Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf (NES)

Golf, despite being a sport that values calm concentration so much it has a quieter version of clapping named after it, has seen some rather action-packed video game adaptations. In Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am you must fight your way to the ball after every swing, in 100ft Robot Golf you use giant mechs to destroy the landscape during your game of golf, and in Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf you fight your fellow golfers by… playing completely normal rounds of golf against them.

 

While the deceptively intense title may suggest there’s something more to Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf, what the game truly is is a pretty standard 2D golf game experience. Between its USA and Japan courses, there are 36 total holes to play, and due to the limitations of the NES, most of these are fairly flat stretches of land, meaning that rolling balls aren’t too much of a concern until you get to the green. Despite not having uneven terrain as a hazard option, the variety between the different holes is pretty well done, the game usually laying out courses that are set for a Par 3, 4, or 5 that can be achieved through smart and careful play or skillful yet risky shots. The hazards to worry about are pretty typical to the sport, but the water and sand bunkers are distributed well across the courses to make them feel distinct enough from each other. Obstacles like trees and the different terrain types are also used to decent effect, there usually being a pretty clear safe path to take with your swings but the player can also take shortcuts that could end up setting them back if they can’t properly clear the hazard risks or avoid the bad terrain. All in all, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf does have some pretty good and believable hole design on offer, even throwing in some grounded but unique designs like a hole at the end of a thin land bridge surrounded by water and one that is a Par 5 if you take the safe path but can be done much quicker if you’re willing to risk pushing through a large wooded area.

Unfortunately, some of this smart course design is ruined by the unreliable visuals of the game. When you hit your ball out, even if you have a pretty good feel for where it will land, you can’t rely on any of the two ways the game will show you its flight path and landing. The left side of the screen shows a plain map of the course, not able to show its entirety unfortunately but still giving you a pretty decent look at what’s ahead as well as following the ball well enough as it flies. On the right and much larger though is a view meant to match how a human would view the game, the golfer initially positioned there and then the window following the ball to its landing place. Most of the time, these will show the data expected of them, that being the all-important information on where your ball will land, but for some odd reason, neither view is totally reliable. While the map may show you safely land on the edge of the water hazard, the real view will instead show the ball plopping in, and the inverse is even stranger when the map thinks you’re on the green and the play window shows the ball now resting safely in the water, your golfer even standing on the water’s surface when it’s their turn to swing. This can make risk-taking extremely dangerous, as nothing is truly as it appears. You can try and hit a shot between some trees, but who knows which window to trust when you do so. You can try and land on the edge of the fairway to get as far as possible, but you might end up in the rough even though the map shows you’re fine. For every potential save during a round of golf where you unexpectedly don’t end up in a bad spot, you’re just as likely to find yourself in a tight spot that looked safe on one of your visual references.

 

The mixed bag of your visual feedback hampers the ability to enjoy the course design, and things can get a bit awkward during putting as well. The game zooms in when you’re on the green and ready to sink the ball into the hole, but the game tries to add in some semblance of slopes here, represented by grass arrows that are a bit hard to read. You can learn how they work through experimentation, but it still isn’t the best way to try and add difficulty to the putting section, especially since its hard to read the potential curve caused by these false slopes when they are tile-based symbols instead of the smooth edges of proper inclines.

