Swingerz Golf

Nintendo exclusive

Tee up on 6 courses featuring diverse terrains and seasonal weather condition. Compete with 14 offbeat golfers, each with distinct personalities and golfing abilities. Experience realistic golfing physics with Ace Golf's intuitive analog swing system. Master multiple modes of play for 1-4 golfers including Tournament, Stroke, Match and Short Course.

Released: 23 October 2002
Platforms: GameCube
Genres: Golf Sports
Developers: Telenet Japan
Publishers: Eidos Interactive
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Third person
Country: Japan
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

Swingerz Golf, known as Ace Golf in Europe and Wai Wai Golf (わいわいゴルフ, Wai Wai Gorufu; "Noisy Golf") in Japan, is a sports video game released by Telenet Japan in 2002. It is a golf simulation game that allows the player to choose from 14 different characters, each with different strengths and weaknesses, to play on any of the game's 6 courses, varying greatly in difficulty and atmosphere. Along with normal match and stroke modes of play, the game offers a tour mode, which simulates the career of a chosen character, a mission mode, consisting of a series of challenges that gradually increase in difficulty, and minigames, including a sudden death style of gameplay and a near-pin style of gameplay.

The game was released under Eidos' short-lived Fresh Games branding, and is the only game within its lineup to be a GameCube exclusive, while the other four games were PlayStation 2 exclusives.

Keywords

golf

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Swingerz Golf was made exclusively for GameCube, so the controls are designed specifically for a GameCube controller. The player-controlled golfer can be aimed in any direction with the analog stick and can change clubs with the R and L buttons to in any distance or direction possible up to that golfer's particular power limitations. With the X and Y buttons, the player may raise up the camera angle, zoom in on the hole, or rotate the camera around to see what is around an obstacle. Hitting the B button will switch between a power shot and a normal shot.

To swing, the player pulls back on the C Stick until the desired power level is reached, then flicks it forward. The accuracy of the shot depends on how straight the stick was moved. If it is nearly or exactly straight, the word "Excellent" will show and the player's character will regain a bit of stamina. Ratings of "Great" and "Good" mean the ball will fly more or less straight, but the player will lose stamina.

Reception

The game received "mixed or average reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 33 out of 40. GamePro said, "While Swingerz doesn't add anything new to the big-head golf genre, the things it does, it does well enough. GameCube owners looking for mascot golf but who don't want the 2Xtreme sportz [sic] feel of Outlaw Golf will be happy with Swingerz."