Is it just me or does Nintendo have the almost at will ability of creating games that are addictive as crack? I should have had my review of Mario Gold Toadstool Tour up awhile ago, but I’ve been too damn busy playing it to actually put pen to paper and review it. If I wasn’t such a big fan of Tiger Woods latest EA outing, I would probably rank this as my favorite golf game.
Toadstool Tour has quite a few different modes of play to keep you busy. You’ve got the typical tournament, stroke, and match/skins play modes, along with a few Nintendo creations like doubles play, and character match which puts you up against a selected computer opponent that if beaten unlocks that characters “star mode”. Star mode characters are just long ball hitting versions of the originals, but are absolutely essential must haves for later challenges.
The 3 most difficult modes of play in the game are the Tournament, Ring, and Club shots modes. Playing any of these without having your Star character will be almost impossible (and in some cases LITERALLY impossible).
Winning in Tournament mode will allow you to unlock new (more difficult) courses to compete in. Doesn’t seem like much, but play the game yourself and you’ll see just how nasty Toadstool Tour can get. The difficulty curve in the game gets much, MUCH higher as you play on harder courses. In fact there are courses in the game that could put any other golf game to shame – where pars might as well be birdies, and it’s not uncommon to lose 5 strokes on a hole.
Ring shots places large rings around the course, making you have to thread your ball through all of them while still having to complete the hole with a par. Much like Tournament mode, Ring Shots gets harder and harder as you unlock new levels to play in, and IS impossible if you aren’t using your star character on the later courses. Words really can’t do justice to some of the weird shots you’ll have to take in order complete this mode. Going 100 yards off course while bouncing your ball off the side of a cliff is just one of the many shots you can expect to have to master in Ring Shots.
The most difficult mode of play in Mario Golf: TT belongs to Club Shots. It’s the Russian roulette of golf; pull the lever to find out what club you’ll be using for your next shot. Driving with a putter and putting with driver can have funny if not undesirable results. While the likelihood of you getting stuck with that scenario is slim, you can still expect to have your skills put to the extreme test; because the one sure thing you can count on in this mode is that you aren’t going to end up with the club you need to easily make your next shot.
What may surprise many of you aren’t all the modes of play or hidden secrets, but rather the gameplay of this latest Mario Golf. Picking the game up and playing it well enough on the first course doesn’t require a mastery of things controller – but as you progress the finer controller adjustments available to you will make the game seem much deeper then you may have originally thought.
Starting off is simple enough – aim your shot, press A once to start your swing, and then A again at your desired strength, (which then turns your swing into an auto-swing and the computer will do the rest from there). This is great for the kiddies on the first course, but you can kiss that ease of use goodbye by the third unlocked course where absolutely perfect precision will be the difference between a birdie and a triple bogie. The skilled players out there will be using manual instead of automatic swing, and be controlling distance, curve, precision, and spin. There is a lot to keep track of from shot to shot on later courses, where you’ll have to hit your ball into a 20 sq yard area of grass, or risk putting the ball into an undesirable location costing you several strokes in the process. Still doesn’t seem too hard when you’re talking about it, but putting a ball on such a small patch of grass requires you to judge your distance (taking wind, obstructions, and fairway speed into account), before you even hit a single button, and then PERFECTLY hitting your ball on your swing (which requires absolute concentration, and fast twitching fingers). The game can get downright frustrating in its later stages where being off on a button press by a few hundreds of a second can mean putting your ball out of bounds.
As is the case with a lot of what’s coming out of Nintendo recently, the graphics are very deceiving. While not being grounded in reality in the least, they are still very pretty to look at, and make the game feel like a cartoon come to life. There are even tiny details that add to the graphical look of the game, like divot’s and lighting effects when you hit the ball just right. I have mostly praise for the look of the game, but the graphics aren’t without any problems. In the Coin Collection mode, slow down is quite frequent (mostly do to the fact you’re adding hundreds of high detail coins to an already visually packed course). And in the character challenge mode the computer can die a slow graphical death when trying to decide what shot to take next, (that’s more an AI issue then anything else, but it does affect the frame rate). The only glaring problem with the graphics though comes via the camera. You can only move it along the flight path of your selected shot, which can make it difficult to look around and judge everything you need to take into account on your next shot (and this can be a big deal on the harder courses). All of the small imperfections aren’t a big deal, but do tend to glare out at you if you’ve played a game like Tiger Woods 2003.
The sound in Mario Gold: TT is top notch, with all your old favorite themes remixed and back in action, along with just enough character sounds to keep Mario and the rest of the gang from getting on your nerves. They even managed to put in a few new tunes for your listening pleasure. As always when you’re dealing with a Nintendo Mascot-a-Thon, it’s easy to have great sound when all you have to do is remix any of the hundreds of tunes you’ve created before, which in the end does make Mario Golf’s sound predictably and rather expectedly great.
Mario Golf Toadstool Tour is pretty much a graphical upgrade of the N64 version with a few extra’s thrown in, and normally reviewers will tell you to rent the game before deciding to buy it in such an instance. But quite frankly, since most people tend to mothball their old systems (and their games) as soon as anything new hits the market, I’m loathe to even suggest that.
With a ridiculous amount of replay value in the single player version, and the always dependable multiplayer fun Nintendo delivers with their Mascot titles, I can easily recommend this game as a purchase. Regardless of weather you’re even a golf fan, Mario Gold Toadstool Tour delivers enough fun to make it a tempting buy, and if you liked the N64 version as much as most did, then I’d say this title is a MUST buy for you.
