Golf games have been somewhat more available on the whole for the Amiga than the ST, especially with the recent release of PGA Tour Golf. This was a fine game but the conversion suffered because no changes were made to the 16-colour lo-res EGA graphics. The 32-colour med-res graphics of Microprose little clubwarmer certainly show up Electronic Arts' poorly presented, but highly playable game.

Suitable for the basic A500 machine, Microprose Golf offers, after loading, a menu of options that can be selected before you dive in the serious business of competition play. Options for past play include loading a previously saved round or a replay of that hole in one of the ninth.

There is also a demo of the play which is handy for beginners because it screens, in one broad sweep, the majority of the available features. You can also view your player's statistics (see later). However, for most beginners you will be well advised to play the driving range and the putting practice area.

Both of these areas have been well designed. The driving range offers alternate strips of fairway and trees - daring you to hit your shot 'straight down the middle', as one crooner described it. In addition to the directional guidance you are offered help with distance as the major distance landmarks are scribed onto the fairway (100, 200, etc).

The putting practice area is just as good. The view for he shot can be changed, the speed of the green can be altered and a grid system can be overlaid to help you observe precisely how the ball is moving after your shot.

After your practice sessions have been completed you can select one of many different types of competition. Microprose should be congratulated for the wide choice (a pat on the back is in the post, Paul - Sarcasm Ed).

Medal is a competition for points using a score card. Points are awarded for each hole - the lowest score wins. Skins is a competition for money. An amount of money is allocated to each hole before the round is played and the player who completed the hole with the least number of strokes wins the cash. If there is a draw then the cash is carried on to the next hole, and then the next until the total amount is won. Head To Head is you against the computer, playing for points. Tournament allows you to play with up to four human players for points. In Singles you play for the number of holes won overall. Bestball 3 and Bestball 4 is a competition for points. However, here the match is you or you and a friend against two opponents with one ball each.

Threesome and Foursame is (deep breath) either two players against yourself or two against two with either two balls for two teams each taking alternate shots or two balls each with the best score on each team counting for the final card. Finally Threeball and Fourball is a competition of three or four individual sides who play for points. In just about all of the above, you can toggle whether a computer or a human player takes part.

Once you have selected the competition you must allocate the skill level. Novice players get things easy while a player with a handicap must suffer all of the vagaries of play (wind speed and varying direction).

It is nice to see a proper handicap system in a golf game. It means that you will be "given" a number of shots that will be subtracted from your final score. The better you do, the lower your handicap becomes. Your player statistics can, therefore, be saved to a separate data disk.

It is pleasing to watch how your player improves - or otherwise - over time and competition. A close eye can be kept on your player's statistics from the main menu View Stats option. Here you can see your player's performance via a large bar graph pls statistics such as average score, average putts holed, number of birdies scored and so on.

There is a wide selection of courses to choose from. Deep breath, Bally-brook, Farthing Valley, St Augustine, Fairdale Park, Fenham Valley, Buckland Heath and Mountsummer Point.

There is a welcome wide selection of variables that you can change before the shot is made, such as varying the foot positions, the height of the tee and the club selection. Other variables include a wide variety of camera viewpoints and an instant replay.

Playing a fairway shot has been well implemented. The game penalises you for a strong shot. Therefore, it is more difficult to hit a straight shot the harder you hit. Basically, you click to initiate the shot, click again to stop the "strength" meter, then click again to try to land in the "straight" zone (which will shrink the harder the shot). Failure to find the "straight" zone will mean a hooker or sliced shot.

For putting, just click to initiate the putt, wait to increase the shot's power and click again to stop the strength meter. This section of the game is a little unusual from others in that the distance you can hit is not explicitly displayed onscreen.

On the fairway you have to quite to the club selection screen and gauge from that how far you go around the strength meter. It might sound strange but this is the nearest simulation to asking your caddy to give you details of the hole.

