Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH! (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH! says almost everything you need to know in its name alone; a portable minigolf game with touch-screen elements and, thanks to the host hardware, some 3D visuals thrown in for good measure. In essence, this is purely a pick-up-and-play game; there is no underlining goal to reach or rival to beat here, just pure old fashioned golfing, done here in sets of nine holes with varying courses.

First thing that has to be touched upon (ha!) is the graphical ability of the title. Although critical reception of the original Fun! Fun! Minigolf on WiiWare was mixed when it saw release, there was little doubt of the visual fidelity the game showed, especially considering the size limits Nintendo imposed on WiiWare games. This rich graphical style has made it fully intact over to 3DS, and combined with the 3D slider makes for one of the most striking downloads on the eShop service yet.

One aspect that will stand out when playing, however, is the player characters. With normal faces they are fairly generic, but when the option of using Mii faces is unlocked, things get very scary indeed; and seeing a Mii head on a normally proportioned body helps clarify why Nintendo never did the same thing. This does help to add a little individuality to each play through, though, and the bodies animate well with the Mii expressions. Musical ability is very rarely an issue with Shin’en software, and here is no different. Cheery, catchy music accompanies play, and the voiceovers are quite encouraging and thankfully non-obtrusive.

Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH! has been adapted well to the 3DS interface. Two control methods are at your disposal here -- buttons and D-Pad/Circle Pad, or touch-screen, and personal preference will decide the method as either option works fairly well. The touch indictors for lining up and powering shots can be a bit too sensitive, but this potential drawback can act as a slight handicap for more experienced players looking for a bigger challenge, so again preference plays a part. For both control methods, though, depending on the potential shot, the aiming sight on the top screen can hinder more than help, as it only depicts the ball trajectory in a straight line, and not where it will go if you rebound it against a wall. The 3D depth does help to measure direction to remedy this issue, and the field can be looked over with a press of the R trigger (albeit with a limited viewpoint) but as a result there will be a lot of trial and error to begin with for new upstarts.

Thankfully things start off quite easy in Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH!. The America Cup is a fairly simple set of nine holes to get started off with, and the pop-up tutorial eases players in on controls. At the end of the courses, coins are dished out depending on the performance that can be spent in the game’s special store, and this is how the other two cups can be unlocked, along with other items such as different clubs and golf balls, as well as higher difficulty variations of all three cups.

Accompanying the cups is TrickShot Mode, in which with a set number of tries are provided so that coin medals on specially designed enclosed courses can be collected to rank up a high score. This mode is enjoyable as both practice for, and a diversion to, the main cups, and works as a useful money-collecting tool for purchasing more shop treats, including another two TrickShot courses.

All that, however, is pretty much the entire game in a nutshell. Although notable feature absentees like multiplayer and online leader boards can be excused given the game’s downloadable nature, there is only the regular scoreboards to return to after purchasing everything and beating all the modes, which admittedly isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Fun! Fun! aspect is alive and well, but the portable pick-up-and-play longevity factor is sadly limited in this instance.