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aka: Mario Golf Advance Tour

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Time to hit the links, instead of bricks!

"Welcome to Mario Golf!"note 

A series of sports games by Nintendo and Camelot Software Planning starring Mario, Luigi, and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom gang.

Games in the series:

Camelot also developed the golf portion of Mario Sports Superstars. Another golf-related Mario game was NES Open Tournament Golf (developed by Nintendo R&D2), known as Mario Open Golf in Japanese, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. We Love Golf!, another golf game made by Camelot and published by Capcom, was more or less Mario Golf without Mario. The first Hot Shots Golf was also made by Camelot, but for Nintendo's rival Sony. As such, Mario Golf gets some of its DNA from it. During the weekend of July 9th, 2021, Tetris 99 celebrated the release of Super Rush with a limited time theme.

At one time, Nintendo of America considered the player character of the original 1984 NES Golf and its 1989 Game Boy port to be Mario, which is reflected in official publications such as Mario Mania and even the Western box art of the latter game. However, Nintendo eventually confirmed in Captain Rainbow that the character is actually Ossan, an obvious Mario Expy whose name is a reference to one of the names Mario was given during the development of Donkey Kong.

See also Mario Tennis, another Mario sports series developed by Camelot.


These games provide examples of:

  • All or Nothing: The "Risky" clubs in Advance Tour either give you a crazy drive distance, or make you go off course horribly, depending on if you get the swing meter perfectly or not.
  • An Ice Person: Luigi uses an Ice Flower for his special shots in Super Rush.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Super Rush allows you to automatically sink a putt if you’re less than a meter away from the pin.
    • While stat atrophy exists in both the GBC and GBA versions, your drive distance will never fall.
  • Anvil on Head: Wario and DK's Double Bogey animations in Toadstool Tour and World Tour respectively involve this happening to them, with a boulder doing this to the former and a DK Barrel doing this to the latter.
  • Airplane Arms: Bowser Jr's eagle animation shows him pretending to be an airplane before striking a pose.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space:
    • A rather ridiculous example in World Tour, which feature underwater courses. The characters simply play through them as normal with no breathing apparatuses or anything. Lampshaded by bubbles issuing forth from their mouths whenever onscreen.
    • Diddy's eagle animation in World Tour involves him taking off with his jetpack, except he overshoots it and finds himself in planetary orbit. His reaction is more surprised than panicked.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Repeatedly in the climax of Super Rush's story mode. The player character struggles against the Big Bad until being saved by the intervention of Mario, Wario & Waluigi, and eventually Bowser. With dialogue establishing that even Bowser Jr. helped out behind the scenes.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Tiny in the GBA version.
  • Butt-Monkey: Wario and Waluigi suffer a huge amount of abuse in the opening of Toadstool Tour, while Luigi is the lone player to have a bad shot in the openings of 64 and World Tour.
  • Camera Abuse: Many characters in World Tour. Bowser routinely grabs the camera and mugs (or in worse cases punches it out), Birdo kisses or eggs it, Bowser Jr. paints the lens....
  • Classic Cheat Code: 64 has one that unlocks every character and course in the game... except Mario's Star.
  • Company Cross References:
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: During the Mario Open, Bowser was somehow able to get a hole in one on the second hole. How he was able to accomplish such a feat on a 383 yard par 4 hole is never explained. Trying to do this yourself is impossible, even in training mode.
  • Continuity Nod: World Tour has a lot of references to previous Mario games, more than you would think at a glance. For instance, Wario's animation when you start a game has him perform his shoulder dash attack from Wario Land as he rushes off to golf, while Mario's Double Bogey animation has him turn into Small Mario after being hit by a Koopa shell.
  • Corner of Woe: Luigi's bogey animation in World Tour. If he double bogeys or worse, Boos take advantage of the unexpected darkness.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: The GBC game's Story Mode gives your four characters to play as; Kid, Sherry, Joe, and Azaela. Advance Tour would establish that Kid canonically was the one used.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Super Rush's story mode gives a lengthy meaningful subplot to Waluigi (and his partner-in-crime Wario) for the first time since Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix.
