{"id":21322,"date":"2021-06-18T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T00:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=21322"},"modified":"2021-05-30T12:23:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T12:23:18","slug":"carys-favorite-golf-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/18\/carys-favorite-golf-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Cary’s Favorite Golf Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>With Mario Golf: Super Rush on Switch coming out at the end of this month, I thought I\u2019d make a list of my favorite golf video games in honor of that.\u00a0 I usually don\u2019t dabble in sports games, but golf games translate pretty well to video games and can be very arcade-y and cartoony, so I tend to gravitate to those.\u00a0 I\u2019m also doing this list in honor of Father\u2019s Day this month as well, since my dad likes to play golf and has enjoyed at least one of the games on this list.\u00a0 And the games on this list aren\u2019t in any order of preference or anything, so keep that in mind.\u00a0 OK, let\u2019s tee off!<\/p>\n

NES Golf<\/strong><\/p>\n

I got my NES a couple of years after it had come out, and by then the original \u201cblack box\u201d games were already pretty old.\u00a0 I wanted to get a game my dad would enjoy on the NES, and since I knew he liked to play golf with his brothers when we\u2019d visit family in Alabama, I decided on this one since it was already out for a while and pretty cheap.\u00a0 Aside from Rad Racer and Arkanoid, NES Golf was one of the few games I could get my dad to play on the NES.\u00a0 A couple of years later when NES Open Tournament Golf came out, I asked my dad if he wanted me to get him that one.\u00a0 He said he was happy with the golf game he already had.\u00a0 Which is just as well since that one was full price and I don\u2019t think he would\u2019ve played it much anyway.<\/p>\n

For a while, that\u2019s about all I had to say about NES Golf, but in the past few years I\u2019ve learned a lot of interesting facts about the game.\u00a0 For instance, did you know the courses in NES Golf were recreated in 3-D for newer games like Wii Sports and Clubhouse Games on the Switch?\u00a0 Also, Satoru Iwata (R.I.P.), the former president of Nintendo and HAL Laboratory, he programmed NES Golf himself!\u00a0 No wonder why I like it!\u00a0 In fact, I read that in honor of Iwata\u2019s passing, Nintendo put NES Golf in each Switch\u2019s hardware code as a good luck charm!\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how you can play it, but they say it\u2019s in there somewhere!\u00a0 There\u2019s a debate whether the character you play as in NES Golf is Mario or \u201cOssan\u201d which means \u2018middle aged man\u2019 in Japanese.\u00a0 Well, in a Japan-only Wii game called Captain Rainbow, you play as a super hero on an island full of forgotten Nintendo characters like Crazy Tracy from Link\u2019s Awakening and Birdo.\u00a0 Well one of the characters on the island is \u201cOssan\u201d from NES Golf!\u00a0 Anyway, that\u2019s about all I have to say about that.<\/p>\n

Kirby\u2019s Dream Course<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an awesome isometric Kirby game that combines mini-golf with bumper pool.\u00a0 You must hit Kirby so he runs into all the enemies, and then the last one turns into the hole and you must sink Kirby into that.\u00a0 You have a lot of control over Kirby and can hook and slice and chip him, as well as give him top and back spin.\u00a0 And of course you can also use Kirby\u2019s copy abilities to help you get to the hole as well.\u00a0 There\u2019s an excellent multiplayer mode, too.\u00a0 Believe it or not, this was the game that got me to be a big Kirby fan!\u00a0 There were Kirby games before then, and I really wanted to play them as I was a HAL Laboratory fan before Kirby thanks to games like Adventures of Lolo.\u00a0 But what was out there so far wasn\u2019t enough for me to want to spend money on.\u00a0 But when the SNES came out, they advertised a game from HAL called Special Tee Shot that looked like a cross between mini-golf and Marble Madness.\u00a0 I like both of those, so I kept my eye on it. \u00a0Eventually it became Kirby\u2019s Dream Course and I rented it and later bought it and I\u2019ve been a Kirby fan ever since!<\/p>\n

Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are TONS of Mario Golf games, but the one I think is my favorite is Toadstool Tour on the GameCube.\u00a0 The thing that impressed me the most about this one is the level of control you have over the ball.\u00a0 I could almost always get it to go where I wanted it to.\u00a0 My friends and I were really into this game for a while back in the day.\u00a0 The next Mario Golf game to come out after that was Mario Golf: World Tour on the 3DS.\u00a0 I was really excited for this one, knowing how much I liked Toadstool Tour.\u00a0 But I just couldn\u2019t get into it as much.\u00a0 Namely because they added touch screen controls that I didn\u2019t like as well.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping the upcoming Super Rush on Switch will bring back that level of control that the GameCube game had.<\/p>\n

Pangya<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally this was a Mario Golf styled game you could play for free online on PCs.\u00a0 It stars some adorably cute anime characters and you can even pick from some weird caddies, too.\u00a0 Like a floating paper bag with a face!\u00a0 I dabbled with it on the PC for a while, but luckily it got some console releases later since it was so popular.\u00a0 Most notably was on the PSP, but Tecmo also got the rights to release it on the Wii as well under the name Super Swing Golf.\u00a0 Since Tecmo published that version, one of the things you could do was unlock outfits for the characters based on other Tecmo games.\u00a0 Typical stuff like Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, but one outfit you could get was from an old arcade game called Bomb Jack!\u00a0 That was before Tecmo was even called Tecmo!\u00a0 Speaking of Mario Golf styled games with weird outfits, Capcom published their own on the Wii called We Love Golf.\u00a0 It was a lot like Mario Golf, too, because it was developed by Camelot, makers of most of the Mario Golf games!\u00a0 Anyway, in that one you could unlock Capcom related outfits and dress your golfers up like Chun-Li or Apollo Justice and whatnot.\u00a0 I thought that was interesting.\u00a0 Anyway I hear Pangya is now a mobile game.\u00a0 I wonder if I should try it on my iPad?<\/p>\n

Ribbit King<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead of hitting a golf ball into a hole, you catapult a frog into a hole with a see saw and hammer!\u00a0 It was also called Frog Golf or \u2018Frolf.\u2019\u00a0 Definitely a weird, quirky PS2 Japanese style game, and your caddy was even a talking, walking picnic basket!\u00a0 It was made by Bandai, so the graphics and characters looked very Tamagotchi-ish.\u00a0 It was fun and weird and I liked it.<\/p>\n

NEO Turf Masters<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is SNK\u2019s signature golf series and most well-known in arcades, but the version I played was on the NEO GEO Pocket Color.\u00a0 It was a pretty good game of golf for a handheld in the late 1999, early 2000s.\u00a0 My friends were really into it for a while, too.<\/p>\n

Angry Birds at Top Golf<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t necessary a video game, but there is a place near where I live called Top Golf that\u2019s like a high tech driving range, and you can play a version of Angry Birds on it with real golf clubs and balls!\u00a0 I wrote about it a while back, so click on the link if you haven\u2019t read it yet.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all the golf video games that I can think of that I liked.\u00a0 There are some more that I haven\u2019t played yet, but would like to, such as Golf Story and What the Golf.\u00a0 Anyway, in the comments section, tell me your favorite golf games.\u00a0 Are you looking forward to Mario Golf: Super Rush, too?\u00a0 Let me know in the comments section!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Mario Golf: Super Rush on Switch coming out at the end of this month, I thought I\u2019d make a list of my favorite golf video games in honor of that.\u00a0 I usually don\u2019t dabble in sports games, but golf games translate pretty well to video games and can be very arcade-y and cartoony, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21324,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21322\/revisions\/21324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}