"A rarity...but fun as hell to play..."

I’ve played a few golf games in my time, but this one was harder than all hell to get my hands on. Once I booted it up in my good old Sega 32X and started playing through, I found that the game wasn’t all that bad and quite honestly, a pleasure to play. Giving you a realistic physics lesson in golf and keeping you on the course all day long is impressive with the tight control and the addictive game play. Silence is your friend and you’ll find that there is no music to be found, and only the most sparse of sound effects can be heard including some encouraging words from Fred Couples himself!

As with most sporting games, you really don’t have much of a story here, and what you’ll find is that this game is loaded full of different options that effect not only the game play but also the number of players that you can have going at any one time. Sure, the visuals might not be the greatest that you’ve ever seen and the lack of music in the game can be a little hard to deal with, but there is still enough here that you won’t need to concentrate on too much other than kicking on through the courses themselves.

The game play works something like this. You play through a couple of different courses with different styles of playing that effects the scoring and overall outcome of the game. While the rules may seem simple, it really does take some time to learn and you’ll spend the first hour or so learning how to work with the different game modes. There are several different clubs that you can use that will effect just how hard and how far you strike the ball from the tee. As with most other golf games {assuming you’ve played them} you have a certain number of times that you can strike at the ball on each portion of the course and the lower your strokes, the better your score will be!

The control that you find here is pretty easy to work with, but you’ll have to find that the game requires you to work with not only wind, but distance. There are different parts of the course that you’ll have to learn how to golf on, and each one requires a different touch. Learning to line up the meters is nothing too hard and even a beginner can learn just how to work the course to their advantage. The multiplayer modes that you can play with does increase the replay value immensely and you’ll get more bang for your buck with up to eight people playing through an eighteen hole course.

Visually, the game does have some lacking qualities that you may pick up on. The courses are actually real courses from around the country and the different places that you come up with will test your abilities to get out of natural hazards. Although the game has nothing more than a digitized golfer, the whole swing and the way that your golfer launches the ball off the tee is well designed. However, the biggest problem that you’ll find is that there is no camera angles and sometimes the game will screw you if you’re not paying attention to where the ball is going. That, and you’ll find that the ball is little more than a speck on the course, so be aware of that as well.

As much as I wish that I could say there was music here, there isn’t. Like most golfing games, the key to playing through it is silence and you’ll find that the ambient parts of the game is what you’re listening to throughout the courses. The audio effects themselves really bring the theme and the feel of the game out, but the shining point to this is that Fred Couples actually comments on your abilities during your game and will either commend you or treat you like crap, depending on your style!

36 Great Holes is a good game that is a rarity to find unless you look hard enough. For the 32X, there is nothing that compares to this golf game as the library is limited to begin with. If you’re into golfing games, then you’ll find that this one is right up your alley and worthy of collecting to complete the set. However, if you can’t stand games of patience, and you don’t have a ton of friends who are into a game like golf, then you’ll need to really think about picking up something more action filled like NBA Jam.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/04/02, Updated 03/04/02