Hello, and welcome to Round 3 of the Defunct Games Golf Club. As with the last two years, I'm looking at eighteen video games of golf spanning eighteen different consoles. Despite the connecting theme of golf, all eighteen games are very different from each other, and that's the advantage golf has over other sports in video game form. Golf can be as realistic or as crazy as developers want without damaging the fundamental gameplay of the sport. Even putt-putt can have that virtual advantage. Unfortunately, the Atari 2600 wasn't fit for going too far in either direction. That console can only really deliver the essentials, but I know it can still do better than Miniature Golf, EVEN in 1979.
As with the first golf game I covered in this special, Golf on the Atari 2600, Miniature Golf only tries to provide a basic experience for those that, for whatever reason, can't go out to do the real thing. Don't go looking for the kinds of things that show up on real mini-golf courses like windmills or clown heads that would eat the ball. Don't expect to find wild courses or power-ups like in Infinite Minigolf. In fact, don't go looking for much of anything. Miniature Golf basically ignores two years worth of game development since Pong. It's just squares, squares, everywhere. Your character is a square. The hole is the same colored square, only smaller. The ball's a white square. Even the obstacle that moves on its own to knock the ball all over the place is just a red square. The game looks like a prototype, not something that would've been worth $40 in 1979. The basic look may have been forgivable if it meant there were plenty of games on the cartridge like with Combat, but that's not the case. There are only nine holes, and that's it. You would've seen everything in barely ten minutes.
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The gameplay is also very problematic. The game not only looks like Pong's bastard son, it plays like it, too. The physics are the same as Pong. Ricocheting the ball is the only way to hit par like on a real mini-golf course. The controls are simple enough; you just move your character away from the ball. Hit the button on the joystick, and your player hits the ball. The power and direction of the shot depend on where you were in relation to the ball when you hit the button. The problem is that if the ball is near an edge of the screen, you can't move far enough away to get long and straight shots. Completely gonzo pinballing becomes the only way to go too often, and that's just cheap.
Over my time writing for Defunct Games, I've established that I am VERY forgiving when it comes to the age and simplicity of Atari 2600 games. Miniature Golf severely tested that. It's not that it's a basic sports game. It's not that it's almost forty-years old. Those same things also apply to Golf on the 2600. However, Golf still came across like a finished game for the time. Miniature Golf looks and plays like a prototype that no one bothered to finish before shoving out the door. It's not the worst golf game I've ever seen, but it's definitely not worth teeing up.
