Mean 18

A golf game in the mid-eighties? That sounds like the idea of taking a pixelated golf ball and dropping it into some digital hole, and Mean 18 strips it down to just the essentials. No fancy frills, just shot after shot, hole after hole, and if it works for you, it works.

It's a golf simulator for IBM-compatible computers, played from above where you see the course as a map. A line appears on screen that you need to aim and power into the hole by choosing direction and force. Simple, but that simplicity is exactly what makes it special. It's not an animated sport with commentary, there's no flash – it's pure mechanics. You sit down, you know what's expected of you, and you either pull it off or you don't.

The controls are straightforward. Pick your club, then adjust distance and angle. The graphics are sparse, colors pale, sounds limited to a quiet click. It plays without unnecessary animations that would slow you down. You'll finish each hole in about half a minute, max. That has its charm, but also its drawbacks – when you're wrestling with the same problem for the twentieth time, it starts feeling tedious rather than fun. The game won't give you a story, won't give you scaling difficulty to pull you forward. Just hole after hole.

Mean 18 is one of those games that had its moment, but time has moved on. It wasn't exactly the best golf simulation ever made, and it wasn't the most famous either. It had its niche and it fit comfortably in it. What remains today is mainly a memory of an era when computer golf was exotic, and if you played it for a few hours, you'd feel what it was like to master something so pointless yet incredibly specific.

Who would enjoy it today? Mostly those who want to see what the screen of a classic PC looked like in the early nineties. It's not a game for a long evening or meditative relaxation. It's more like an artifact that tells you what grew from such simple seeds. You can give it a shot, but expect a pure retro encounter with a piece of your past, not a discovery of hidden genius.