Nintendo's seminal golf title spent the first half of its life stuck in the deep rough, but then it made a big rally in the back nine.
Part of the video-game medium's magic is its ability to open your mind to subjects and activities in which you previously had little to no interest.
At least, that's what I told myself in late 1991 when I impulse-purchased NES Open Tournament Golf, which appeared to be a sequel to a game that I pretty much considered to be a pile of junk. I'm talking about 1985's Golf, which I played a few times at my friend Dominick's house. It was an unplayable mess of a game and arguably Nintendo's worst offering. I didn't enjoy playing it, and nothing it did made me curious about the sport or how it was played.
So what, then, was I doing when I grabbed that ticket in Toys R Us' games section and subsequently dumped fifty bucks on a game whose quality I was suspicious of?
Well, there's no reasonable-sounding answer to that question. What happened, rather, was that my growing acquisitiveness and general gullibility combined together to create the condition for a heedless game purchase. And at that point in my life, I was making that type of purchase more and more frequently.
So my interest in NES Open Tournament Golf was driven mainly by (a) my insatiable appetite for new NES games and (b) my susceptibility to Nintendo's marketing and specifically two of the items displayed on the game's box art: Mario and "NES." Those were two things for which I had a great fondness, and I couldn't resist any game that had both of them on its box cover.
So I'd just purchased my very first golf game, and I'd done so for reasons that had nothing to do with actually liking or being interested in its content. And, well, I wasn't feeling very good about that decision.
I mean, I had plenty of time to think about the sport and its depth during those minutes-long trips that my friends and I had to make when whenever we had to search for and retrieve the clubs that I helicoptered all of the way down to range's opposite end or into the parking lot, but I never did. I just didn't find the actual sport to be that interesting.
"So if my knowledge of golf doesn't stretch beyond 'hit the ball really hard and hope for the best,'" I thought to myself, "will I be able to enjoy a golf game that's bound to require a deeper understanding of the sport?"
Surprisingly, though, Tournament Golf was an accessible game and didn't demand deep knowledge of the sport. Its action was simple, and its systems were easy to understand. Those qualities made it instantly more inviting than 1985's Golf, whose action and systems I found to be baffling.
In fact, Tournament Golf was superior to Golf in every way: It had a much more attractive presentation; its courses' separate holes were colorful and well-detailed whereas Golf's looked as though they were being swallowed up by black voids. Its version of Mario actually looked like the "Mario" we knew rather than a normally proportioned human and a dead ringer for your average local deli owner. Its overhead screen helpfully displayed the course conditions and other pertinent textual and visual information, whereas Golf's displayed only the most basic of information. It had catchy music in place of cold, failure-emphasizing silence. It allowed you to rotate the aiming reticule 360 degrees rather than simply choose between three predetermined, rarely ideal directional options. And it contained an impressive collection of systems and mechanics, all of which might have been overwhelming had the game's SNES-style manual (which I always enjoyed reading) not done such a great job of explaining how they all worked.
And for a while, I was digging Tournament Golf. I became immersed in it as I explored its many modes and soaked in its attractive visuals, whose impressive quality went a long way toward convincing me that I'd made a good purchase. "This is a finely produced game," I felt. "Obviously a lot of care was put into it."
I was so dazzled by the game's depth and visual quality that I wasn't even concerned about the fact that I wasn't any good at the actual golf part (though, this would become a huge issue a bit later on).
At first, I stuck mostly to the game's 1-Player "Stroke Play" mode because I had little faith in my competitive golf skills, and I was intimidated by the idea of playing against unseen CPU players. As per my natural disposition, I was unnerved by the idea of not being able to keep constant track of what the other participants were doing (and I'm still like that today).
Still, I knew that inevitably I'd have to move on to the other modes and compete against CPU players. That was the only way I was going to fully justify my $50 investment. So reluctantly I prepared to enter my first tournament. But first, though, I had to attend to the important business of renaming all of the tournament roster's players and giving them the names of Nintendo characters. I thought that doing so might improve my chances!
It didn't. In fact, I came nowhere close to winning the big prize. And I didn't fare any better in future tournaments, either.
