Original Release: Bandai, 1987, Famicom Disk
Based on an obscure anime, this title is technically impressive for 1987 but has beacoup frustrating gameplay elements
Pro Golfer Saru (NES, Bandai, 1987)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
With most of the 8-bit console golf games (that generally patterned themselves after Famicom/Mario Golf), you’re expected to mess around with their physics to get a feel for their individual quirks before you can play them competently. That’s also true of Pro Golfer Saru, but this one is worse than usual thanks to the very random and wacked-out things it likes to do with the wind and background objects (like suddenly carrying the ball to the Heavens in defiance of God, or a random tree that looks like can easily be shot around reaching out a limb or something to keep the ball from going anywhere).
That would be rough enough on its own, but our hero Saru seems to have found himself in Death Course 3000. Courses are beladen with weird gimmicks like moving walkways, tornadoes, waterspouts, and creatures roaming around interfering with the ball.
All of this seems to stem from the source material, a 70s manga and mid-80s anime series that was kinda like proto Happy Gilmore, but with competitors that have weird Dragon Ball powers. Fertile material for a game, but it asks a lot of messing around to learn its weird nuances, more so than usual with golf games of this period.
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