Sports Illustrated: Golf Classics

There used to be a time when Sports Illustrated was THE authority when it came to sports, even more so than ESPN. Nowadays no one brings that magazine up except for when Kate Upton makes the cover of the annual swimsuit issue. However, in the mid-90s, a few sports games got the Sports Illustrated license, primarily on the Game Boy. While too many licensed sports games had a real problem with just "phoning it in", Sports Illustrated Golf Classic put in the time and effort to produce a great portable golf game.

Like with the pro licenses on the Intellivision's sports games, the Sports Illustrated license doesn't really add anything to the game aside from marketability. Fortunately, the game provides enough content to make you overlook the superfluous license. There are two challenging fictitious courses that don't go so overboard that they become unfair. The four characters available to choose from are ostensibly the difficulty settings for the game. This one even has hot-seat multiplayer; THANK YOU!!! The interface is fantastic. Picking your target landing zone for each shot automatically chooses the ideal club to reach it. Stance settings give perfect control over your spin. In a novel twist, instead of looking at simple meters to judge power and impact, you watch an animation of your golfer taking the swing and judge accordingly. It was tough to get it right at first, but after a few flubbed holes, it became second nature. At no point does the game get bogged down in walls of text like too many portable golf games. Even the game's aesthetics were very good by Game Boy standards. The visuals were well-detailed. I liked the use of shading to show the slope of the green. The animation is amazingly fluid for the system. It especially looks great when plugged into the Super Game Boy or Game Boy Advance. Even the music was pleasant; bonus points for actually having more than one tune on this one.

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The issues in the game are very minor. The wind gauge can be tough to judge, using an animated weather vane instead of a simple arrow. It can be very easy to overpower shots, killing distance on some drives. The green can be a little tough to see on some holes, particularly the longer Par 5s. In those cases, the green becomes almost microscopic. While it is nice that passwords are provided to resume games in progress, having one after every hole is overkill. Providing a password every three holes would've been sufficient.

This is easily the most pleasant surprise of this round of the Golf Club. Why weren't there more golf games with the Sports Illustrated license? Sports Illustrated Golf Classic was great, even better than many of the games with the PGA license coming out at the time. Playing it today, it's held up remarkably well. Small gripes aside, retro golfers definitely should check this one out. Unexpected Development unexpectedly scored an eagle here.