Jack Nicklaus, a living legend on the golf links, has linked his name to one of the best computer sports games on the market. Simply put, Jack Nicklaus’ Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf is a masterpiece. It has it all: great graphics, realistic game play, and a nonstop supply of golf courses from around the world. Whether you’re a rabid golf fan or you don't know a birdie from a hole in the ground, you're bound to be hooked by this thoughtful, well-designed game.
Art Imitates Life
The secret of the success of Jack Nicklaus'Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf is that Accolade has designed the game around some of the world s best golf links. Everything is presented just as if you’re actually playing through the course: the obstacles, the doglegs, the sand traps and lakes, in fact all of the idiosyncrasies that make each course unique and challenging. Even the clubhouses and grandstands of some of the most famous courses are included.
Where the game really excels is in the graphics – at least for the color version of the game. The scenery is realistic, from the trees that line the course, to the lakes and sand that form the obstacles, to the buildings in the distance. When you swing, the animation of your computer alter ego is superb: your body twists, your follow-through is impeccable. You end up wishing you really could hit a golf ball like that. Once you've hit the ball, the visuals keep the action realistic—the ball casts a shadow as it flies, and makes a spurt of sand fly when you hit it into a sand trap. The ball makes a satisfying plop when you slice into a lake — and believe me, you will slice into a lake before you’ve learned to master this game.
Choices Galore
You have an impressive series of choices to make before you start. First, you select one of three courses, the primary one being Jack Nicklaus's fantasy golf course: a single course made up of individual holes from nine major championship courses, including Pebble Beach and Baltusrol. The other two courses were designed (in real life, not just for the computer screen) by Nicklaus himself: Castle Pines and Desert Mountain.
After the course selection comes one of the few drawbacks to the game: a copy-protection scheme that's guaranteed to make your eyes bug out and give you a headache. You're given a piece of paper (photocopy-proof red) with over 50 tiny maps of golf holes. A hole randomly appears on screen; you've got to pick the corresponding hole on the map before you can continue. The trouble is, lots of the holes look almost the same, and you find yourself squinting at itsy-bitsy details of the maps trying to figure out the right one. Two strikes and you're out: Jack tells you it looks like rain and bumps you out of the program.
Anyway, once you can focus again, you select up to four golf partners, either preprogrammed computer players, or human players. The nine preprogrammed computer players come in all flavors—from Jack Nicklaus himself (I warn you, he hits almost every shot perfectly) to female pro golfers, gifted amateurs, and an incompetent Sunday player named Curly. You select the level of each human player, either beginning or expert, and the sex (female players hit the ball less powerfully and therefore have tees slightly closer to the pin).
Strokes or Skins
One of the more interesting aspects of the game is deciding the type of competition on the course. You can choose to play for lowest score (stroke play) or for a winner-takes-all dollar amount per hole (skins play).
Each hole starts out with a description and a tip from Nicklaus on how to play it. He tells you what obstacles to look out for, or suggests the best way to position the ball through the course. It's a good gimmick — you really feel as if you're getting a quick (albeit superficial) lesson on the ins and outs of the course from someone who knows the course intimately.
The Play's the Thing
You start out with a bird’s-eye view of the hole, to plot your approach strategy; then you're at the tee. Beginning players have their clubs automatically chosen for them; expert players get to choose their clubs at every hole. Each dub has a maximum distance rating tor a perfect swing, but if you book or slice, the distance can be much less.
There are more than enough variables in the game to keep it interesting. First of all, the wind factor is constantly changing. You have to compensate by changing the direction in which you hit the ball, or intentionally hooking or slicing in a direction that counteracts the wind. On the putting green, the direction and steepness of the slope (or break) is given to you, so you also have to adjust your swing to make your putts. Again, the realism of the graphics is excellent — when the ball is blown off course, or you make a putt on a particularly steep break, the trajectory of the ball looks like the real thing.
Swinging your club and hitting the ball is a talent that takes some practice. Each swing requires three perfectly timed taps of the mouse button: one to start your backs wing, one to determine distance, and one to begin your downswing. If you don't time it perfectly, you either hook, slice, or change the distance the ball travels. But with a little practice it gets to be second nature. Hie skill in the game is to take into account all these variables — wind, distance, slope, and obstacles — and also hit the ball perfectly. Nicklaus can do it. Most of the time, you can’t.
International Intrigue
One of the things I like most about this game is that its possibilities are as endless as the number of golf courses in the world. The publisher has already released two supplementary programs that feature new courses. The first, Jack Nicklaus Presents The International Course Disk, features championship courses from Australia, japan, and England. The second, Jack Nicklaus Presents The Major Championship Courses of 1989, is made up of the courses that the U S, Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship were played on in 1989: Oak Hill, Royal Troon, and Kemper lakes.
With such great graphics, it’s a shame to play these games on a black-and-white monitor. You can’t really get the full beauty of the landscape, and, in fact, I found the black-and-white approximations of the rough, lakes, and sand traps to be difficult to decipher.
But really, these criticisms are minor points when compared to the excellent overall design, pleasurable play, and great graphics that make up this computerized golf world. It's the next best thing to being out on the greens — but in this computerized golf world, you can play on the golf course with Jack Nicklaus — and with a bit of luck, you can win.
Dashe, Michael. (November 1990). Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 80 Holes of Major Championship Golf. Macworld. (pgs. 233-234).
Sculptured Software
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
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Jack_Nicklaus_Greatest_18_Holes_of_Major_Championship_Golf.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