I tried again and again, but each time, I fell well short of victory. My usual score of +4 or +5 wasn't even good enough to land me on the top-six leader board. And after a while, I started to feel as though I just didn't have the ability to get better. I mean, I had a pretty good grasp on how the three-point power-accuracy meter worked, but still I couldn't put it to good use. I could never execute hooking and slicing shots (intentionally) or get the timing of the higher swing speeds. All I could do was hit straight shots using the lowest swing speed, which offered better club control yeah, but sacrificed distance.
And because I played this way, I was guaranteed to never be able to reach par-5 holes' (and even some tricky par-4 holes') greens in two shots, which was something you had to do regularly if you hoped to compete at a high level and win tournaments. I knew that in order to get better, I was going to have to learn how to execute shots at higher swing speeds, but I wasn't sure that I could. Each time I tried to execute a medium or fast shot, I'd wildly hook or slice the ball. I was just incapable of timing faster shots.
Also, the putting aspect, as it tended to be in golf games, was nightmarish, and its difficulty was what was causing my stroke-totals be so damn high. I understood that the arrows represented the greens' coarseness and slope heights, but I could never get a strong grasp on their actual level of influence or the speed that you needed to apply if you wanted to tactically utilize or neutralize their effects. If I wanted to get a good score on a hole, I had to avoid putting myself in a position in which I had to make long putts; I had to get lucky and have my approach shot land within inches of the cup.
In short: I was pretty bad at the game.
Feeling somewhat dejected, I decided to give the Match Play mode a try. I assumed that it was easier than the tournament mode and thus I'd have some fun with it. But that's not what happened. Rather, after playing it for a while, I wound up becoming even more dispirited!
Match Play mode was basically a hustle. Its starting opponent, Luigi, could be beaten with little effort, but thereafter, its difficulty spiked dramatically. Oh, it'd make you believe that you had a good chance of beating the second opponent, Steve, by scripting him to perform poorly on the first hole, but that was just a setup; from that point forward, he'd birdie just about every hole and make ridiculous long-distance putts and do so without having to adjust for coarseness or curvature. And what made me angry was that none of the things the he was doing would work for me. I'd perfectly replicate one of his putts--hit the ball in the same direction with the same speed--but for some reason, my shot would veer left or right or skip over the hole!
I didn't fare any better in the Tournament Mode's "Bet On 1 Hole" sub-mode. I'd lose almost every hole, and as an added indignity, I'd have to keep forking over what little money I had--the small amounts I'd managed to earn in the other modes.
So it was looking as though NES Open Tournament Golf's difficulty "curve" was a 90-degree angle.
If I was playing well, it wouldn't last; some disheartening event would inevitably occur. I'd put together a good run and feel like I was finally gaining a deeper understanding of the game's systems, but then a single screwup would ruin everything. I'd be at -1 and in a position to make a par-5 hole's green in two strokes, but then I'd accidentally hook consecutive shots into the out-of-bounds area and wind up bogeying. I'd cleanly hit a green, but then I'd get ravaged by its unreadable slopes. Or I'd luck into a final score of, say, +2 but still lose because every other competitor decided to finish at par or better (when the average was usually +3). Something would always go wrong.
So what happened was that I established a love-hate relationship with Tournament Golf, and that remained the state of things for about a month or so. Eventually, though, hate won out. After a while, I got tired of taking its abuse and gave up on it. I said goodbye to it and promptly retired it to my game rack. At the time, there were so many exciting games on the market, and for that reason, it just didn't make sense for me to continue devoting time to and trying to get better at a golf game that clearly hated me.
And just like that, NES Open Tournament Golf was gone from my life. And I was certain that I'd never play it again.
Well, that's not how it worked out.
So about 20 years later, in August of 2011, I was reunited with NES Open Tournament Golf when Nintendo re-released it as part of its 3DS Ambassador program, which offered 10 free NES games (and 10 GBA games). At first, its inclusion in the package caused me to groan because I had such a negative opinion of the game--an opinion that was shaped by old memories that had, through processes of distortion and intensification, grown so traumatic that they now painted a picture of a game that I couldn't remember ever liking.
"Not this game!" I thought.
But it was free, after all, so I decided that I might as well give it a play and spend at least a couple of minutes with it.
