Golf Video Games: Top 20 Golf Games of All-Time

17. NES Open Tournament Golf

NES Open Tournament Golf is basically where it all started for Mario and served as the foundation for what would become an extremely fun and enjoyable gaming franchise.

Developed: HAL Laboratory

Published: Nintendo

Release Date: September 1991

I hate saying the phrase “for its time”, because it’s basically a slap in the face to older generations of games, but – and I’m going to say it anyway – for its time this game was great.

NES Open Tournament had a handful of courses – which was a lot back then – with their own specific set ups. Some were based around bunkers, others water, etc.

One of the neat features that the NES Open Tournament Golf had – which was well ahead its time – was that you could save your scores, keep track of how much money you made, and you could save your best shots.

Those were features that weren’t common back in the early 90’s of gaming.

NES Open Tournament Golf is available to download on the Nintendo Wii via the Virtual Console and while I haven’t played that version from what I’ve heard and read it’s basically the same as the NES version.

It’s an 8-bit game and it doesn’t hold up as well as it did back in the day.

Mario Games have been improved upon since then, but this was basically the starting point and I felt that this one deserved a shout out somewhere in this list and I feel putting it at seventeen is fair.

Next: Continuing the process