Links: The Challenge of Golf is a Sega CD game, offering an innovative take on PC golf gaming. This game transitioned golf from a conventional sports game to a dynamic simulation. It was distinguished by its commendable utilization of VGA's 256 colors, contributing to a realistic golf course depiction filled with environmental features such as trees, water bodies, sandtraps, and fairways. Enhanced game mechanics included ball physics, options for mulligans, changing ball lie, and genuine encoded environmental sounds. Moreover, it provided a replay feature with multiple viewing angles, setting a new benchmark for PC golf games in quality.
Links redefined what golf on the PC should look and play like; it migrated golf from a sports game to a simulation. Good use of VGA's 256 colors made for a realistic course with trees, water, sandtraps, and the fairway. The addition of ball physics, mulligans, changing the lie of the ball, real digitized environmental sounds (even through the PC speaker), and the ability to view a replay (even from multiple angles) gave PC golf games a new echelon of quality to match.