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Golf (JP) is an NES and Game Boy video game created by Nintendo. It is the only Nintendo game based solely on the sport of the same name. It was also ported to the Nintendo PlayChoice-10. The golfer has been identified as Mario in supplemental material, albeit not wearing his traditional shirt and overalls.[1] However, the game Captain Rainbow would instead identify the golfer as Ossan, which happens to be a generic internal name Mario had during the development of Donkey Kong.[2] Additionally, the Game Boy conversion of this game would feature Mario on the Western cover art, but not the Japanese version.
A copy of the original game was embedded in Nintendo Switch firmware. Activating it required the internal system clock to be set to July 11 - Satoru Iwata's death anniversary - and performing his iconic "directly to you" hand gesture with both Joy-Con controllers on the main menu. If successful, a voice clip of Iwata from a Japanese 2012 presentation would confirm the input, and an emulation of Golf with added motion control support would promptly boot up.[3] Golf has significance as one of the first video games Iwata programmed himself for Nintendo while working at HAL Laboratory.[4] This version of Golf was overwritten as of the 4.0.0 update, making it unplayable.[3]
Plot[]
Gameplay[]
To change the direction of the ball by looking at a bird's eye view of the course. Once you chose your direction, the power of the shot will be determined by where the pointer on the bar lands. As in most golf games, sand pits and ponds are scattered all over the course, as are trees on the side.
Development[]
Reception[]
References in later games[]
- Wii Sports - 9 of the holes on this game's course reappeared as the 9-hole course in this game.
- Wii Sports Resort - The same 9 holes that appeared in Wii Sports reappeared as the back 9 of this game's course, and in the same order.
Trivia[]
- Nintendo planned to release an 18-hole golfing game as a launch title for the Family Computer, but software companies declined the project and believed that it could not be done with such limited memory at the time. Then-HAL Laboratory employee Satoru Iwata was eager to prove this technical achievement and program the game himself, which required him to create a custom data compression routine.[4]
- Golf is the second released video game that Satoru Iwata programmed for Nintendo, after Pinball.[4]
- Similar to Ice Climber, the red-colored character on the North American NES box art is actually the second player.
- Golf is a playable NES game in Doubutsu no Mori for Nintendo 64 and its GameCube port, Animal Crossing.
- Half of the game's courses were deemed the better designs and included in Wii Sports.
- The game is one of the 16 games featured in NES Remix.