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If you haven't played PGA Tour Golf before, you're in for a big surprise as it is universally recognised as the greatest golfing simulation ever devised for the home computers. On the Megadrive, it has even spawned a sequel - PGA Tour Golf II, and it's even more incredible.

Now, the golfing magic of the PGA has arrived on the Master System in the guise of this conversion from the guys and gals at Tengen. Does it succeed in bringing the 16-bit magic of the best golf game ever to the 8-bit console? Or is it a sad, shambling example of forlorn lampooney? This review intends to let you, the discerning Master System-owning Mean Machines reader, know for sure.

A conversion of the Megadrive title, in turn converted from a top-selling PC title. Huzzah.

Choose a club and smack the ball towards the hole on the green. Easy.

If you're rather sad at putting, an option exists to improve your skills by visiting the putting green. The console puts the ball randomly on the green and unsurprisingly, it's your job to putt the little blighter. When you're consistently putting the ball in one "stroke", be off with you to the main tournament.

Four taxing, eighteen hole courses are on offer in PGA Tour Golf - each based on real life events. Test your golfing sills on TPC Avenel, PGA West Stadium, TPC Sawgrass and (made up especially for the game) Sterling Shores. The courses range in difficulty from the rather easy TPC Avenel to the golfing hell that is Sterling Shores. Aieee!

On the course, you have a choice of clubs to use from woods to irons to putting wedges and suchlike. Each club has its own qualities, the most obvious being that they hit for different ranges. The Master System chooses the club most suitable for the range to the hole automatically, although sometimes a manual choice yields better results.

So, you're a tad sad on the driving front, eh? Well, you can practise those gargantuan shots on the driving range. Smack those balls as hard as is humanly possible and see how far they go. Huzzah!

Master System PGA plays every bit as good as any other version I have played and is, in fact, better than the Super NES version!

Though the update of the screen is slow this isn't much of a problem as Golf is more a thinking person's game anyway. Every feature that has made the PGA series is present, if not slightly 'modified' to suit the capabilities of the machine.

Therefore it is simple enough to conclude that this is the best simulation of golf available for Sega's 8-bit system.

This is a very good version of the Megadrive game, capturing the control method of the original perfectly with just about all the features and courses. There are a couple of problems with the game though.

Firstly, the screen update is extremely slow - it takes a good couple of seconds for the screen to form fully. The actual game window is very small as well, with loads of space wasted. However, there's no doubting that at least some of the PGA magic has made its way over to the Master System, making it a good buy for golf fans.

Presentation 86%
P. Just about all the options you could possibly want.
N. Some of the presentation screens and suchlike are very scrappy.

Graphics 78%
P. The overall look is functional and the animation is okay.
N. The "action" window is too small, unfortunately.

Sound 88%
P. Some nice music kicks off the proceedings and some of the effects are good...
N. Whilst others (the ball being holed for instance) are crap.

Playability 88%
P. Easy to get into and utterly addictive, you'll spend hours playing this one, especially with more than one player participating.

Lastability 88%
P. Four courses to master, which should take some time. The multi-player action is a real lastability winner.

Overall 88%
Although it's not graphically awesome, PGA Tour Golf on the Master System is an admirable conversion of the incredible Megadrive game.