#51: True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links

Nice beach!

5 months after the release of Waialae Country Club comes a practically identical game, Pebble Beach Golf Links. I remember playing this game also, but not nearly as much as the first one.

I feel like DQ is a bad name for your caddy.

I found this game very frustrating. Most golf games have the power meter cycle up to the top, and then come back down the same path. Often the backswing downwards will be faster, making it a little punishing if you're slow with hitting the button. This game loops back down to the bottom. So if you miss the max power shot by a millisecond you hardly hit the ball at all. I'm sure this means you either get really good at the timing or learn to not hit the ball as hard as possible. But when you're picking the game back up 21 years after release that's hard to remember. So I started by just barely hitting the ball forward. Over and over.

Thanks, Dawg!

I mentioned in my Waialae post that I stopped playing after I fell to the bottom of the leaderboard which took two holes. Well, this time it took one hole. And I gave up before I finished the second hold. I made it to the green in 3 strokes and my caddy Dawg was thrilled. Then I managed to putt the ball too hard and it barely fell off the green. But I didn't notice that it had switched to the wedge, and I put the right amount of power on the meter for a putt. Which made my shot go way over the green the other way. Frustrated, I gave up. I didn't even remember getting frustrated and giving up with Waialae, but I did there and I did here too.

The lag was very annoying this time. Adjusting your shot a smidge to the side forced the game to render the entire course fresh from the new angle. Want to adjust three smidges? That's three slow renders.

The music was chipper and upbeat, which was nice. And I do like that they used a real golf course. It's that sort of thing that justifies releasing essentially the same game several times a year. I know I appreciated having a second course to play as a change of pace as a kid when I used to play these games.

I guess I should probably give this the same rating as the last one? I still don't want to play it now, and I think the limitations of the SNES hardware really make the level of detail they put into the course hurt. But I did like it back in the day, and that should count for something.

Rating: C+