Sid Meier's SimGolf for Windows

Sid Meier's SimGolf lets you create and manage your own golf resort. You start with a set budget and choose a country to build your first course. The game is about planning and creativity. You set up everything from the tee to luxury features like hotels and marinas. Your goal is to design a course that looks great and is fun to play, all while managing your money to avoid bankruptcy.

In Sid Meier's SimGolf, you can design each hole on your course. You add features like fairways, bunkers, and trees. Where you place these features directly affects how the game plays. Adding amenities like snack bars and tennis courts enhances the course's appearance and impacts golfer satisfaction. It's crucial to hire staff such as groundskeepers and drink vendors. They help maintain the course and keep golfers happy. The happiness of golfers depends on your course design. You need to make the course challenging yet enjoyable.

You can save your customized golfer and enter championships to earn extra money. This money can be used to upgrade your course. The game also features a sandbox mode, which gives you unlimited funds to experiment with your designs. You need to design each part of the golf course to suit different player skills—length, accuracy, and imagination. These skills are vital for creating challenging holes. You must also place landmarks strategically to advance 

Despite the plethora of Sims-inspired games in the market, this golf fantasy game still offers plenty of challenges for the creative who aren't peeved by its substandard graphics. Just as in games Theme Park and SimCity, your goal is to create the golf resort of your dreams. Golf players come to visit and play on the courses you've designed. The graphics of SimGolf aren't any more developed as the first version of the Sims game, released in 1989. The interface also is similar and basic, and characters babble to one another. We weren't thrilled with the game resolution, as it seems locked to 800x600, and you can't zoom in. What's more, there isn't any music to keep the game amusing. A nice touch includes the ability to create golf players you can then allow to play in contests on your courses. Aside from a few operational glitches, the game plays smoothly and offers enough options to keep the process entertaining.

Overall, old-school Sims fans and golf fanatics may find Sid Meier's SimGolf a hole-in-one, so to speak.

• This version may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.