Putting is even more bizarre - across the bottom of the screen is a thermometer gauge. The line which bisects it is the ideal strength for a straight flat putt into the hole from wherever you are. It is up to you to work out whether you need less for a downhill putt or more for an uphill putt. The static screen graphics make the most of the 32 colours, and as the camera tracks the ball, the smooth way in which the course rotates is reminiscent of the Konami Golfing Greats coin-op, which included more custom chips than you could shake a salt sachet at.

Microprose Golf has many advantages. One excellent feature is the design of the topgraphy which is nicely contoured and contains all of the essential obstructions including water, sand and trees. Even better, this allows the ball to react to the contours. For example, the ball can "kick", if it finds the right spot on the fairway, Other nice features are the ability to change the distance measurements from metres to yards and the colour of the player's jersey.

There are niggles, though. You do not see tournament computer player updates, such as in PGA Tour Golf, which has a commentator updating the play. You always have to exit to the scoreboard to find out where you are relative to the competition.

There are many excellent features to Microprose Golf which has, on the whole, been expertly designed. Possibly the best golf game you'll find on the Amiga, it is definitely the best looking and my personal preference is for this against PGA.

In many way, and more so than with most other sports, computer golf is the very antithesis of the real thing. Golf is all about getting out into the fresh air, having a leisurely stroll along the course with a chum or two, and socialising convivially in the clubhouse afterwards. It doesn't really matter how good you are, for the average hacker the playing of the game is its own reward. (Contrast this with something like Kick Off, where the ordinary gamer has neither the talent nor the opportunity - who's ever got 21 friends all in the mood for a quick kickabout at the same time? - to seriously pursue the real thing, and hence looks to the computer game to give him a flavour of something he'll never experience for real).

To play it by yourself in a dark and clammy bedroom, then, is a pretty strange thing for anyone to want to do. Still, it's always a popular theme for programmers, which leads me to believe that it's not the fact that a computer game is a simulation of golf per se that's important, but that there's something inherently attractive about the basic concept that real golf was developed from in the first place. I'd have thought that this would make total accuracy of simulation the last things which was really important in a computer golf game (when are we going to see a future sport game based on the pitch 'n' putt principle? Death Golf, with exploding balls, mines in the rough and snipers in the trees, maybe? Now that'd be interesting), but nonetheless (surprise!) that's what MicroProse have gone for here, so all that remains to be seen is how good a job they've made of it.

FIRST AND FOREMOST

The first thing you're going to notice when you play MicroProse Golf (hell of a title, guys), is the stunningly 3D effect. The courses are depicted in vector-graphic contours, and as the ball flies through the air, a camera tracks its progress past rolling hills, across lakes and streams and through clumps of trees in an extremely effective manner (indeed several cameras do, as you can view a shot from any one of five moving angles).

It's an impressive thing to witness, but unfortunately the programmers have gotten slightly carried away with it and over-stretched themselves. What I mean by that rather cruel-sounding comment is that when your golfer stands at the tee or wherever, you see a lovely and reasonably detailed panoramic view of the hole ahead as far the eye can see, but when he goes to actually hit the ball, all but the close foreground is suddenly blanked out by a cloak of light blue. The effect is rather unsettling, as if a particularly thick golf has descended without warning on the course, and it gives you an unwelcome reminder of the limitations of the machine (in much the same was as 'Loading And Decrunching Level Two' messages spoil the atmosphere and flow of many an arcade game).

Now you can say that's unavoidable and forgivable - some people in the office are arguing that angle even as I type - but I don't agree. When I'm playing a computer game, I want to feel that I'm lost in whatever little world I've entered, and the last thing I want to see is the machine's little cogs and wheels grinding in front of me and dragging everything back to Earth. If the machine isn't up to what you're trying to do, you should forget about it and concentrate on making it perform to ultimate standard that is within its capabilities. In such a way are all the best games written - it's why Rainbow Islands is brilliant (partly, anyway) and why Dragon's Lair is trash.

