#95: Irem Skins Game

Skin those lions!

I have never heard of the company Irem, nor their skins game. Given how absolutely terrible most of the golf games have been thus far on the SNES I was not really looking forward to playing this game. (It turns out Irem is perhaps best known for the game Moon Patrol which I used to play when I was a wee lad!)

ActRaiser Golf!

The biggest reason I've soured on the SNES golf games is they try to do way too much graphically and end up lagging pretty badly when they try to render the course. Irem Skins Game somehow manages to get it right and avoid that problem entirely. I can rotate my character around without it taking seconds to redraw the screen. And while it doesn't look terribly realistic it still looks pretty good. There are clouds, and trees. The overhead view reminding me a lot of ActRaiser, and that's always a good thing.

GIVE UP!

The interface for the game took a little getting used to (you use L/R to move around the menu at the bottom and only that one section would work so you couldn't rotate while changing clubs like you can in other golf games) but once I caught on it all made so much sense. There are a bunch of different things you can adjust in your golf swing and you get to change them one at a time or skip over them.

I had never played this game before, and I birdied two of the first three holes. My first few swings back at other golf games, which I had played before, went a matter of feet. I was scoring 8+, not 3. This is a really big deal and means this game just makes sense out of the box. I really, really like that.

There's also an interesting difficulty setting in the game which is a big step up from other games. There are 4 playable characters and each has different strengths and weaknesses which they tell you about right off the bat! I chose to play as the girl, of course, and her stats were such that she hit for the least distance but had the most accuracy. (Maybe that's why I was able to actually hit the fairway and get birdies...)

I only played three holes because I really don't feel like playing golf right now, but I'm not turning the game off in disgust. It was actually fun. Which is a HUGE step up from the other golf games thus far. well done, Irem. I hope you make good money in the pachinko business.

Rating: B+