GAME CLEAR No. 183 -- Neo Turf Masters

Neo Turf Masters (1999, Neo Geo Pocket Color)

Alternate Title: Big Tournament Golf 🇯🇵
Developer: Saurus
Publisher: SNK
Clear Platform: Neo Geo Pocket Color
Clear Date: 7/24/24

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Why should I care?
The handheld version of SNK’s hit arcade golf sim trades a realistic aesthetic for a cute one but loses none of its appeal in the transition to a portable platform.

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On the green!

Neo Turf Masters

NEO TURF MASTERS

For sure in the Video Game Title Hall of Fame, Neo Turf Masters for Neo Geo AES/MVS is a title that I sort of feel needs no introduction, but then I remember that actually just about anything on Neo Geo beyond Metal Slug and maybe Puzzle Bobble is actually somewhat niche.

So, I will introduce it. Neo Turf Masters is a 1996 Neo Geo golf game made by Nazca Corporation, which is better known for the aforementioned Metal Slug. Like that game, it has gorgeous, realistic spritework (see: some screenshots), but on the surface it looks like a pretty ordinary golf game. It’s got the typical power meter and shot direction stuff, but there aren’t any Piranha Plants or things of that nature to spice things up.

Play for a bit, though, and it grows on you. The soundtrack is surprisingly maximal, flying stuff, the various golfers’ reactions to their score on each hole are amusingly over the top, and placing a shot just where you want it feels as good as any other golf sim. And who could forget the bizarre announcing (“Player 1 had a bad day…”)? A combination of little things give it the juice to feel like something with a bit more character than Golden Tee or EA’s PGA games despite being fairly traditional gameplay-wise.

Anyway, in 1998, the Neo Geo Pocket came along, and alongside original titles, SNK naturally dipped into their strong arcade catalog for games that could be feasibly converted to a lower-spec handheld format. Having acquired Nazca by that point, Neo Turf Masters was among the games they chose to downsize for the Game Boy competitor.

And downsize they did. Leaning into the pocket-sized vibe of the thing, SNK and developer Saurus chose a chibi art style for this version. It’s endearing, and it’s the exact sort of thing ports like these should be (contrast with, eg, the disastrous Mortal Kombat Game Boy version). And really, in situations like this where the hardware capabilities are so vastly different, “port” isn’t really the right word. From a software perspective, the game was almost certainly built from scratch for the NGPC. Yes, the course designs and concepts are the same, but all the assets and code are bespoke. I’ll grant that this is one of those situations where the distinctness of the game relative to the original is debatable, though. While I personally consider them separate games (see: the metadata section of this post listing the year of release as 1999 rather than 1996 and with only one platform), I wouldn’t really say it’s wrong to call it the NGPC “version” of Neo Turf Masters, which implies some sameness. This is all getting a bit tangential to my point though, which is just that the ways that this NGPC title does not struggle to be a higher-spec game than it is and instead establishes some identity of its own is to its benefit. I would compare it favorably to James Bond 007 for Game Boy, and more directly to the many surprisingly-fun fighting games on the Neo Geo Pocket. The handheld’s short lifespan belies the fact that SNK knew how to make quality little games for the thing.

It also helps, of course, that the gameplay is perfectly replicable on the diminutive two-button machine. All you gotta do is aim your shot in accordance with distance to the hole, wind speed/direction, and present hazards and then time up some button presses with the meters. Classic stuff. And somehow, this game really got its teeth into me in a way other golf games I’ve played have not. I think it’s a combination of its ultra-simplicity and the pace of play. While playing through courses, there’s very little bloat between shots to slow you down. Your golfer’s reaction to his outcome on each hole is cute but to the point as it displays the impact on your overall score. It does a good job of generating that “one more hole” desire (lol) to keep going that tightly-designed games like this can engender.

The game’s single-player offering is slim but exactly what it needs to be. You can basically either play one of the courses for kicks or play through each of the game’s three tournaments (in Japan, the US, and Germany) in sequence to try for the Triple Crown. This is one short of the four tournament courses present in the arcade original, but Triple Crown has a nice enough ring to make up for that, I guess. Anyway, I won it with the good American boy with standard Mario stats, George Spinner, hence this blog post. I enjoyed playing through the courses, and I really felt like I was improving throughout. By the end, I had managed a solid handful of Holes-In-One and Eagles. Pretty neat! Really makes you feel like a trigonometry genius to shoot a ball directly into a hole from far the fuck away, accounting for cross wind, precise distance (and thus power), and appropriate loft.

But of all the things that make this little game special, nothing has made me smile quite like the insane Golf Clubs of Legend that the game awards you for each tournament victory. I don’t really know how to take a nice shot of a tiny, non-backlit screen — and I couldn’t find screenshots of them anywhere online — so forgive my poor photography, but just look at the 9 Iron of Transcendence and the 5 Iron of Omnipotence. I can’t get over these images, and of course there’s a whole remainder of the set I’ve left to your imagination, but I hope these two examples give you an idea of their awesome power. You can use the clubs on your next trip to the course to try to set an unbreakable new record, but be careful: they’re single-use clubs (so much for my omnipotence…). Alternatively, if you’re feeling generous toward your friends who suck at golf (click for an autotuned Charles Barkley earworm), you can give them some of your prized sticks over the NGPC link cable.

You can also play versus matches over the same connection, which I sadly doubt I’ll ever have the chance to do. A shame — I’d really love to play in a tourney to determine who in this world is truly worthy of the Clubs of Legend.