Scratch Golf

Golf is a game that can easily be screwed up on a portable console. With all the information that has to be provided to the player to make the game easy to play, it can be overbearing when you have limited screen area. Awesome Golf on the Atari Lynx showed the best way to display traditional golf on a handheld, and Fred Couples Golf on the Game Gear showed the worst way. Scratch Golf falls in the middle of that spectrum.

Scratch Golf made a very good first impression. The visuals are some of the best I had seen on the Game Gear. The colors are vivid, and the two challenging courses show very impressive levels of detail. While the interface is more text-based than Awesome Golf, it doesn't reach the "painful to look at" levels of Fred Couples Golf. The tune that plays throughout the game is repetitive, but it doesn't get annoying. The interface is very similar to the one from Wicked 18, complete with the shifting impact point and stance control. The big exception is that, if a mistake is made like choosing the wrong club, it's easier to go back and fix the screw-up without having to backtrack through everything. The game also plays very fast.

Click For the Full Picture Archive
There are plenty of issues with Scratch Golf, though. While most of the interface is solid, the aiming and shooting needed some fine-tuning. The scrolling of the course for aiming is shoddy. You can pan right to see to the hole, but the camera shift doesn't hold. That wouldn't be so bad if the camera regularly centered on the golfer. Unfortunately, it tends to hold too far left, making aiming more annoying than it should be. Then there are the problems with shooting. Forget regularly getting birdies or even parring. Even with maximum power and perfect accuracy, shots tend to be far too underpowered. It reminded me of Chip Shot in that regard. Another annoyance is the limited modes. Stroke play is the only option. Two people can play but only if they have linked Game Gears. Would it have killed Vic Tokai to put in a hot-seat multiplayer mode?

Scratch Golf is not a bad choice for portable golf. It looks great by Game Gear standards, and the two courses can really test you. There are some significant problems with the gameplay, limiting its appeal, though. I can think of plenty of better golf games overall, but this is one of the better ones to play on the bus. Vic Tokai didn't ace this one, but they didn't scratch it, either.