Mario Golf

About Mario Golf

Mario Golf (1999) is Camelot's Nintendo 64 golf game, a pick-up-and-play take on the sport with Mario characters, made as a warm-up for the hardware and good enough that Nintendo cancelled its own golf game.

Mario Golf in Depth

Players choose from Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, Baby Mario, Metal Mario and five original characters, Plum, Charlie, Sonny, Harry and Maple, and play on courses themed after the Nintendo world. It strips away golf's complicated real-life aspects, but its engine still weighs many variables on each shot: the strength and direction of the wind, shown by a Boo, rain, each character's attributes, spin and the slope of the ground. Alongside stroke play there are speed golf, ring shots, mini golf and skins matches, and every character has voice samples for commenting on opponents' shots.

A separate Game Boy Color version, also by Camelot, adds a story mode with role-playing elements. With the Transfer Pak the two versions can exchange characters and data, and a Game Boy Color character earns experience with each round.

Making Mario Golf

Nintendo had been making its own Nintendo 64 golf game, tentatively called Golf, when it recruited Camelot Software Planning for a role-playing game. Camelot preferred to make a simpler game first to get used to the hardware, and Nintendo was so impressed by its prototype that it cancelled the other golf game and assigned Camelot to Mario Golf 64. The game was announced in the February 1999 issue of The 64Dream. The Nintendo 64 version received universal acclaim on Metacritic, and the Game Boy Color version scored slightly higher, IGN calling it "an absolutely brilliant rendition of golf". Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour followed on the GameCube in 2003.