The second golf game on N64, and again it’s exclusive to Japan. This is a significant improvement over The Glory of St Andrews, but is still far from being a good golf game. Like St Andrews, this one also covers only one specific course.

Augusta Masters doesn’t try anything new in terms of video game mechanics for golf, using the tried and tested bar system from Golf on the NES. There’s nothing wrong with it as it’s a good system, but the big flaw with Augusta is that it’s very, very difficult to correlate power to distance – it just never seems right.

This is especially evident during putting, anything above 50% power is far too hard, and really anything over four tiny bars will cause the ball to spiral out of control. The balance for getting it right requires perfection, but you never know what level is needed. If you don’t land on the green very close to the hole, you’ll be adding 5 to your score.

So with difficult gameplay, graphics that are detailed yet also extremely ugly and only one course, there isn’t much to this game.

Poor

For starters, it used digitised players. Like ‘blue screen’ special effects in old movies, this looks woefully dated, with golfers appearing divorced from the backgrounds they’re placed upon.

James Price, N64 Magazine #14. Review Score: 40%

Remake or remaster?

This game doesn’t need any special treatment.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Augusta Masters #98