  • Defeat Means Playable:
    • The Get Character Mode in the N64 version. Also how you unlock the champ characters in the handheld versions.
    • Defeating a character in a Match Game challenge in World Tour unlocks the Star Player version of that character, who is identical apart from a much harder AI.
  • Denser and Wackier: 64 and Color, especially the latter, are somewhat realistic portrayals of golf, albeit with outlandish hole layouts (especially in later courses). Starting with Toadstool Tour, however, courses start to have hazards, some of them Mario-themed, that you won't find on real golf courses. In World Tour, the items add to the zaniness, as do the character-specific skills in Super Rush.
  • Developer's Foresight: As unlikely as it is, the games do account for getting an Albatross, and some even have an "Albatross Putt" graphic.
  • Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Peach sings the first few notes of the Super Mario Bros. theme in Toadstool Tour.
  • Demoted to Extra: Joe, Sherry, Azalea, and Kid only appear in the credits of the Virtual Console / NSO version since there's no way to transfer them over.
  • Dump Stat: Spin in the GBA handheld version. If you are planning to transfer your characters to the GameCube version however, it is preferable to put at least some points in Spin, but it is still the stat that decays the least out of all the stats in the game, meaning that you can ignore it to an extent and still end up with a decent spin if you level up correctly.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • NES Open Tournament Golf is a realistic golf game. While all games are fairly realistic in their own right, it doesn't have any Mario flair like special shots and Mario themed courses.
    • For the N64 version, which was the first in the series, it had playable normal human characters, which seems rather bizarre when you put them side by side with the more colorful cast of characters from the Mario universe. The concept of having human characters was kept in the GBC and GBA titles Story modes (which revolve around building characters with RPG Elements), but not in Toadstool Tour (though you could transfer the human characters from the GBA game to it), World Tour, or Super Rush.
    • The N64 version is the only installment where Mario, Luigi, and most of their friends are unlockable in single-player mode. Peach and Baby Mario are the only ones who are available from the start in all modes.
    • 64 and its GBC counterpart don't have an option to star characters, which would become a feature in all games starting with Toadstool Tour.
    • While everything in 64 is in 3D, the balls and the hole are sprites.
    • The N64 game was the only one to completely lack original golf outfits for Mario characters, but this would change with the GBC game, in which Mario and Luigi wore golfing outfits, while Peach got a Golf Minidress starting in Toadstool Tour in place of her usual Pimped-Out Dress. By the time of Super Rush, all characters received new, unique Golf uniforms, with Peach's replacing her previous Minidress.
    • The N64 game also had an unique Mini-Golf game where the characters' goal is to sink the ball in Mini-Golf themed courses using only Putters. It hasn't been brought back for any future installments.
    • Some characters (Luigi, Harry, Bowser in 64, Mario in GBC) would actually express disappointment if they achieve par. In subsequent games, all characters (even Bowser) are all quite happy to make par.
  • Easter Egg:
    • If all four players are using Yoshi or Donkey Kong in 64, the music will change to a laidback remix of the Palms Club theme.
    • If Toadstool Tour is kept idle, a Boo will start giving advice on how to play. If the game is left idle long enough, the Boo will get impatient and tell you to hurry up.
  • Fake Longevity:
    • Toadstool Tour has one of the most insane examples of this in all gaming when it comes to unlocking the MAX difficulty in the American version. To unlock it, you have to beat every Star Tournament with every character. This makes for a grand total of a whopping 102 Star Tournaments to be won. Understandably, this was completely toned down in the Japanese and European versions (that came out afterwards), where to unlock the MAX difficulty you just have to beat Bowser in his Character Match. Similarly, this requirement was understandably completely axed for future games.
    • Linking Toadstool Tour and Advance Tour has this when it comes to unlocking the Star Courses, you have to play all Character Match, Ring Shot, Shot Practice, Approach Practice, and Putt Practice modes with your transferred character to unlock them, even if you had already done so beforehand with any other character.
    • Super Rush has an example of this in unlocking the Super Star versions of the characters, to do so, you have to get 3000 character points. You get 10 points per hole played, so you need to play 300 holes with every character to unlock their Super Star version.