Going in, I expected to have a rough time with the game. I remembered it being punishingly difficult, and I was certain that I'd quickly grow frustrated with its precision-based systems. But that's not happened. Rather, I was able to perform pretty well. For whatever reason, the game's systems now seemed more natural to me than they did back in 1991, and suddenly I was having success and greatly enjoying the game's action.
That day, I had an amazing time with Tournament Golf. It was a lot of fun. So I returned to it the next day and then the day after that. And I continued to return to it thereafter. And in that first week, I wound up spending more time with Tournament Golf than I did with any of the other NES games, whose group included beloved classics like Metroid, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Wrecking Crew. It was that addicting.
And when I thought about it, my sudden aptitude made sense: In the 20 years in between, I'd been playing high-caliber golf games (mainly the exceptional N64 version of Mario Golf, which, you might be surprised to learn, was my most-played N64 game) that had evolved and perfected the three-point-striking system and putting mechanics. They trained me. They helped me to improve my reflexes and curvature-reading skills (also, of course, my general gaming skills had improved a lot since I was 12). And resultantly, I was able to perform much better in Tournament Golf.
I remember thinking that Tournament Golf would rank among Donkey Kong Jr. and Ice Climber and wind up being my least-played Ambassador game, but that's not what happened at all. Rather, the complete opposite occurred. Tournament Golf wound up being my most-played Ambassador game. Over the years, I returned to it regularly (almost daily). I was addicted to its fast-paced, satisfying golfing action. I couldn't get enough of it.
I attained "Pro" status rather quickly, but that wasn't my true goal. What I actually desired to do was win as many tournaments as I could and consequently pull off a feat that I previously thought was impossible: earning $1,000,000 and the opportunity to view the game's congratulatory credits sequence.
And I was able to accomplish that and much more. I played Tournament Golf constantly in the following six months, and in that time, I earned in excess of $10,000,000. I pretty much became a master.
To add a touch of nostalgia to the experience and form a connective thread, I went into the Tournament Roster mode and changed the names of all of the competitors to those of Nintendo characters. Specifically, I aligned the game's roster with Super Smash Bros. Brawl's, since I felt it appropriate to use the company's latest mascot mashup as a reference point for all-star qualification (I didn't change "Iwata" because, well, it represented Satoru Iwata, and I felt that he was an integral part of the game; I'll say more about this in a bit).
And for a long time, Tournament Golf was one of my go-to games. I played it all the time.
When I look at the game with my new perspective, I think about how much of shame it is that I ignored it for so many years. I can admit, now, that doing so was a huge mistake and that all I did was stupidly deprive myself of what was not just a great golf game but a great video game in general. I can say that I was to blame for all of the struggles that occurred. Because, after all, it's difficult to improve at a golf game when you're not patient enough to study its systems and gain a deeper understanding of them--when your only instinct is to attempt to brute-force the ball onto the green by smacking it with the strongest club regardless of what the lie conditions are.
It would have taken me only a bit of experimentation to figure out that you could, say, effectively dig out from the deep rough and reach the green by using an iron whose shot distance was 30 yards greater than the distance to the hole (or 20 yards greater if you were using a fast shot). Had I been observant, I might have realized that you could compensate for a 9MPH headwind by executing a lot shot and applying an extra 25 yards' worth of power (for fast shots, you have to add 10-15; I'm not sure what the number is for medium-speed shots, since I almost never use them).
After I gained a solid understanding of the different lie types and figured out the best methods for hitting the ball off of them, the only remaining hindrance to my continued success were those pesky wind conditions and the havoc they tended to wreak. I still had trouble dealing with them. And I continued to have trouble with them until I wised up and started applying the knowledge I'd acquired while playing N64 Mario Golf.
At that point, I remembered how to correctly re-angle shots when crosswinds were blowing (for each knot, you had to move one pixel left or right, depending upon the wind's direction). I recalled that you could compensate for tailwinds by cutting distance off of your shots or utilize them by hitting high shots; by doing the latter, you could pick up yardage that was well beyond what clubs could net you under normal conditions (the only problem was that high shots had natural back spin, which could lead to some unfavorable ball movement for shots that landed on closely mown surfaces). And I knew that I could best counter the more troublesome diagonal currents by putting to use my combined knowledge of vertical-current- and crosswind-neutralization.
