Krazy Ace Miniature Golf

You know how some of the dumbest, most unwatchable movies ever made got excused just because they were kids' movies or chick flicks? That also tended to happen during the first generation of portable consoles. Third-parties developing for the Game Boy, Lynx, and Game Gear many times were convinced that people would be so enthralled with being able to play on the go that they'll ignore any issues that came up. "Graphical issues? Lacking content? What do you expect? It's a portable." That definitely seemed to be Telegames' thinking when it came to making Krazy Ace Miniature Golf.

When I first loaded up this game, I was initially encouraged. The visuals were bright and colorful. On top of that, unlike the very generic-looking courses of Putt & Putter, the holes I saw here had personality with cannons, clown heads, and other attractions that tended to populate a putt-putt course. The animation was a bit choppy, but it didn't really detract from the game. Between this and Awesome Golf, it's clear that the Lynx had the best visuals of that handheld generation. The controls were easy to grasp, as well, playing more like a game of pool than mini-golf. They were even nice enough to include hot seat multiplayer for up to four players.

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Unfortunately, the game's problems made me want to throw a putter through a windmill. The fixed angled point-of-view made pulling off precise angled shots almost impossible, which were necessary due to the six-stroke limit on each hole. Many of the interactive elements were too much of a headache like the cannon and the ramp jumps over water. I hit the stroke limit constantly which annoyed the hell out of me. However, the thing that drags this game into irredeemable territory is the fact that THERE ARE ONLY NINE HOLES IN THE WHOLE GAME! Granted, Miniature Golf on the Atari 2600 only had nine holes, too, but that was fourteen years before this game! Besides, the Lynx cartridges could easily fit multiple full-length courses as proven by Awesome Golf. As if that wasn't bad enough, the designers apparently ran out of ideas too early as holes 8 and 9 are exact duplicates of holes 1 & 2! Not a single thing was changed; they didn't even use something like mirroring as a cheat!

Krazy Ace Miniature Golf is a nice-looking piece of crap. Just because it's a portable game released when the Lynx was on it's way out absolutely does NOT excuse the glaring lack of content. This made the simple, cheap Tiger LCD games of the era look feature-rich! Developers, take note: if you don't have enough ideas to fill even the front 9 of a single course, JUST QUIT!