The Golden Bear is back, and he's better than ever. Accolade's Jack Nicklaus series hasn't had a new incarnation in almost five years, but in all that time its position as THE leading game for course design has not been supplanted. Jack Nicklaus Signature Edition Courses are still made and traded widely on the Internet, and a bevy of course designers are already using JN4 to crank out more.

JN4 is the work of Accolade and Cinematronics, and it's a fine piece of work with only a couple minor flaws. There are two parts: the gameplay itself and the course designer. The game easily competes with anything out there, while the course designer is in a class of its own. The game is a handsome, full-featured golf sim with all the bells and whistles you could want. The resolution scales up to 1600x1200 in a full 16.7 million colors, with nice, wide vistas on the course. The courses are sharp-looking and second only to Links LS in sheer beauty: quite an accomplishment considering JN4's fast redraw times and need to accommodate a course designer. Water and sky textures are quite good, but unlike the original Nicklaus game, there's no in-screen animation: the price of hi-res.

While there's a viewing window with plenty of height options - from one meter to 30 - you can't keep multiple views open at the same time. An optional ball camera automatically reverses angles to show where the ball lands, but this causes one of JN4's minor hiccups: a three to five second hitch in golf swing animation. With the landing camera turned off, the golfers are animated immediately and smoothly, including Jack himself, whom you can play against but not as. Opponents are recorded rather than AI, which means you get a few canned golfing partners rather than a series of constantly changing opponents.