Dynamic Country Club

In the late 80s and early 90s, it seemed like there were lots of great games that few Americans knew about at the time as those games never left Japan. I'm definitely seeing that with some of the golf games I'm covering on the third and fourth generation consoles. Naxat Open managed to renew my hope for the TurboGrafx-16 after the very poor games I previously covered on the system. After the utter nightmare of Links: The Challenge of Golf, finding a game as competent as Dynamic Country Club on the Sega CD was as miraculous as scoring a double eagle on the world's longest Par 5.

Fortunately, while the main menu and narrations during the game are in Japanese, everything related to actually playing the game is in English. There are four game modes including the Foursome co-op mode. Up to six player profiles can be saved along with custom club selections and saved stats, but, strangely, stats are only saved from tournament play. The game is very similar to Wicked 18 with its interface and basic 3D-rendered course. Even though the visuals are rather grainy, they're still bright, colorful, and acceptable for 16-bit. The course provided is put together very well, providing a good challenge without any of the unreasonable crap that tends to show up on fictitious courses in other golf video games. However, the fact that there is only one course on the CD is unacceptable. How is it that cartridge-based games on the Genesis can get multiple courses on each, but the CD-based games can't? This one doesn't even have the excuse Links had of too much disc space being eaten up by grainy FMV!

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The gameplay is a mix of Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf and Wicked 18. The stance can be adjusted to provide draw and fade to get around the rather severe dog-legs, and the impact point striking is very reasonable. Even though aiming involves shifting the viewpoint like in Links, there are no egregious load times. The re-renders take only a second. The only problem is the putting. The grid isn't good at showing elevation changes, and the swing gauge isn't clear when judging power. Even though that issue with the gauge is present off the green as well, it only really becomes a headache on the green.

Dynamic Country Club is a hell of an improvement from Links: The Challenge of Golf. I know that's not saying much since Links was utter garbage, but I'm still impressed. Dynamic Country Club was easy to get into and an enjoyable, if limited, round of golf. I'm still pissed that it only has one course, though, keeping me from recommending the import to everyone. Moral of the story: if you have the space, USE IT!