Previous Next

This Electronic Arts' golfing simulation first made an appearance on the IBM way back in July of last year. Since then, the sport has stormed onto our screens on Saturday mornings at one o' clock, just after the skiing and before the Indy 500 racing... do you get the feeling that EA is trying to corner the Saturday morning TV sports market?

Anyhow, back to the game. There are four courses here for the choosing, Sawgrass and Sterling Shores in Florida, PGA West in California and Avenel in Maryland, each with its own good and bad points (Sawgrass in particular is notorious for its 17th 'island' hole).

Both tournament and practice rounds can be played, with the statistics for each player recorded for all time on disk. So what are you waiting for? Pick up your clubs and get swinging.

IBM PC owners have long been able to savour the delights of chipping their balls onto the green, lying in heavy rough and getting a double bogey. Now, thankfully, all of you Amiga caddies can earn yourselves a handicap too, thanks to a brilliant conversion.

Not that there aren't a few flaws: the disk-accessing isn't as smooth as it could be, the 'fly-by' feature is more of a jerk-by and the isometric green view has the annoying habit of appearing when completely unnecessary (when you're four inches from the hole for example).

All but the disk-accessing can be switched off though (to be called up manually when required), so nothing major is lost from the gameplay. And that's it for the gripes, everything else has retained the energy and playability of the original PC version.

The added sound effects - birds chirping in the trees, crowds 'ooohing' when you narrowly miss a putt and cheering wildly when you birdie a hole - just serve to emphasise how much attention has been paid to detail and lend further weight to the theory that PGA Tour Golf is the best golf game currently available.