    • In Super Rush, to unlock new Characters and Special Costumes each month you have to play Online matches and reach A-/135 match points monthly. You get around 10 points per match played so it takes a while.
  • Fantastic Fireworks: In the N64 version, if a Match Game is tied after 18 holes, the sun will set and holes will be replayed in Sudden Death format into the night. Scoring par or better at night will trigger some fireworks in the shape of a character related to the course being played on.
  • Fisher King: Super Rush's Adventure mode establishes that the Bowser Highlands were built on a place called Mount Snow, and whether the area is filled with lava or snow depends entirely on Bowser's presence. Oddly for the Mario franchise, most characters prefer the Bowser-style environment.
  • Game-Favored Gender: Toadstool Tour and Advance Tour favors a different gender each when it comes to character customizing, between Neil (male) and Ella (female). Ella in Advance Tour has a drive that naturally decays into a low height while Neil's "decays" into a high one. As the latter stages have very high wind, and obstacles never really get taller (Very much so if the characters are not transferred to Toadstool Tour), Neil is at a heavy disadvantage despite his slight power advantage. You can work around the wind, but it's still more effort than Ella has to make. However, Ella's low shot, while great in the GBA version, becomes a liability when imported into the GameCube version with its 3D environments. With a very low shot, it is sometimes impossible to hit the ball up cliffs onto fairways above. This means that Neil gets the advantage in Toadstool Tour with his naturally high shot and powerful distance as he can take some really good shortcuts on top of it. Extra points if your Drive and Impact/Control are high enough to turn him into a Lightning Bruiser. You can work around the terrain sometimes, but it's still more effort than Neil has to make.
  • Gender-Inclusive Writing: Toad’s commentary in Super Rush uses "they" as a pronoun for all characters.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Exemplified in World Tour, where Peach and Bowser can be found sitting side by side in the VIP room.
  • Graceful Loser:
    • In stark contrast to most of the other characters, Diddy's Bogey animation in World Tour has him reacting rather nonchalantly, simply lying down and eating a banana. He does slip on the peel if he Double Bogeys or worse, however.
    • Peach's Bogey animation in Toadstool Tour has her react surprised at first before calmly accepting her loss, in contrast to her Double Bogey animation where she nearly faints in a dramatic fashion.
    • In Super Rush, the failure animations have been greatly toned down compared to previous games, with most characters expressing only mild disappointment. Additionally, at the end of a round, the losers always clap for the winner, even perennial Sore Losers like Wario and Waluigi.
  • Green Hill Zone: The first course or two in each game tends to be a lush, grassy area with few hazards. Examples include Toad Highlands from the N64 game (it's also DLC for World Tour), Lakitu Valley from Toadstool Tour, and Bonny Greens from Super Rush.
  • Gusty Glade: Ridgerock Lake from Super Rush, which has Ty-foos that blow golf balls around, as well as updrafts which will not only carry balls upward, but are also used by players to get to higher places during Speed Golf.
  • Hailfire Peaks: Bowser Highlands from Super Rush is this in the game's story mode due to the Snow King's influence. The holes close to the lava are unchanged, but the rest is frozen over.
  • Harmless Electrocution: Wildweather Woods in Super Rush suffers from electrical storms that are prone to shocking golfers who raise iron clubs too high. This is a minor inconvenience that causes gameplay shifts and often dropped coins. Wario and Waluigi have apparently been electrocuted dozens of times during their time on the course.
  • Hostile Show Takeover: Wario mutters this in the opening to the N64 title.
    "Should've been called Wario Golf. You gonna love it!"
  • Inelegant Blubbering: Bowser Jr. bawls his eyes out and throws a tantrum if he gets a Double bogey or worse.
  • Insufferable Genius: Gene, whose name is a pun on the word. Putts is a very mild version.
  • Interface Screw: Bowser Jr.'s Special Shot in Super Rush turns the ball into a smoke bomb, covering the area around where it lands in smoke. The smoke removes the icons normally visible over player's balls during Speed Golf, making it harder for opponents to find them. It also removes the flag icon on the shot meter that shows where the hole is, making putting more difficult.
  • Interface Spoiler: Of a very short-term sort in Toadstool Tour and World Tour. When you make a putt, you can tell instantly if you're about to sink it or not by whether the camera focuses on the hole or not.