One thing hasn't changed since 1991: my fondness for the Tournament Mode's randomly occurring "Contests." They represent one of my favorite game aspects. I'm able to reliably win "Longest Drive" contests, though I don't fare quite as well in "Closest to the Pin" contests (I always try to be too perfect--I try to bounce the ball onto the green's lower area, at just the right spot, and get it to cleanly roll in--and most times, resultantly, I wind up undershooting and landing the green's edge). But still I like them both equally.
What's great about the Contests is that they offer you a chance to grab some extra cash and compensate for potential lost earnings in those instances when the Tournament Mode's difficulty begins to spike in response to your wealth increase (early on, when your wealth-total is low, a score of -2 or -3 will be enough for you to win a tournament, but once you move into the millions, you have to be really good to win; you have to finish somewhere between -10 and -13 if you want to realistically have a chance).
Tournament Golf's having such great mechanical depth made so much sense to me after I read through its elusive credits sequence and saw the name "Satoru Iwata" listed within it. He was the game's "Chief Programmer." I'd never heard of the guy before 1998, but after I learned of him, I started seeing his name everywhere. It would show up like clockwork in many of my old favorites--not surprisingly in those that were more technically advanced than other games on their respective platforms. Iwata has been correctly described as a programming whiz, and his magic touch is certainly on display in Tournament Golf. To this day, I still wonder about what type of special coding (read: "sorcery") he used to create the suspenseful, cinematic 3D scenes that play whenever the ball is nearing the cup.
That guy is one of the best.
So yeah--I spent a whole lot of time with Tournament Golf. At one point, I was playing it on a daily basis. Doing so helped me to unwind after a long, stressful day. It helped me to take my mind off things. It was a relaxing game.
After a while, though, I got little burned out on Tournament Golf, and I sensed that if I continued to play it with the same frequency, I'd probably get sick of it and abandon it for another decade. So what I decided to do was stay away from it for a while--maybe for about a year--and give my heart some time to grow fonder.
And just recently, it came back into my life in full force. It did this because I had a strong desire to return to it and otherwise because I needed something to fill the void that resulted from my complete disinterest in the games that are currently available on the retail market. It gives me something the big blockbuster-type games can't: the fun-in-short-bursts action I'm looking for at this point in my life.
Even today, I'm still trying to find ways to improve my game. I've become fairly adept at connecting on Super Shots, executing which requires high levels of concentration and precision, but still I'm looking to become more consistent. When I'm able to keep my mind from wandering and lock in, I'm capable of pulling off one Super Shot on another, but when my energy-level is too high and my focus is scattered, I'm bound to miss the mark and wildly hook the ball.
Though, I've totally nailed down the formula for making chip shots, which I do with regularity. This skill allows me to cover for many of my mistakes--for mishits that fall just short of the green. I'd like to pick up more albatrosses (which, in my opinion, are tougher to get than holes-in-one) if only for the satisfaction of doing it (and also for the purpose of finally displacing some of the weaksauce eagles that have been occupying the "Hall of Fame" list's top spots since the early days).
My ultimate goal is to achieve a score of -21 or better, and I'll do it when I'm able to birdie all par-3 and par-4 holes and eagle all par-5 holes. Until then, though, I'll have no problem settling for my usual $60,000 first-place prize, which is always awarded to me most graciously by the tournament organizer ("Larry Csonka," as I call him).
Now I'd like to pad out this piece a bit by sharing with you my strategies for certain holes. This'll give you an idea of how my brain works.
Let's start with the US Hole 3.
My approach to this hole demonstrates how I don't feel the need to hit fairways if other lies will get me closer to greens--how I'm fine with hitting out from the rough. So what I do here is avoid the outlying fairway and instead hit the ball up the middle and through forest area's largely unpopulated center portion. But I don't hit a perfectly straight shot because doing so lands me right in front of the middle sections lone tree; rather, I set the cursor a tad to the left or the right (and even farther if adverse wind conditions force me to adjust). If I screw up and land in front of the tree, I set the cursor to a 75-degree position, in the rightward direction, and hit a massive hook shot, and that usually gets me on the green--even when I'm up against strong headwinds.