When it comes time to swing, the control system is fairly easy to understand at least, even if its ranges for power and curve are somewhat limited by its bar-based system. Once you’ve pulled back your club, the meter begins filling up to the left, the player pressing a button to stop it to pick the power. After that is selected, the bar will now start filling up to the right, the player wanting to stop it towards the middle to get a straight shot or stopping it on the right or left of the central marker to curve it during flight. If you don’t stop the bar well, your player hits a dud shot, but its usually easy enough to make sure you at least hit it far even if you don’t hit it well, factors like wind also needing to be to considered when you aim and when you choose how much power you put into your swing. More than anything though, the effectiveness of your shot will be determined by which golfer you pick, the game offering four choices who all have different stats. Big Jumbo can hit the ball the farthest, but his meters fill up so quickly it can be difficult to properly pick his power and curve. Pretty Amy is the opposite, where her meter fills up at a slower pace but she has the lowest possible range for her most powerful swings. Occupying the middle between these two is a character named Miracle Chosuke and of course… Super Mex, the game choosing to use one of Lee Trevino’s nicknames instead of properly identifying him in game. The skill gap between the four isn’t too huge so Pretty Amy can win against Big Jumbo even if the Jumbo player has pretty good aim, but the AI opponents are a bit unusual. Sometimes it can be surprisingly excellent, making any inconsistency in your play or the visuals hard to overcome. Other times though, the AI seems completely confused, as on one hole I watched the computer player launch its ball three times off into the out of bounds area by aiming away from the hole entirely. Which club you use can help overcome some power discrepancies though, the game trying to suggest which one to use by automatically putting it in your hand but it not always being the best choice. Drivers, wedges, and putters aren’t explicitly named, but its easy enough to figure out which club is being indicated by the number and letter pairings when viewing your shot preview before a swing.

 

We’ve gotten this far without really seeing why this game might be called Fighting Golf, but there is potentially an answer to this mystery, albeit an unsatisfying one. Besides a practice mode, the game offers two main ways to experience its 36 holes, that being stroke play and Nassau game. Stroke play is standard golf, one to four human players taking turns on all 18 holes of either the US or Japan course to try and have the least strokes total across all the holes. The presence of other players here just makes it a competition rather than playing alone, but Nassau game makes them truly compete with its rule set. Here, points are award based on how few strokes it takes to get to the hole, this mode caring more about how close to par you are on individual holes and giving you a score based on how well you do. If a player begins to get too much of a lead though, the losing players may get an option to change the conditions on the final hole. Now, if the losing player wins that hole, the score becomes tied, but if they lose the hole, they lose a bunch of points. However, since they were already losing at this point, it is basically risk free to press this last hole. This is still hardly a fight, but it is at least more competitive than typical golf and that press option means there is potential for interference. Nassau game is also the mode where a single human player can play against the AI, and its split into sets of 9 instead of 18, the US and Japan courses now split into two selectable modes to make for a quicker game. The AI will take quite a long time lining up shots, but it still won’t take too long to get through the nine holes of a Nassau play session thankfully.

THE VERDICT: Unusual title notwithstanding, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf could have been a passable 2D golfing experience that did its best with its hardware limitations, but it’s got a few traits that make it hard to enjoy some decent hole designs. Unreliable visual feedback makes taking risks less enjoyable and encourages a more boring and standard way of playing, the limits of your golfer being the determiner of your performance since you can’t always trust your eyes.  Even discounting visual inconsistency, the AI’s strange shifting from professional play to inexplicable idiocy makes them a poor opponent. While the mechanics and hole layouts almost made it decent but forgettable, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf instead ends up a game that disappoints both in name and in play.

 

And so, I give Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A BAD rating. It seems Super Mex endorsed a bit of a stinker with this one, but most of its problems were from the strange inconsistencies rather than the core design at least. It’s very possible a player might get through a round of play without encountering the odd disagreements between the map and the player window, or they might not encounter the AI deciding to just launch the ball in strange directions during a Nassau game. Putting will still be strange though as the green and its poorly depicted slopes will almost always crop up since holes rarely encourage hole-in-ones, but the design of the courses could have been a fine fit for a better execution of a golf game. The fact is, there’s no real reason to risk running into the problems the game has since this game has been outclassed even in the realm of 2D golf games, but at least its issues aren’t so overwhelming that it will make the experience excruciating if you do decide to give the game a look.

 

Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf’s weak adaptation of golf would have likely left it to fade into history like most old sports simulations, but it managed to claim a bit of fame with an unusual title that doesn’t match its contents, one that seems to have had enough of an impact on the creators of The Simpsons that a parody of this game called Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge appears in one of the show’s episodes. It’s more than likely that this is the best legacy the game could have hoped for, so while it’s not really enjoyable to play on its merits, at least it still manages to intrigue with its tiny cultural footprint.