
Though there are already two DSiWare games based on serious golfing, putt-putt (or crazy golf to our European chums! - Ed) has remained oddly under-represented – until now. Teyon has brought us yet another DSiWare game almost straight from the PC: 101 MiniGolf World, featuring over 100 different holes to play, tons of different obstacles and a one-system multiplayer mode allowing you to share the experience with up to eight of your friends. It sounds like fun, but if you're the type to throw your clubs around when you don't make a shot, you'll want to have something handy while playing this game so you don't wind up throwing your DSi through a wall.
There are two modes of play: Single and Multiplayer. Of the six 'islands' in the game, each with its own 18-hole course, only the first is available at the outset. Once you've gotten past a hole, you may replay it at your leisure in order to lower your stroke count, as each subsequent island/course is unlocked by having completed at least half of the prior island's available holes at or below par.
As there is no tutorial available, the game begins by showing you how the camera works. Moving your stylus up and down on the screen zooms in and out on the ball, and left or right rotates the view. A marker appears while you're lining up your shots to help you aim straight for the hole. The camera is centered on your ball at all times, which makes lining up certain shots annoying, especially if they involve shooting your ball up a ramp and onto a platform farther away, but once you're ready to take a crack at it, tap the golf ball icon in the lower right-hand corner of the touchscreen. You'll then be told to slide your stylus upward to hit the ball. How much power you put behind your 'swing' depends on how fast you slide your stylus: a quick flick will send the ball flying, but a slow drag will give it the tiniest little bump. The meter to the right will light up after you've taken your shot, showing you how much force was really behind your swing. If you aren't satisfied with your swing, tapping the 'undo' button in the lower left corner will allow you to retake your most recent shot, though the undo button will not appear if your ball went out of bounds.

Some of the holes feature interesting obstacles – fans that blow your ball into the air, ramps with accelerators, and loop-the-loop slides – but the more traditional sand-traps, hills, and fallen logs are also strategically scattered about the landscape. There may also be multiple paths to the hole available to you, or shortcuts that can be taken to shave strokes off of your score, but however you get to the end, once you're there the game will tally your score for you and move on to the next hole. You may view your top hole-by-hole scores at any time from the main menu.
Unfortunately, what should have been a fun game of putt-putt golf quickly becomes irritating as the camera and swing technique combine to make this an overall frustrating experience. There will be shots you'll have to make where your ball has to go up a ramp and fly across the water to a faraway island, a feat requiring pinpoint accuracy and a steady hand. The camera focusing on the ball instead of moving freely makes it difficult to see how far away the landing spot is though, and there's no on-screen meter letting you know exactly how fast you're hitting your ball during the swing process – you'll only see that information after-the-fact. Together with the game not allowing you to undo shots where the ball lands out of bounds, you may spend quite a while trying again and again to get that last at-or-below-par stroke count you'll need to pass the first course.
Multiplayer mode is more of the same. All six courses are available at the outset this time, and you may choose how many holes you'd like to play. Up to eight people may play together, though only four of them may be profiles saved to the game – the rest will be guests. The player turns seem to be meted out not by strokes made but distance covered: once your ball has gone far enough or has gotten close enough to the hole, it'll be your opponent's turn. There's no pomp or fanfare between turns, so you'll have to be careful to watch out for which colour flag the ball in play is under and whose name is on the top screen. The top three players are awarded beautiful trophies and the scores from each hole played during Multiplayer, if high enough, will be added to your high score list if you played using your own profile.

101 MiniGolf World sticks close to the 'island' theme with flowers, rough-hewn logs, and palm trees scattered throughout each course, and of course the ocean slowly drifting past as you play. The 3-D graphics have little in the way of shadowing, however, so be careful to use the camera to thoroughly check your path for dips or hills as you play. As for the music, it's a repeating loop of inoffensive pop with a slight island flair thanks to the xylophone and drums. It's not the greatest music ever, but it won't really get on your nerves, either - not with the other problems this game has on tap.
As of this point in time, it must be mentioned that this game has a problem with locking up. The first time it happened was while attempting to load a new profile after having progressed through all the holes of the first island/course; the second while attempting to go back to the main menu from the middle of a Multiplayer game, and it was all downhill from there. The screen will go black, the music may or may not stop, and the DSi must be reset or turned off entirely. Once it's locked up once, it's all downhill from there; you'll gradually come to a point where the game must be deleted from your DSi and re-downloaded in order to play normally again, and all your scores and unlocked stuff will naturally be gone. Until this is fixed, in no way can this game be recommended in good conscience.
