What the hell is wrong with me?

I've played PGA 2K. I've played Hot Shots Golf, Everybody's Golf, whatever you'd wanna name it. I've played Links, Golf Story, Golf With Your Friends, Worms Golf, Wii Sports Golf, Flappy Golf, etc. I'm not a huge golf fanatic but I never seem to pass up any video game adaptation of the one sport I think probably shouldn't exist in real life in the capacity it is. I loathe golf's existence in the real world. I hate its tedium. I hate the concept of needing to have a caddy and having to travel via a dumb cart across shots and holes. I hate the impact the sport has had over our own ecology, the destruction of lands and habitats that had to be made to create a sport that's really only enjoyed by those rich enough to play it. And yet ironically, condensed into video game format I can get addicted.

But I've never played a Mario Golf game before. I never really had the opportunity to come across any edition of the titles until Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 made its way onto the Switch. So why, with all the mild experience of golf games under my helm, did I get so obsessed with Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64? Why did I sink 25 hours into the main content, only unlocking just half of the content so far, in such a relative short amount of time?

I don't know.

But I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why.

It's not like I actively avoided playing a Mario Golf game, but within minutes of playing I was absolutely entranced. Captivated. I think moreso than any other golf game except Links is there more information on the screen for you to read before making shots. The notion of analyzing the field around you and converting it into a game of number crunching and mathematics is why I find golf so entrancing in video game form, and does Mario Golf not only come in spades with numerical analysis, but it's also for some reason some of the most difficult golf I've played on a controller.

You're not on the PGA Tour fields, you're in the Mushroom Kingdom. You're not going to be swinging across plains and greenlands, you're going to be attempting maneuvers around green-checked canyons across fields of Koopa Shells across rows of islands, and it's going to take you a while to get comfy with your swings.

Mario Golf took forever for me to get sunk into despite being hooked from minute one. Mario Golf, similarly to Everybody's Golf, has such an addictive push/pull with its difficulty. At first glance, pars are unrealistic, you're far along behind leaderboards, somehow other CPUs have the lead with -7 and you're struggling with a +4 on the 7th hole. By the time you decide it's not right to give up after just starting you already feel yourself getting better. You finish the cup in last place. You get 6 exp. You try it again. You finish in third this time. You get 30 exp. You try one more time. First place. 76 exp. You unlock the next cup. Last place. 6 exp. The cycle begins again.

Every venture into new ground feels like completely relearning the game, uncommon for golf games in general but pulled off to immaculate success here. Except you won't always be pushing into new ground, because content unlocks are slow as all fuck. It still took me three tournament plays to unlock the next cup. With roughly 30-45 minutes taken per play, it took me almost two hours to unlock the next set of 18 holes with my 50 exp accumulated (as exp is your means of unlocking courses.) It takes 300 exp to unlock the third course. 1000 for the fourth. 1500 for the fifth. 2200 for the last. After 25 hours I'm halfway to unlocking the fifth.

You'll be at the peak of your game inbetween these valleys of unlocks frequently, so what can you do with your excess skill? You can go for character unlocks, where you play one-on-one in a stroke game with a character up for grabs if you can beat them. Except oh boy, these unlockable character matches are home to some of the nastiest cheating cunts I've ever had to deal with, and I've played Mario Kart 64 throughout my life. Since these unlockables always possess higher stats than any other character you have in your roster up to that point (which means, yes, there is insane power creep), you'll get absolutely crushed by some scrimblo bastard who can swing 40yds farther than your strongest owned character. There are instances, particularly in the case of unlocking Wario, where these unlocks are so much higher in stats that you can throw statistically the best game possible and still lose. It genuinely comes down to if the CPU decides to fuck up or not. It's a deterrent to the average player, but somehow had the opposite effect on me; I became so fixated on playing as good as possible that I had no problem playing against Wario 11 times before he decided to fuck up enough for me to win. I finally got Wario, and now I can't beat this next guy because I'm in the same situation again. Insane power creep, insane demand for perfection, but it will never not stop being fun to analyze and crunch every single number on screen and make the most ridiculous shots you've ever seen.

