you can’t put English on the ball, that kind of shot is totally unnecessary.

The bunkers might as well be repainted fairways for all the challenge they pose in this game.

Yet, if you’re right by the green, you don’t want to use the wedgie. Even with a very light powered chipping stroke, the ball gets too much distance. I found myself using the sand wedge, which I suppose was a satisfactory enough chipper for the purposes of this game. Yes, many people, including pros (famously Phil Mickelson) use the sand wedge on the fairway because of its large-angled face which is great for a variety of different spins. You know what? I honestly found it was a lot safer and accurate to just putt from the fairway if I was 30 yards away. The game at least tells you how far you are from the hole, and anything less than 30, screw it, I putted. Sometimes it would even go in the hole, though this felt entirely like it was luck-based. This doesn’t seem like that big a deal, right? But, it sort of is.

Putting is annoying at first, but you can get SOMEWHAT used to it. The arrows on the green clue you into the slope, and it’s just a matter of figuring out the power to use. But, it’s not a good system. There’s no adjustable power and judging the speed and roll and distance is completely guesswork. Also, sometimes you’ll get a lie that I’m almost entirely certain isn’t possible to make in a single stroke. That happens in situations where you’re putting directly against the slope from a long distance. I had full-powered strokes come to a stop before they reached the hole. Golf doesn’t do any of the short game in a way that feels good, but putting is the worst. It never feels comfortable. Annoying you can learn to deal with it just enough to not be a deal breaker, but you’ll NEVER like it. Okay, maybe this really IS accurate to the sport.

See, you’re not going to be shooting holes-in-one or ironing-out eagles from 150 yards out as anything but dumb luck in Vs. Golf. It’s just not a precise enough game. BUT, you also can’t just chip-in either, and that’s where it crosses the line for me. Putting from a pixel or two off the green isn’t the same as knocking-in a forty-yard chip, and you can’t do that here. 99% of the best moments in golf, real or digital, are not shots off the tee. The most exciting and satisfying shots almost always come after that, and that can’t happen here. Not with these mechanics. Thus, you’re left with a game of video golf that lacks the potential for the most exciting shots. It’d be like a basketball game without dunking or a three point line. That’s the fun stuff! Remember, Golf is the one sport where “close enough” can be exhilarating. One of the single most incredible moments of my life was the first time I shot a ball from a bad lie in the rough and put it about five feet from the hole. Mind you, the putt was for a double-bogey, but I didn’t care. I was 12 years old and it was the first time I’d ever done anything that resembled good golf.

I had to rewrite a few parts of this review because I didn’t even think to pause the game to check and see if there was a shot chart to help newbies. I hate that I keep picking games I ultimately don’t like. I can see why Hamster wouldn’t want me to get review copies. They have a bad winning percentage with me. BUT, I will always give them props for their instruction manuals. They’re never half-assed and I really do appreciate the effort for clear instructions.

Well, the Nintendo Golf doesn’t really capture that spirit well because the short game just isn’t exact enough, and while “close enough” is a staple of golf, it’s also a game of precision. The strongest aspect about Vs. Golf is easily the shots off the tee. This was a pioneer of the standard triple-click swing mechanic that’s so ingrained into the video golf genre that the recent EA PGA game brought it back. It works here, and thank god for that. You can only shoot in sixteen exact directions and have to learn to utilize the slice (curving the ball right) and the hook (curving it left), which is simple to remember: left is right, and right is left. On the final click, if your meter is left of the white target, the ball will slice right mid-flight. If you’re right of the target, the ball will hook left in the air. You have to learn to use this, because sometimes you absolutely just can’t aim at the green the way you want to and have to sort of guestimate the hook or slice. There’s no flight trajectory or any method of helping you. I suppose, once again, it’s true to real life golf: you have to practice to get a feel for it.

Stupid as it is, I did enjoy the standard Arcade Archives five minute Caravan Mode. Yes, it’s even part of Golf. My best was shooting -4 after five minutes. I only barely finished the 6th hole when time expired. My best in the standard mode was shooting -10 for 18 holes. Not too shabby. In my recent Mario Golf session, I shot a 51, or -21 under par for the second-to-last course. My best as a kid wasn’t far off that. I think I did -25 under once. In real golf, one time at a par-3, nine-hole pitch & putt, I shot +1. At the course I played most on, my best ever for a day was +7 scratch. Sounds not too bad, but I was only +1 after nine holes. I gagged away the best nine holes I ever shot in my life, and Dad was calling me “Shark” after famous choker Greg Norman.

Another problem with Vs. Golf is every single shot is essentially a clean lie on the fairway. If the ball lands on a tree, it’s out of bounds and a penalty. Otherwise, even if you’re facing a tree, you don’t have to do anything different. It’s as if the trees aren’t there. There’s not even a rough in this golf game. Rough, aka the tall annoying stuff which is the thing that you’re desperately trying not to hit in real golf. No worries about that here. Instead, you’re playing all-or-nothing golf. It’s feast or famine: you’re either on the fairway, bunker, or green, or you’re out of bounds (or in the water, but at least there you get to take a drop). There’s wind, which barely manipulates the ball at all unless it’s over 10mph. Even sand traps don’t really factor in all that much. I never once hit one that wasn’t right by the green, which would be the only time that would actually hurt. The ball doesn’t get buried in sand, and you don’t have to do anything special besides switching to the sand wedge, which makes them kind of toothless, which defeats the point of having them in the first place. If anything, they’re just a brown-colored fairway that’s easier to chip off of. They’re the one element where it IS safe to chip and not worry about overshooting.

The little fist-pump Mario does when you sink a birdie managed to bring a smile to my face. Sadly, I never shot an eagle this entire review process. Not one. Came close only once, and yea, that was cool. It’s golf! Those moments would be cool no matter how antiquated the actual game is.

So, what do I make of this? Because golf should be frustrating, right? It’s golf, named as such because all the other four letter words were taken (yes, I stole that from Leslie Nielsen). It’d be weird if there wasn’t a steep learning curve. But, I think that this does little more than serve as a good first step towards making video golf a legitimately fun and viable genre. I’m totally certain this was groundbreaking and probably very fun in the mid-80s, like Golden Tee was in the 90s. Nintendo’s Golf is ultimately a very stripped-down game of golf, and while it isn’t totally crap by today’s standards, it’s just not that fun anymore. Vs. Golf is hurt badly by what it doesn’t do. Despite the lack of complex terrain, it lacks for assisted club selection, thus making it not so newbie friendly. But, veterans of video golf will find it too basic. What is Match & Stroke Golf? It’s a really good proof of concept for where video golf would go over the coming decade, and that’s awesome and admirable. But, now it really only has value as a historical curio. Then again, there’s people buying this because this version has music and the NES version doesn’t. Do I recommend it? Well.. no. But, with handicap, it could be a yes.

Golf is not Chick-Approved.

Golf was developed by Hamster Corp.
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 triple-bogeyed in the making of this review.

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