Having always held a place in my heart for Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge, the Bonestorm killer from The Simpsons’ golden age and undisputed king of fictional golfing games, it was my duty to give it a try.
I also have a lot of spare time, but that’s beside the point.
The PlayStation can produce mind-boggling effects. Netflix
Now, following my brief stint in Golf Mayhem ’98, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised – not only is it actually quite fun, but it’s probably better than the film it’s based on.
The game takes place across a single hole, which is apparently a par 4, but based on my experience is about a par 10. Your job is to get the ball in the hole; in case you are new to the game of golf.
It’s a short game, really earning that ‘Demo’ in the title, and based on its graphics alone it certainly wouldn’t look out of place playing on an old CRT through your PS1.
It has the same kind of surreal atmosphere about it that you used to get from those CD demos you got as part of some kind of McDonald’s promo 20+ years ago – close enough, welcome back Pepsiman.
During your sojourn from tee to green, there are all sorts of floating icons to encounter. Many of these are simply collectibles, but a few of them spawn short minigames.
If you give the golf a rest long enough to enjoy some of these minigames, you’ll have the chance to drive a golf cart with incredibly janky physics through a series of checkpoints or beat the snot out of some hecklers in a janky beat-’em-up. You may be sensing a theme here.
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There’s a timer on your shots, after which you’re heckled, causing you to slice your shot before a short cutscene where PS1-era Adam Sandler throttles the heckler on the fairway.
As you inch closer to the green, more brief, almost hallucinatory cutscenes appear where Shooter McGavin or the ghost of Chubbs Peterson talk to you.
Eventually, once you do land your ball on the green, you are of course treated to a boss fight, where Happy and the late great Bob Barker slug it out one last time.
Beloved deceased media personality dispatched, Happy slots the ball into the hole, and you get to plug your initials into the high scores like an arcade machine.
Christopher McDonald as Shooter McGavin and Adam Sandler as Happy Gilmore in Happy Gilmore 2. Netflix
I won’t lie; there were some pretty good gags in there. Certainly, enough to elicit more than a few wry chuckles.
Maybe it’s the fact I haven’t played a PS1-era game in so long, or maybe it’s the fact that I am, at the time of writing, quite tired, but I found Golf Mayhem ’98 to be a surreal, almost hypnotic experience.
There were times where, bouncing between golf cart explosions and apparent hallucinations, I started to think that maybe Happy Gilmore: Golf Mayhem ’98 Demo was more than it led on – some kind of avant-garde, postmodern audiovisual art piece.
Then, I remembered that I was playing a 10-minute video game tie-in to the sequel to a 30-year-old Adam Sandler movie.
Sadly, I’m not sure that Golf Mayhem ’98 will be landing on many Game of the Year lists come December, but then, I’m not sure how many Film of the Year lists Happy Gilmore 2 will be on either, so let’s just call it even.
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