Mario Golf turned me into a sick person, obsessed with a desire to get better, to play perfectly, to beat everyone despite the pleading of my friends to "Please Just Play Something Else". It's obscenely difficult at times, and content is dripfed to ridiculous amounts, which only fuels my obsessive need to grind my skill. And whether or not the day comes that I finally unlock everything this game has to offer me or I give up and play for the final time... I don't know. Nintendo release another Mario Strikers game please it's been like 15 years

Played on N64 Switch Online.

I'll never understand why given all the potential things you could do with the premise of a golf game set in the Super Mario universe, they chose to not do anything interesting and just make this bland thing. Even the mini golf courses are just courses in the shapes of numbers and letters. I can't even give this the excuse of being an early golf game because Kirby's Dream Course came out on the SNES and utilizes the Kirby universe perfectly, and it's probably the single best golf game because of it! 1 star because I can make Peach call my opponent a whore.

As technically the first Mario Sports game, Mario Golf gets the whole subseries off to a pretty mediocre and confusing start.

Starting off with the positives the game looks pretty good for an N64 game and has really good visual presentation. Everything from the textures to the UI is rally clean looking and has almost as much charm as any other Mario game on the platform, almost. The game also has a good amount of content in all its unique courses, modes, and characters that have different playstyles for the player to master and choose which they like best. And finally, the core gameplay of Mario Golf, while it does have its negatives as well that I'll get into in a moment, is still pretty fun and satisfying. The game has several complex systems for the player to figure out in a natural way as they play the game, even several courses in I was still figuring out new things I could do to get better shots and it was pretty fun. The process and feeling of figuring everything out by the end felt a bit like finally grasping how to effectively play a fighting game or finding the correct strategy to beat a Soulslike boss, albeit to a much lesser extent though.

Unfortunately, though the game's depth is a double-edged sword and is for the most part more of unnecessary hinderance than an endearing feature. As I already mentioned the game has several complex systems to learn how to use but as the game goes on it expects you to learn them for yourself or you will constantly be getting left being by the CPUs in one way or another. I did start to get the hang of it with time but by the time I felt confident in my abilities the game was over and I had done everything it had to offer. Another big problem I had with the gameplay is that it doesn't feel like Mario Golf, it just feels like Golf. There are no fun gimmicks that would only happen in a Mario game, no interesting stage hazards or chaotic items or cool character specific signature moves that have some effect on your golf shot that we've come to expect from Mario Sports games, no this one truly is just golf with Mario characters in it. Now again, this was the first Mario Sports games so I can cut them some slack for not having those things yet, but having played newer entries in the subseries first that do have these kinds of things that make them stand out, it makes me question why anyone would ever go back to this game.

Mario Golf is a good first attempt and foundation for the Mario Sports subseries, but it's not one I can ever see myself going back to. I'm hesitant to call it a bad game, but it's certainly not a great one by today's standards either, so I'll allow it to sit here in the middle of the road as a perfectly mediocre 5/10.

I love this game so, so much. totally got the rose-tinted goggles on regarding this one. will not hesitate to admit that. but also, I don't care. I am so sad that Mario Golf got less and less fun as the installments kept coming. this game is the most fun. I will admit the unlocking characters is garbage and that they're OP af when you go up against them. it's true. it's really all true. but I like Peach and Plum the most anyway so uhhhhhhhhh. whoops. Maple too, but she's the easy unlock that exists, so... well. :)
never owned this one, just rented it a lot, and then have emulated it a number of times. so much fun. I have done the research and realized that Toadstool Tour has most of the same content this game did. huh. the only game mode here that is not there is mini golf. while the mini golf courses are bland(and visually glitchy via N64 emulation), I don't care, I love doing the mini golf. it is a real shame they've never done it again.