Completion Time: 15h:36m:00s
Rating: 6/10

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Hitting the Green

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I don't care for sports games usually, and that tends to extend not only to sports like snowboarding, skating, and well, golf, but also to the more cartoony versions of these games as well. Honestly, the only thing that escapes this generalization usually are kart racers, but I have way too much fun with those. At any rate, this is Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, a title that I've had in my collection for a very long time, yet I've never actually opened it, let alone played the game itself. The site's "Mario month" bounties already had me busting out my DDR dance mat for that Mario title, at least this one is a little less involved. Right?

Two games featuring Waluigi this month? I've truly been blessed!

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Above Par

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I had a hard time getting into this one, though I think a lot of that might've been self-imposed. I mean, I completed a lot of Mario games for this month, to the point where I felt I might've been running low on time for this one. And I certainly didn't know how involved it would be. But there were a lot of tournaments to get through and way more unlockables than I was expecting. Thankfully, most of these just come from finishing various modes, but the number of them did mean that I sort of skimmed a lot of the control guides. I didn't even learn about the Power drives until after I had finished the tournaments (yes, really). I feel like this is a frequent problem for me, I need to just sit down with the manuals more often. It would definitely save me a lot of headache.

If you initially told me "Power" was a Wario exclusive mode, I would've believed you

But even still, a lot of this was just an overall learning curve as I got more accustomed to how things worked. For example, at the start I relied a lot on the game's Auto shot function for the end of the swing. But by the time I reached the end of the game, I was pretty well forced to not only engage more with the Manual version of this, but to experiment more with the curvature of the swing and the back and top spins of the ball. Not much is quite as satisfying as missing a hole on the green by a wide margin, only for your Super Backspin to kick in and get you barely a putt away. But even better are the Hole in One moments, incredibly rare but extremely delightful. I only got two of these across my whole playthrough, though I don't know that I got either of these on camera. So enjoy an Eagle, which were almost as rare for me.

Almost as good, right? Right?!

By far, though, my favorite part of the game is the style and layout of the different courses. It starts out fairly plain to get you accustomed to the game, but eventually takes you to the sandy desert, tropical paradise, and even the castles of Peach and Bowser respectively. These are the courses where things get real fun, as they start to introduce different environmental components that mess with the gameplay. Peach's Castle Grounds contains a lot of Warp Pipes that will transport the ball to various places on the Hole, for example. Or better yet, on Bowser's map, you can hit a Bob-omb, which will then explode and shoot your ball in another direction, which can be used strategically to gain distance on your drive, if you set it up correctly. So much variation that leads to a lot of cool experimentation. I just wish that all the courses had more flavoring like that, but I can't really say I'm disappointed with it, so I won't.

What would make Bowser's territory more depressing? Oh! Torrential downpour!

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Completing the Game

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This was a rough one, even though there wasn't too much to actually unlock. Overall there are 7 areas to play golf on, but there are different configurations of these courses that you can unlock across the various modes, and this generally comes from completing each tournament (and it's star variant) in 1st place. This is extremely time consuming, even if you try and cheese it by saving during each hole of a selected tournament, that's a lot of going in and out of the main menu per each hole, and recall that there are 18 holes per tournament. It's recommended that you just keep getting good at the game, because you're gonna need your skills when it comes time to unlock the various characters. So for each base character in the game, there comes a star variant that hits farther, and you can only unlock this version by besting that character in a 1-on-1 matchup. As can be expected, they start easy and get much harder, with the Donkey Kong and Bowser matches giving me a lot of trouble. Even during my best, winning runs, I regularly tied with those two, to the point where I only actually needed 2 actual victories to beat Bowser. I was in Sudden Death with him for a loooooong time there. Following the star variants, there are also 4 new characters to unlock. You can get Boo for starters, his unlock is the simplest, as all you have to do is earn 50 best badges. Each time you get a Birdie or better on a hole in tournament mode, you receive a Best Badge. Once you've received a badge on a hole, however, you can't get another for that hole, so this one isn't a grind and is more so a skill check. Next, we've got 3 characters hot off the heels of the GameCube's own Super Mario Sunshine! For Petey Piranha, you just need to beat each of the Practice modes in Side Games on Expert Mode. This sounds a lot more difficult than it actually is, and I was able to get it done in no time. Then, Bowser Jr. comes from completing the Birdie challenge. A lot more complicated here, as it requires you to make it through all 18 holes of the Congo Canopy course with a Birdie on each hole. If you mess up, you start the whole run over. This took me quite a while to master, I frequently got stuck on the 12th hole, which was the death knell for me. Something about the slope of the hill, I don't know. But still, it's just golfing and the holes are set up in such a way that Birdie's on everything is at least feasible.

Quick view of the full roster... oh, we haven't talked about Shadow Mario. Disregard

Finally, you have Shadow Mario, which you unlock through completing all of Ring Attack. This by and large was where I struggled the most, for numerous reasons. Thankfully, each challenge is separate and starting it over only starts that particular challenge, but wow does these get difficult quick. You go hole by hole, course by course, and need to hit the golf ball through all available rings while also getting the ball in the hole with a score of Par or less. Some of these were set up in such a way that I couldn't beat them and actually had to come back later after I had unlocked star versions of some characters. It was near impossible to hit a ball all the way up the side of a pyramid until Star Mario came along and could wallop the ball all the way up and onto the other side. And don't even get me started on the last challenge of this mode. The level "That's a Volcano!" took me over 2 hours to finish, as I kept experimenting with characters and going in and out of the mode to adjust the wind speed and direction before I could even get the ball in a reasonable position. Eventually, I just handled it with Mario and a 4 Wood before I was even in a position to get to the top of the pyramid. And that doesn't account for the number of times I got to the top of the volcano only to knock the ball into lava or fail to reach the hole in time. But oh, that victory, that was a sweet moment that can never be taken away. Never!

We really need more inventive hazards in the PGA

And now, a collection of some images of the new characters' ending screens, as I find them funny.

Oh, boo-hoo

Hail the conquering hero!

Ho-hum

OK, that's just sick

Toadstool Tour is a good game for what it is, and for my money I think it's a better instance of a golf game than Mario Kart is for kart racers (they're lots of fun with friends, but still not really for me). As it stands, there was way more here than I thought I would be getting into for completion and I was ultimately frustrated more than I was enjoying myself. This seems like something that would be fun if you could just enter a code to get all the characters and then play a round with some pals for an evening. But with that, Completionator's Mario month comes to an end for me, and not a minute too soon (I've got a lot of new things I'm trying to finish up before the end of the year!).

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 12/652