Neo Turf Masters

About Neo Turf Masters

Neo Turf Masters (1996) is Nazca's fast-paced arcade golf game for the Neo Geo, with a simple two-click swing, devious courses and wildly variable wind.

Neo Turf Masters in Depth

A fast-paced, arcade-style golf game, it offers stroke play for one or two players and match play for two. Players compete on four fictional courses in the United States, Japan, Australia and Germany, choosing one of six golfers with different attributes. Unlike many golf games of the time, which used a two-click swing to decide hook or slice, Neo Turf Masters uses one click to set the shot's power and a second to set its height, with hook and slice chosen beforehand using the B and C buttons.

That makes it much easier to pick up than its more technically demanding contemporaries, and it compensates with fiendish, if somewhat unrealistic, course layouts and highly variable wind. Although improved for the Neo Geo, it resembles Irem's Major Title 2: Tournament Leader in many ways, because it was programmed by former Irem staff who had worked on that game. The Neo Geo version mixes partially digitised sprites with realistic art, while a later Neo Geo Pocket Color version uses cartoonish, less detailed graphics. IGN gave the Virtual Console release 7.5 out of 10, recommending it to anyone who "appreciates SNK's arcade style and can jibe with the idea of juiced-up, high-speed golf".

Making Neo Turf Masters

Nazca Corporation, a team of former Irem employees who had worked on Major Title 2, developed it, and SNK published it in 1996 as an arcade MVS cartridge, a home AES cartridge and on Neo Geo CD. The Neo Geo version was later included in SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 for PlayStation 2, Wii and PSP and released on the Wii Virtual Console, while the Neo Geo Pocket Color version reappeared in Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 in 2021.