PICKING MORE HOLES

There are a few other areas of the game which seem to have been neglected in favour of the spanky graphics, too. For one, the ball-hitting mechanism, while perfectly serviceable, is a touch over-fussy for my liking. The circular bar are unnatural, and the moving line is too thick for the pixel precision needed for some of the trickier shots you'll be called on to play.

Also, the aiming system used on the course map is needlessly confusing and unhelpful - imposing an arc on a forced-3D perspective makes it extremely difficult to know exactly where your ball is hopefully going. (The manual only muddies matters further here with lots of unnecessary waffle about bouncing and rolling and 'optimum' and 'maximum' distances).

It's a pain in the neck, too, to have to keep going back to the map screen when you just want to change your club. In a game drowning in icons, having such a complicated route to one of the simplest tasks seems a little absurd.

In addition, the slopes on some of the greens are a little intangible. Having overlaid the grid lines on the green which seem to show it as flat, it's very disconcerting to watch your ball shoot off six yard to the left of the hole. And finally, the game does so much of the work for you (selecting clubs, aiming at the hole etc), that something the player can feel that he's not exerting much real control over the proceedings.

In fact, after a while, it can seem that all you're actually doing is performing a quick reaction test when taking the shot, and it's the computer that's really doing all the actual golfing!

BUT WAIT...

Hang on, though. You might not think it, But I like this game. For all my nitpicking it's still a highly enjoyable golf sim, and the accuracy and depth of options (well, they are MicroProse's strong points) are both painstakingly comprehensive. While it's not quite as gloriously playable or as slickly presented as Electronic Arts' PGA Tour Golf, MicroProse Golf still has a great game lurking beneath the stunning aesthetics. Many people will buy it purely out of technolust, but once they'll be getting a decent amount of play after the initial thrill's worn off, and that shouldn't be sneered at. Computer golf has always done well, and if it's what you want you'll have no real complaints about this at all. Having said that though, I'd really like to see what golf is like on the Amiga in two years' time.

Oscar Wilde said 'Golf is a good Sunday afternoon stroll - spoiled', and so, no doubt, it's those people who prefer to sit at home on Sunday and take their Amiga for a brisk walk who will benefit most from MicroProse Golf.

Golf is not an easy game for beginners. Yet everything about this game seems so example, from its humble beginnings, to the supposed ease with which one can hit a small ball with a large metal stick towards a small flag.

MicroProse are famous for their simulations and comprehensive documentation, detail and realism, so it's easy to understand why MicroProse Golf has so many options available.

A simple point-and-click system takes you through a maze of options which make the game look anything but simple. Fortunately, the programming team of Lee Hodgson and Mark Davies have included a 'Quickstart Tutorial' option that pts you on one of the six courses, ready to tee off.

Once you've gone through the setup and become familiar with the controls, you'll soon understand why the game is so magnificent.

The options allow up to four players, with computer-controlled contestants if needed, to play a full 18, 36 or 72 holes, with full 3D effects.

The game is progressive and easy to follow once initiated and holds your attention at all points. The level of control that you have over both the golf club and the golfer are exact in their realism and add to a level of playability that is only equalled by the excellent PGA Tour Golf, but without the constant disk swapping.

Graphics, too, are excellent, with the five option camera mode allowing you to view the path of the ball from a variety of angles - you can even include a pan shot which moves the whole 3D world around upon itself - all of which happens with a speed and fluidity of movement that would put Steven Spielberg to shame.

Sound is the only poor point in the whole game. The sound effects, whilst adequate, add very little to the atmosphere, add very little to the atmosphere, the game relying heavily upon its phenomenal playability to draw the player in.

MicroProse Golf is a classic. It remains so because the game is as complete as it could be without you actually getting out there yourself and spoiling that Sunday afternoon stroll.

If you play Golf, it's a must. If you don't, then after just a few rounds on the Amiga, you'll be making enquiries down at the local club - and, whatever the outcome, Sunday afternoons will never be the same again.