Despite liking golf games and Neo Geo stuff, I somehow never touched this and that was a mistake. This game rules. Thanks to @HOBO and @hideous_pizza for making me see the golfing light. An absolutely perfect golfing experience and a surprisingly great arcade game experience smashed into each other. And I am going to get good at it, goddammit, but before that, I figure I should fill you all in on this game.
Who Our Golfers Be
There are six different gods of the green here for your selection. Some are more man than god, but all are giants in the field of hitting a small ball at a hole. They are:
YOUNG HERO
Name: George Spinner
Country of Origin: USA baybee
Summary: That Big D Energy (where D= Divorce)It seems as though his in-game title of YOUNG HERO is pure irony, as one look at this dad tells you that he has a few kids that he only gets to see on alternating weekends. He is not young, though he keeps telling himself that in case he ever decides to get “back on the market”. The thing is that he’s just not really good at anything. He’s not awful, but he’s just average, both on the course and off, and eventually, his first wife just needed something more. When he’s not on the greens, you can find him nursing a beer at the local BW3 or slowly pondering if his children can ever respect him again.
TECHNICIAN
Name: Thomas Stewart
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Summary: Do I Make You Horny, Baby? (NO I DO NOT)It’s not the length of the drive, but the curve and the height. That’s how the saying goes, right? It should be, at least for Tommy’s sake. My dude rocks the Sally Jesse Raphael look, which gets him none of the ladies, but does mean he can do some technical shit with a ball (if you know what he means (what does he mean?!?!)). He’s probably got the weakest drive of the game, but look at how he holds that putter. You know he’s got game (golf game, not dating game). Will likely die alone.
VETERAN
Name: Frank Adams
Country of Origin: Australia
Summary: Just Slightly Not Too Old For This ShitFrank is a veteran of the Golfing Wars, having seen it all out here on the turf. Frank’s moustache says he knows the score, and he knows what he needs to do. He has no times for distractions like “forming meaningful relationships” or “good sportsmanship”. Frank is here to win, any way he can. One way he can’t win is by hitting the ball far; just not really his jam, as the kids (he never had) would say. His jam is getting himself into jams (like the rough) and getting out of them pretty well. When you’ve been in this much shit, you learn how to get out.
SHOT MAKER
Name: Robert Landolt
Country of Origin: Germany
Summary: Now, What Y’all Wanna Do? Wanna Be Bakers, Shot Makers, Fakers?Let’s just put it out there: like half the time, this guy sometimes looks like Josh Brolin with a bad fake goatee and a haircut that says he never met a Great Clips he wouldn’t frequent. That aside, this German’s game plan is simple: hit the ball hard and straight, then drain that putt. Sure, he might look like he has some relatives that somehow migrated to Argentina, but don’t underestimate him due to that. His recovery ability is, how do you say, not so good, which is probably why he has kept his life as simple as possible, because god only knows how he would handle a broken heart.
POWER GOLFER
Name: Fernando Almeida
Country of Origin: Brazil
Summary: SmashMouthMulletFernando is a basic man. He hits shit hard. That’s it. He barely aims. What the fuck is a putt?
As in golf, so in life. Fernando doesn’t plan for second dates. He barely plans for first dates. This doesn’t often go well for him. It never goes well for him. But at least the ball flies far. And that mullet game is on point.
PUTT MASTER
Name: Toyoshige Takeno
Country of Origin: Japan
Summary: King Shit of Putt MountainIf we were playing Neo Putt Putt Badasses, Toyo here would be the absolute GOAT, but we are not. We are playing golf, not putt putt, so my dude has got problems. If he gets on the green, he is solid gold, but getting there ain’t gonna be easy.
Due to a lack of frustration in his short game, Toyo is pretty well adjusted in life. He got married and has two kids who almost don’t hate him. He is pretty vain about that hairline though, so he rocks a visor at all times in the hopes of minimizing that fivehead. You ain’t fooling anyone, bud.
Where The Golfing Be
Golf can, apparently, take place in a bucnh of different places all over the Earth. Who knew?
GERMANY
Baden National Golf Course can kiss my ass. You might think this course would be the easiest, since it is the first one, and maybe you are right, but I don’t think so. This is the one I have started working on for that precious 1cc and it is a harsh mistress. Hole 1 is an easy as hell birdie that can still fuck you up if you aren’t bringing your A game, but it goes downhill fast from there. Hole 4 just yells at you that you better learn how to hook and slice, or else you are going to become best friends with Germany’s own pine trees. Some of the holes even feature said pine trees in the MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN FAIRWAY. What the fuck, Germany? That’s not how golf holes are supposed to be designed. Even Mario knows that.
JAPAN
It’s a good thing this game was made by a Japanese studio, otherwise calling your golf club the Fujiyama Oriental would probably come off pretty racist. This course has a lot of shorter holes with some tricky shit, and even more of THE GODDAMN TREES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FAIRWAY. Who does this? Why do they do this?
You might think that since the holes are, on average, shorter than other courses that this would make our fellas with less driving power a bit better here. You might be totally wrong. The men of the long ball can get to the greens even faster here, so enjoy your wrongness.
USA
Clearly, no one on the development team has ever been to the Grand Canyon. This is not to imply that I have, though I am pretty sure palm trees and water hazards are not Things of the Canyon. I mean, neither is planting trees in the middle of the goddamn fairway; that never stopped the mad lads at Neo Turf Masters, so don’t let it stop you. Like everything else in America, bigger is better on this course, with long holes that are so long that even POWER MASTER can’t really exploit the long game to his advantage.
AUSTRALIA
Hey, do you like water? I mean, really fucking like water? You ever want to golf on a goddamn archipelago? If you answered “shit yeah, my dude” to all those questions, then welcome to the Blue Lagoon Golf Course, where half the holes are effectively islands, and you better bring some solid ass drives because otherwise that ball is going to be yet another thing polluting the oceans. Sorry, Great Barrier Reef, golf is actually more important than silly shit like “diverse biomes” and “the non-extinction of aquatic species”. Just accept this.
You Can 1CC…Golf?
Technically, yeah. So the way they made golf into an arcade game kinda rules. You start the game with 3 Rests (lives). Each hole by default uses one Rest; if you par the hole, you lose one rest. Birdies give you and extra Rest, effectively making the hole cost nothing, but going over par makes you lose an extra Rest. When you hit zero Rests, game over. That’s it. So a 1cc would be getting through all 18 holes this way before running out of rests, which means basically birdie or better every hole but two pars or one over par. This shit is hard.
So How’s It Going…?
Not terrible! The game is still hard as shit, though I have managed to get to hole 8 in Germany before my golfer runs out of Rests and has to GAME OVER. The Hamster release of the game on Arcade Archives (under its way less awesome Japanese name of Big Tournament Golf) has a high score mode that makes you use only one credit, so it’s nice for forcing me not to cheat on it. Not that I am tempted, nope, I would never give in on that. Notably the one site I saw for competitive Neo Turf Masters had unlimited credits as part of its rule set. Not I!
In Conclusion
This game rules. Play this. Talk about this. Work to 1cc this. Possibly fail forever. Semper scribito.