A playthough of SNK and Nazca's 1996 golf game for the Neo Geo CD, Neo Turf Masters. This video shows the entire Grand Slam mode, including the secret bonus course, played at the normal difficulty level. Here are the time codes: 3:07 Germany - Baden National Golf Course 52:22 Japan - Fujiyama Oriental Golf Club 1:41:48 Australia - Blue Lagoon Golf Course 2:22:05 USA - Grand Canyon Golf Course 3:04:38 Scotland - Edinburgh Old Links (CD exclusive course) Neo Turf Masters (or Big Tournament Golf, as it is known in Japan) was one of the first offerings by Nazca for the Neo Geo, released at roughly the same time as their breakout hit, the first Metal Slug. Though Neo Turf Masters has never quite reached the levels of stardom that Metal Slug enjoys, it's widely considered one of the best arcade-style golf games around. With the exception of the Golden Tee series, it's hard to imagine a game based on a sport as slow and as deliberate as golf being faster paced or any more genuinely engaging than Neo Turf Masters somehow manages to be. The controls are refreshingly simple for a golf game - you merely tap the button to decide the strength of a shot, and tap it again to decide the height at which it'll travel. Everything else is automated, so you can sit back and appreciate the over-the-top presentation as you wait for your next turn. The graphics look awesome, especially for a golf game. Huge, smoothly animated digitized sprites are overlaid atop course graphics that make heavy use of parallax scrolling and raster effects and everything smoothly rotates around your player as you aim, and small animation windows pop-up whenever your ball decides to misbehave, showing it landing in a bunker, going for a swim in the lake, bouncing off of a tree branch, etc. The cinema scenes between holes really do a nice job of injecting some humor, as well - they change based on how well you're playing, so depensing on the results, you might see your duffer avatar fist pumping or bending his club in half. The sound is somehow even more memorable than the graphics. There are tons of excessively enthusiastic voice samples - Nancy (apparently on loan here from Taito's Chase HQ?) narrates in one of the funniest Japanese-English accents I've heard in a game ("On tha gweeeen!"), and who doesn't appreciate 'Nancy's report' at the end of each hole? The music is all the sort-of cheezy muzak that you might associate with the term "country club," but it somehow manages to be brilliant. It's rare that I can appreciate random saxophone solos being blared at me, but for whatever reason, I quite like them here. The CD remixes of the soundtrack are also a huge upgrade over the music in the original MVS and AES versions. The CD version, by the way, also has an exclusive bonus locked away on it. Once you've won all of the Grand Slam competitions on the main courses, the game introduces a final, hidden competition and a brand new course to play on! The Scotland course is just as well designed as the others, but it ramps up the challenge in a big way! It's definitely intended as an "experts only" sort of thing, and it's an awesome prize for dedicating enough time and effort to the game. No matter which version you play, you really can't go wrong with Neo Turf Masters. But despite the addition of load times, I'd recommend the CD version for its fun extras. Between this and Metal Slug, Nazca pretty much cemented their legacy from day one. What an awesome game. (BTW, is it just me, or does the guy pulling on the glove in the intro make anyone else think that he's preparing to perform a "full cavity search"? Hahaha eww, I know.) _ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete ( punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