Editor's note: As always with our reviews, we try to be as thorough as possible and let you know of any major bugs we may encounter. Although we've done our best to highlight and replicate these issues, there is still the chance these bugs may be related to our technical setup and may not occur if you download the game yourself. We'll update this review accordingly if any new information becomes available.
Conclusion
Luck alone should not be a factor in progressing through a game like this, but unfortunately, that's the situation you'll find yourself in with 101 MiniGolf World. The fixed camera point and nearly unpredictable power behind your swing will throw precision shots to the winds, and the fact that you'll spend quite a while attempting to unlock each course will have you thanking your lucky stars this game didn't include the 1000+ holes of the original PC version.
Even if there were no issues with this game locking up and becoming unplayable, it's still more hassle than it's worth. If you really want to play some golf on your DSi, try one of the other available games instead and save yourself the headache.
Comments 28
There really is NO other choice for mini-golf on DS, accept for the Domo game but that game itself is lame because it won't record a score unless you actually complete a level which is really stupid. Is this 101 mini as BAD as the reviewer says? I think this is on the iPhone and it didn't get very good reviews there.
wow, that's bad. I will pass on this one (or anything made by Teyon for that matter)
To bad,so sad
@Gmls719: I've got two other Teyon games and never had this kind of problem. I think it's just this game.
Yeah, sucks when a game is broken rather than bad because it's crap. Hopefully this will underline the importance of QA when doing a port.
Interesting that IGN gave this a "Get It" recommendation in their capsule review, and apparently experience none of the technical issues described in this review. link - http://ds.ign.com/articles/105/1058316p1.html
@Dabogues: no offense to IGN, but i doubt they played it as long as I did in order to review it. this game locked up on me to the point of unplayability three times in all between two DSi's, one of which was brand spanking new, just replaced by Nintendo this past week, and the other was bought at launch. Also, note that another user on our forums (see #12) has also had this game lock up on him on his own DSi.
Teyon has been made aware of the issues with this game and given the opportunity to download not only all three of my savefiles but also video of the game's different methods of locking up on both of the DSi's i have available to me. hopefully they're working on a solution as we speak, but in the meantime, this game cannot be recommended in good conscience.
Oh, I'm sure that's the case, theblackdragon.
The 1/10 Club seems to be getting less exclusive by the week!
@theblackdragon: I agree with you about IGN. I'm not saying they always do a bad job, but their capsule reviews read more like "first impressions" than a full review. They are helpful, but having a full review is more helpful.
Jesus, good thing I didn't go by the IGN review--they had me right excited about this game.
I do feel I must mention, though: your tagline for the review game is "this put-put is below par". In golf, being "below par" is a good thing.
@TBD.... nice review. I love a good honest review. I seriously hate reading a review and buying a game and finding it NOT to be what I was expecting in the review. Having just bought a Android phone and playing all the FREE Games available on it, DSiWare having lame games as this is NOT a good thing for the service. At any rate they should be Free as they are on the phones.
@Kid_A But when talking about a game, it definitely isn't
@Kid_A: i know, but if you note the A Little Bit of... Nintendo Touch Golf and Let's Golf! reviews both used par puns in their taglines, and i figured 'above par' would be misleading to the general public who doesn't really care about the specifics of golf rules :3
I think we might need some new golfing puns.
hopefully the next one will be a hole-in-one.
it's bad when you have to facepalm at your own comments D:
CONFIRMED...
Confirmed... after playing through the first 26 holes. Tihis is THE WORST incarnation of video game mini-golf I've ever played on any electronic form. Stupid level design (too many ramps, they should've called in RAMP GOLF). Horrible DS graphics. Can't review the hole after the flyby ends. No map/overview of the hole, no restart option. TOtal GARBAGE.
That bad ?!
Nintendo True Swing Gold sucks too ;-/
Amazed no one said this. "This putt-putt is below par" - below par is a good thing! d'oh
@winter123: See comments 11-14.
Hi. I'm an 13 year old cartoon illustrator, the creator of 'Gator Down Under.' I'm new! Still, OOOOFFFFF!!!
First of all in golf below par = Good but we are talking about reviewing a game and below par for reviewing = Bad
Second I actually almost got this game.
Third this Game should have been one of those discount retail games at walmart. If this game wasn't crazy glitched I would've gave this game a 101/10 (not realy more like a 8/10
The graphics look OK... But, I don't really care. Golf games pretty much cannot be fun, except Mario Golf.
weird, i read some other reviews and most of them said it was really good
Oh my god, wow. Glad I did not pick this one up!
@winter123
ya this is a pretty awful game with glitches to the max on all levels :/
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