Mario Golf 64

I never would have thought it, a realistic, accurate, PC-style golf simulation on the N64? Nothing but you, your opponent, a bag of clubs and some gently rolling hills to play on. So, if I can just get this chip over the giant mushroom on the right, I'll leave the dinosaur I'm playing against a shot down. Hang on - giant mushroom? Dinosaur? Perhaps this is not quite the standard golf game we've all come to know. Featuring all the favourite characters from the Mario games, this particular episode lets you take your choice round nine or eighteen holes of some of the strangest courses ever seen. But if you want to play as one of the more popular characters, you'll need to beat them first.

Graphically the game is presented in classic Mario style. It moves well, the occasional rainstorm provides variety and there are a whole host of nice touches that pop up at unexpected moments. I won't spoil the fun by letting you in on the surprises. The ball moves very convincingly and wind, spin and so on have believable effects on where you end up. Sound effects are the swoosh of your clubs, the click as your driver makes good contact with the ball, and the praise (or curses) of your opponent as you thump another ball into the distance. Music plinks away in the background and you'll recognise some of the tunes if you've played any of the other games.

The controls are intuitive and easy to master. The stick selects your club, and controls the direction of your shot. Most of the other buttons are devoted to controlling the camera and shifting your viewpoint around the course. When you've lined up your prospective hole-in-one, the A button starts the swing. The power meter at the bottom of the screen starts to fill, and when it's reached the right level, A starts it dropping back. You'll need to hit A again within the "sweet spot" on the power bar to get a good contact with the ball. While this is all going on, it's also possible to alter the impact point on the ball. This will all be familiar to those who have played any other golf games.

There's a straightforward tournament mode, or you can challenge one of the other characters in an effort to beat them and thus make them playable. But when you get bored of that, there's the ring mode, where you have to hit the ball through one or more floating rings and still sink it in four shots. Much more difficult than it sounds. Then there's the mini-golf option - just you and your putter on an enclosed course. The aim is to bounce the ball off the walls in an attempt to reach the hole.

As you would expect, there are plenty of multiplayer games to play. Up to four players are supported, using anywhere between one and four controllers. It's great fun in multiplayer mode, passing around the controller, and it will lead to many late nights with your friends. There are a total of eleven characters to play, and each have their own different type of shot - some tend to bend the ball in an arc to the left, and some to the right, and the later characters have much longer drives. They have their own sounds and even their strokes look different.

At first there is only one course to play on, but soon the next will be available to you. As you play, you accumulate course points. Earn enough and the next course is unlocked. But instead of the points only being gained in tournament mode, you get them in any game you play, even in multiplayer modes. This works well, and helps the lasting appeal of the game a great deal. There are a total of six courses to play, of increasing difficulty, and as you progress you'll find the fairway growing narrower and more hazards appearing. The greens will get ever more bumpy and difficult to play, and you'll need real control over your club to make headway.

Despite the game being such fun to play, it's a bit of a shame that the courses stay soundly within the realms of the possible. The mini-golf mode is a little staid and although it's perfect for the younger ones, it won't have the adults coming back for more, unlike the main game. It would have been nice to have seen more imagination in the hazards - perhaps more like crazy golf than mini-golf. But apart from this there isn't much to criticise about Mario Golf. It manages to be one of those rare simple-to-learn but hard-to-master games that, for the most part, end up becoming classics. Mario Golf deserves to join them.