Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf (NES) Playthrough
111A playthrough of Konami's 1990 license-based golf game for the NES, Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf.
This video shows two rounds: the first is a stroke game played between Jack and I, and the second, beginning at 40:04, is a skins match between Nancy D and Lars X, two of the CPU-controlled golfers.
As a port of Accolade’s 1988 PC title, Konami’s Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf does an admirable job of recreating the core experience on the NES with surprisingly few concessions. For his first starring role in a video game, the winner of 18 major golf championships selected his 18 favorite holes from famous American and British courses and brought them together as a showcase piece for the pro golfing world. Drawing from Pebble Beach, Muirfield, St. Andrews, Augusta, and more, the selections should please fans of the Tour despite the game's lack of a PGA license.
Both stroke and skins play are available for up to four players, and you can choose your gender, skill level, and which tee you'll begin at for each hole. Computer opponents may also fill in during a game if you so desire, the most capable being Mr. Nicklaus himself.
Each hole begins with a headshot of the Golden Bear informing you of which real-life course the hole is pulled from, followed by an overhead map that shows the hole layout, length, and any hazards that may be present.
The gameplay setup is typical, and it works well. The layout is clean, the shot meter is one of the most intuitive I've come across in a golf game, and you're given all the info you need to hit a solid shot everytime.
The graphics in this NES adaptation are nicely detailed. The golfer animations are solid, and the backgrounds get the job done. Differences between the rough, the fairway, the green, water hazards, bunkers, cart paths, and out of bounds areas are all easily distinguished thanks to some clever use of dithering to skirt the limitations of the NES's limited color palette.
The trade-off comes in the form of the loading time that this level of detail requires: for each shot, the game takes about five seconds to render the new scene piece by piece. It's certainly tolerable, but it does slow the game's pace a bit, and it's not as snappy as the computer game running on a well-equipped 286.
The sound is typical of a golf game – there is very little music and the sound effects are the standard smacks and pings featured in most 8-bit golf games. The music that is there, however, is great. The game was created by Sculptured Software, but the single tune that plays at the beginning of the game and between holes is a classic Konami track, and there's even a distorted (and hilariously gratuitous) voice sample on the title screen.
"Nice shot!"
I had this game as a kid. Well, I guess I should say that my dad had it, but my sister and I played it way more than he ever did. He had rented Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf and got a real kick out it, so when it had to go back to the video store, he decided to buy a copy for himself. That afternoon we headed over to Target. They didn't have it, but copies of the newly released Jack Nicklaus game had just come in, so that's what we went home with. He didn't like it as much (and it probably didn't help that he already had a superior Jack Nicklaus game on his Tandy computer), but my sister and I loved it.
While Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf isn't as feature-laden as some of its competition, the polished gameplay mechanics make it one of the best golf carts for the NES. Jack’s brand of golf doesn't reach the heights of NES Open Tournament Golf, but second place is nothing to sneeze at.
Poor Jack, though. That portrait does him no favors.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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