Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour Review

Developer	Camelot Software
Publisher	Nintendo
Genre	Sports

Nintendo has stated that the most drastic change in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour is that it was developed as a Mario game first, and a golf game second. If that was their goal, they have certainly succeeded. While the original Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 was essentially a “normal” (and very good) golf game that happened to feature Mario characters in it, many more aspects of Toadstool Tour have been designed with the Mario Bros. universe in mind. Since it also happens to be a very good golf game, well, then it has that going for it too.

Gameplay - Chief among the factors that make Camelot’s golf games so enjoyable is the wonderful marriage between depth and accessibility. Toadstool Tour does not deviate from this philosophy, as it’s a game that anyone can pick up the basics to with ease, yet it offers a nice amount of depth under the ostensibly shallow surface. The physics in the game are spot-on, so success is entirely dependent on how well you utilize all your clubs and different types of shots (for those who can’t tell their putters from their drivers, proper club selection is done automatically for each shot).

The process of swinging the club functions very similarly to Camelot’s past games, with a bar along the bottom of the screen in which various button presses determines strength and accuracy. Toadstool Tour does add a new twist—you now have the option of either an automatic or a manual swing. With the automatic swing, you only need to press the A button to start the gauge moving, then the A button again to set the desired strength; the accuracy is set automatically. If you instead press B to set the strength, you’ll then have to press either B, A, or a combination of the two to set the accuracy.

For example, double tapping A will give the ball topspin (making it roll a little bit more when it hits the ground), while double tapping B will give it backspin (making the ball barely roll at all). While the auto swing is best for beginners, you’ll generally want to use the manual swing the most for its finer degree of control, as a bit of backspin could literally be the difference between landing a foot from the cup or in the bunker behind the green.

Since the actual gameplay in golf games are generally very similar, it’s usually the course designs that set these games apart. In this respect, Toadstool Tour is like no other game of golf around. While the first few courses are what you’ll typically see at your average golf resort, they eventually begin to draw from the wealth of Mario Bros. concepts to make course designs that are supremely imaginative. As if bunkers and water hazards weren’t bad enough, now you have to deal with Thwamps and Chain-Chomps! The most inspired addition is the warp pipes. Shoot your ball into one, and it’ll pop out of the other of the same color. But while they can offer a very nice short cut, miss getting your ball into the pipe and it’ll likely end up in a very bad spot, as most warp pipes are surrounded by various hazards and uneven terrain.

Even worse, if you accidentally get the ball in the wrong pipe, it might end up being shot out of a pipe that’s farther away from the cup. Obviously, courses designed around the warp pipes offer the most interesting options for your approach, thus making them the more exciting courses in the game.

Seeing as this is Mario Golf, there is of course the standard stock of Mario characters. Besides different rankings in power, control and spin, each character has one of five different shot trajectories—some shoot straight, some hook slightly to the left or to the right, and some hook extremely to the left or right. This makes the characters more unique and offers a good deal of variety, as each course becomes a slightly different challenge depending on the shot trajectory of your character.

The camera is easily the worst aspect of the game. It’s not entirely terrible, mind you, but it does prove itself to be rather unintuitive on a number of occasions. Since you can only move it along the trajectory of your shot, it can be difficult to get a good read of the entire course; it’s particularly annoying in courses with warp pipes, since it sometimes makes it a hassle to see where each pipe leads. Putting has camera problems of its own. You can never take your character off-screen or make it transparent, so some characters come with an innate handicap—for example, Birdo’s large snout or Donkey Kong’s bulbous hand obscures your view of the hole unless you zoom the camera in closer to it.

Furthermore, the camera angle often stays focused on your character instead of following the ball after you putt it, which is just plain foolish. Half the time you’ll know whether you sank it or not by hearing the ball fall into the hole instead of actually seeing it. Although all these issues can be annoying, the camera is really never so bad that it degrades the enjoyment of the game. Still, it is unfortunate that Camelot didn’t ponder the mechanics of it a bit more to come up with something that works better.

Graphics - The visuals are both technically accomplished and wonderfully charming. Mario and the gang have never looked better, as each character model is made of a high number of polygons and animates extremely smoothly—each character’s various victory or defeat poses adds a lot of personality to the game. The courses also look fantastic. Each set of 18 holes has a specific motif, such as the Egyptian-style deserts of Sandy Classic, the tropical islands of Blooper’s Bay, or the Super Mario 64-style courses of Peach’s Invitational, complete with the entire castle in the final hole. The textures for the various types of grass all look extremely crisp (if a little flat) and the frame rate is constantly silky-smooth. This really is one of the finer looking games on the GameCube.

Sound - Although the music is certainly competent, it’s not quite on par with the wonderful visuals. Original Mario tunes are used well, if a bit sparsely; the classic underground theme certainly ranks up the suspense on birdie attempts. But all the original music, while well composed and fitting with the theme of the game, is ultimately forgettable and sometimes a little repetitive.

The sound effects, however, are really quite perfect, but that isn’t saying too much considering they consist mostly of various bleeps and bloops for menu choices and the sounds of striking the ball with your clubs and its subsequent thump on various types of terrain. But they sure are fine sounding thumps, and it’s hard to imagine any of it sounding any better.

Overall Value - There’s plenty of modes to play, adding a ton of replay value. If you ever tire of standard tournament play, you can try your hand at Character Match (where you play against a character in the hopes of unlocking his/her/its slightly improved “Star” version), Ring Shot (in which you have to make par while shooting your ball through a number of very inconveniently placed rings), the immensely frantic Speed Golf (complete 18 holes as fast as possible), the challenging Club Slots (where a slot machine at the start of every hole determines what clubs you can use), and a number of other slightly lesser modes (unfortunately, there’s no mini-golf mode).

And much like prior Camelot golf games, Toadstool Tour is a lot of fun when played with friends, up to four of which can play. You can play with one controller and pass it around, but it’s worth getting four controllers together so everyone can make use of the taunts—sinking a birdie putt with three other people mashing the taunt commands is not an easy feat, but it is a lot of fun. It would be even more fun if you could play it online, but oh well.

As a whole, it might not be a substantial difference from many other golf games already out there, but Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour still has enough charm, originality and fun gameplay going for it to make it a worthy purchase for anybody. Super-hardcore golf fans may want to stick with the more serious representation of the game in EA’s Tiger Woods series, but Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour will still more than satisfy both fans and non-fans alike.

Review by Kris Pigna