In Armchair Arcade‘s  ongoing series (first started back in 2012 on the old version of our Website, here and continued on our current site, here), we ask the provocative question, “What makes a particular videogame sexy?” Each feature explores some of the many intriguing approaches game designers have taken over the years to make their games more sensual, not just with increasingly detailed graphics, but also with romantic and seductive gameplay. While some of the games we’ll be looking at are unabashedly low brow, displaying their raw sexuality like a badge of honor, other games in contrast are remarkably subtle, often downplaying their suggestive themes.

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Today’s series entry, which is the eighth, features an adult take on casual cartoon-style golf games:

Outlaw Golf

Developer: Hypnotix
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Interactive
Initial Release Date: 2002
Platforms: Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, PC Windows
Game Type: Sports

Golf has been called the gentleman’s game. It’s also been called stuffy, pompous, slow, and boring. Outside of cartoon characters and miniature golf – the latter of which is like golf’s fun, but embarrassing presidential sibling – the sport of golf has typically been presented in videogames in a similarly stuffy, pompous, slow, and boring manner. Likewise, unless you found super deformed cartoon characters or out-of-shape middle-aged men particularly attractive, these games certainly didn’t bring the sexy. Or at least until 2002 when Outlaw Golf came out.

Years before Tiger Woods’s being chased by a golf club wielding Elin Nordegren suddenly brought the world’s most famous golfer’s remarkably convoluted off-the-course shenanigans to the public eye, Outlaw Golf rendered a world where he would have fit in far better than we – and the now defunct videogames that bore his name – ever envisioned.

A pre-The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Office Steve Carrell sets the scene with his sarcastic commentary. He zings everything from the three extreme courses – one of which takes place near the infamous New Jersey Turnpike and features overpasses as hazards – to the 10 stereotype-ridden golfers and their individual caddies, who are there to both help titillate and to be on the receiving end of a composure restoring beat down.

Even though the 10 in-game golfers represent an even mix of five women and five men, it’s in no way indicative of how the game’s sex appeal is balanced. While male characters like the perfectly coiffed El Suave show some promise in this area, in the end, only the ladies really get to complement the outrageous with the sexy. In fact, with its female roster, Outlaw Golf hits some of the most popular sexual archetypes.

There’s Harley, the tough, tattooed biker chick who rides her pudgy caddy and live-in boyfriend, Snake, during beat-downs. There’s Summer, the PhD stripper, who straddles both the flag pole and her caddy sidekick, Autumn, who – if it wasn’t clear from the name – is also a stripper, and is also clearly more than just a friend. There’s Mistress Suki, the no holds barred dominatrix complete with gimp caddy, Puddin’. There’s sassy urban tomboy C.C., who pities no fools, least of all, caddy Heavy G. And finally, there’s Trixie Monroe, the naughty school girl all-grown-up, complete with ham-handed, worshipful caddy, Conner.

From the erotic character models complete with different outfits to the sexy beat downs to the double entendre-laden word play and all the way through to the gratuitous camera angles that include plenty of up-skirts, Outlaw Golf displays its sexy proudly and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Even with all that going for it, though, unlike some of the other sexiest videogames of all time (including some of the additional entries in the Outlaw series), it’s actually a really good game to boot, or should we say, to putt?