Last weekend, my oldest friend and I threw on the Switch for an extended game of Hyrule Warriors. Following this, I launched the NES Online app, partly to wind down from the stress of bombing around murdering thousands as Link, and ostensibly as a joke; the selection is one I'd perceived as anaemic - at least, in terms of offering a seasoned gamer a fresh experience. Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best platformer of all time, yes. But I've played that from beginning to end a hundred times. River City Ransom? Inventive and quirky, but I've never really enjoyed it. So - as another joke, really - I booted up NES Open Tournament Golf. Ha ha, we thought. We'll blow five minutes taking the piss out of an archaic old golf sim.

Within minutes we were hollering at the screen as we spectacularly failed to sink yet another easy putt. The game was accessible for us both to pick up immediately without so much as a sniff of "tutorial", yet nuanced enough to be satisfyingly unmerciful. A fantastic marriage of form and function - Christ, the way it handles slopes on the green is more elegant than the confusing system employed by Switch's (frankly inexplicable) critical darling Golf Story.

We proceeded to play the full eighteen holes, barely ever achieving par. It was glorious madness - we taunted and teased, yelled and screamed and offered earnest, gentlemanly acknowledgement of each other's successes. It brought out the very best in us both and served to reinforce our ironclad platonic (...?) love for one another.

NES Open Tournament Golf is the Switch's killer app for local multiplayer and it single-handedly justifies the cost of Nintendo Switch Online. That's high praise given that the system also plays host to SNK's truly exemplary Neo Turf Masters. But I'd rather play the one with Luigi.

• nes
• switch
• golf
• Nintendo Switch Online
• NES open tournament golf
• Neo Turf Masters