My daughter the game reviewer.
I have a strange habit with video game collecting. Some people collect Atari 2600, or NES, Genesis, whatever system you can think of they collect for it. I don't waste my time with that shit because for a console system I only buy what I plan on playing. I DO however kind of collect those stupid plug and play games. You know the kind. You just shove some batteries in it, hook it to the TV and you're good to go. Now there are some damned good ones out there like ANY of the Sega Genesis based ones, Mortal Kombat, the Namco ones, and of course the venerable Atari Flashback 2. Which it's debatable as to whether or not that is actually a plug and play system since it's literally a reproduction Atari 2600 sans the cartridge slot (which, anyone with some skill with the soldering iron can put one on).
I recently got what you see to the left. Visually ... that's just wrong. But aside from that, NONE of the games on it are any good. But I think that of most of the plug and play games like this. The graphics are halfway decent, but that's about where it ends.
Every time I get one of these, my daughter wants to play it. She's 9, and I've deliberately started her off on a good regiment of Sega Genesis games and old arcade games, along with some select Xbox 360 games that are acceptable for her age. She wanted to play Mortal Kombat however, and that's where I drew the line. Instead I just popped in the Sega Genesis version and didn't bother to put in the blood code. But that's neither here nor there. Now ... she absolutely loves the Spider-Man movies, so when she saw this she automatically wanted to play it. Which is fine by me, hell, this thing was made with kids her age in mind.
She did what I typically do with these, started running through the different little games it has on it. After about 10 minutes of fighting with these "games" (well, okay, to it's defense there is a little first person dungeon crawler style game on it that I think is halfway decent) I hear her call from the other room. Here is how the conversation went :
Angela : "Daddy!"
Me : "Yeah baby?"
Angela : "This Spider-Man game sucks."
Me : "I tried to warn ya!"
Angela : "Can I play the Xbox?"
Me : "Sure thing baby-girl!"
So yeah, she's already started reviewing these shit games like her daddy. I couldn't be more proud. Now all she has to do is turn 26 so she will actually be allowed to listen to my podcast.
The Golden Tee Golf : Home Edition TV Game from Radica Games
This thing has gotten a LOT of flack. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read anything good about it, but it’s mostly from people who are familiar with the arcade game. And it’s totally understandable, because though I’ve only actually played the arcade arcade version of it a couple of times … I know how fanatical people are about this. The arcade game is a GORGEOUS game that obviously plays extremely well with it’s unique and damned innovative trackball control scheme. It’s definitely a hard core game for video game golf nuts.
This is NOT that arcade game. Flat out. As an arcade translation, it’s pathetic. The only thing it has in relation to the arcade game is the name, the fact it’s a golf game and the trackball … which I’ll get to in a minute. This honestly shouldn’t have even been called Golden Tee Golf purely because of the hardware. A TV game setup is NOT capable of doing a good reproduction of it. And that’s how I’m going to review it, completely ignoring the Golden Tee name and just going on it’s own merits. Which it DOES have.