I approach Japan Hole 14 the same way: I use my 2-wood to hit a straight shot and launch the ball over the hole's scarily large out-of-bounds area. This lands me in the rough and leaves me about 90-100 yards short of the green, whereas landing on the outlying fairway's top portion puts me about 200 yards away. From there, making the green is simple; all I have to do is hit the ball with an iron whose distance-total is 20 yards higher than the "Rest" number. I do this because shorter shots are always preferable, even when they demand that I hit the ball out of the rough or sand traps; they allow me to use slow shots, with which I'm more comfortable, and spend less time worrying about how much the wind will affect my shots.
US Hole 8 always makes me nervous because I have a tendency to wildly hook fast-speed shots, and I know that doing so from this hole's tee will invariably land me in the out-of-bounds area. This is a big problem because each out-of-bounds shot adds one penalty stroke to your score, and since I play for best score, I can't afford to make any errors. I need to eagle this hole to stay on pace, and even one mishit will prevent me from doing so (and it may even ruin my entire run!).
What I attempt to do is hit a long shot over the out-of-bounds area and land on second fairway's upper portion. This can only be done with a Super Shot, so I have to really dial in when I'm making the tee shot; I can't afford to be even a millimeter off. If the wind is against me (and it usually is), the shot becomes much more risky, and in some instances, it forces me to take an alternate approach--to instead aim for the second green's center portion and thus steer clear of the out-of-bounds area.
It's a similar story with Japan Hole 16--a par-3 hole on which I aim to reach the green with a cleanly hit straight shot. Accuracy is a must here. Even the smallest hook lands you in the water. The problem with this hole is that, for some unknown reason, even the most well-calculated shots tend to fall short of the green (and falling short of the green can also land you in the drink). If you want to reach the green cleanly, you have to use a driver whose distance-total is equal to the "Rest" number plus ten. And the other problem is that the green is so small and so generally frictionless that even the most-well-placed shots tend to bounce or roll off of it and land in the surrounding rough. Because of these issues, I usually have to settle for par on this hole.
US Hole 16 continues to be inexplicable to me. Apparently, despite there being no evidence of such in the rest of the game, water hazards have a vacuum effect and cut distance off of any shot that passes over them. I have to add 20 yards' worth of power to a tee shot to get it to sail over the water and land on the green. And you have to be accurate here; even the slightest hook or slice will land you in the surrounding drink. But it's the vacuum-effect issue that scares me the most; it, alone, always has the potential to ruin my run.
Japan Hole 9 is among my least-favorite. What I try to do on this hole is something theoretically simple: land on the second fairway's center portion. But it's actually difficult to do. Reaching its center portion cleanly requires a very precise fast-speed shot. If my timing or accuracy is off even just a little bit, I wind up missing the target in a big way and landing in either a sand trap or the out-of-bounds area. I'm fine with my shot hitting the fairway's tree because it causes the ball fall dead to the ground and results in an obstruction-free shot (if your shot hits a tree during a top-down animation, the game gives you a break and places you in front of said tree).
I don't have much to say about the UK course other than that it seems to be the game's "Hard Mode." Its holes contain large-scale out-of-bounds areas and many cruelly placed sand traps (Hole 9, in particular, has multiple circular sand traps in its lone fairway!). I can perform decently well on this course, though I'm not yet able to consistently score lower than -10. So I still have some work to do here.
And I'll have plenty of opportunity to figure it all out because I'll be spending many more hours with Tournament Golf in the future. I'll be enjoying its action for years to come.
And that's my story with NES Open Tournament Golf, which, I'm proud to say, has become one of my favorite NES games. I absolutely love it. It's a great golf game (to me, it's second only to N64 Mario Golf) and a great video game in general. It does everything right, and it manages to punch above its weight and provide a golfing experience that's as satisfying and as entertaining as any of those provided by the most modern of golf games. My only disappointments are that it doesn't contain more courses and that it never got an NES sequel.
Really, though, that's actually the best compliment I can give Tournament Golf: Even 20-plus years after its release, it still leaves me wanting more.
So in the end, love ultimately won out, and thus NES Open Tournament Golf proved that it was possible to emerge from even the deepest of rough patches and make a huge comeback in the second half of life.
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