  • Instant Costume Change: In Super Rush, when either using a speed boost or hitting a star swing, Luigi (who is in golfing clothing) would use an Ice Flower and transform to Ice Luigi, changing his outfit to Luigi's clothing as Ice Luigi.
  • Ironic Name: Tiny is a large, muscular man. "Putts" to a lesser extent, since those who have played the game know that his putting skills range from so-so to pitiful.
  • Irony: Despite Mario's name being in the title, he isn't playable from the beginning in either 64 or GBC. This marks one of the very few occasions across Mario spinoffs where he isn't readily available from the start of the game.
  • Jack of All Stats: Mario is surprisingly not this for once, being a high power low control instead. In fact, the only Jack-of-All-Stats to be found is Yoshi, who has average stats all around. Diddy and Birdo however, can also fit the trope, except that Diddy leans a bit more towards Weak, but Skilled and Birdo towards Unskilled, but Strong. Maple leans towards this due to her super straight drive but the fact that her shots are pretty long and divot fairways are the bane of Maple's existence may disqualify her from this. The Mii in World Tour with no stat-altering clothing is a textbook example.
  • Kiss of Death: Getting an eagle with Birdo in World Tour results in her blowing a kiss that knocks the cameraman out.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: Checking Ella's locker when playing as Neil in Advance Tour will result in this happening.
  • Large Ham:
    • In World Tour when Bowser gets an eagle, he grabs the camera and breathes flames at it.
    • Rosalina through and through. Scoring a birdie will prompt her to flash herself into space for a cosmic fireworks display, while shooting over par will make her swoon dramatically.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: Super Rush does away with the traditional "three point" system used to hit the ball. Power shots were also removed in favor of special shots.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Any of the Bowser courses, including Bowser Badlands from Toadstool Tour, Bowser's Castle from World Tour, and Bowser Highlands from Super Rush. Landing the ball in lava in Toadstool Tour and World Tour counts as out of bounds, giving the player a penalty and forcing them to completely redo their shot. In Super Rush, lava is treated like a water hazard instead.
  • Lightning Bruiser: You have enough level up points (and distance boosting drinks) to make your character into one of these, completely overshadowing the other golfers, including Bowser, Metal Mario, and Petey.
  • Limit Break: Super Rush introduces Special Shots, which replace Power Shots from previous installments. Each player has a gauge that fills up when sinking putts or collecting coins. When it's full, the player can use their Special Shot. Each character has their own Special Shots which, in addition to being more powerful than a regular shot, has various side effects depending on the character, such as freezing the ground where it lands, knocking opponents balls away, or making opponents balls curve dramatically when they're hit.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Peach and Daisy, starting in Toadstool Tour, are the only ones who dress with sports attire in most of the games while the male characters keep their usual clothes (even Rosalina in World Tour just came with her regular dress). Averted in Super Rush, where everyone gained proper golf wear.
  • Long Song, Short Scene: The Replay music in 64 and GBC is actually quite a bit longer than even a very lengthy replay.
  • Macro Zone: Wiggler Park from World Tour takes place in a garden where everything is giant.
  • Metropolis Level: Super Rush has New Donk City as an all par 3 course, with the city's layout ported from Super Mario Odyssey and adapted to golf. Some holes require players to curve their shots over or around buildings, while others take place on the rooftops.
  • Moveset Clone: Metal Mario is just a stronger variation of Mario.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: As a result of letting Motoi Sakuraba (best known for battle themes making heavy use of electric guitar) compose for a golf game, the music is very peppy for a golf game. Combined with the standard casual ignorance of the laws of physics of a Mario title and the announcer, golf has never been so epic.
  • Musical Nod: In Advance Tour, facing off against the club champions in a Doubles Match uses a remix of the club champions' respective themes from the GBC title.
  • Mythology Gag: Mario's clothes from NES Open Tournament Golf are unlockable in World Tour and Super Rush (which adds Luigi's variation as well).
  • Near Victory Fanfare: Entering a dormie hole or sudden death in a competitive match changes the music to something more upbeat and intense.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Kid's appearance in Advance Tour is clearly inspired by Tiger Woods.
  • No Stat Atrophy: Averted in the GBC and GBA games, where not leveling a stat will make it fall.
  • Nostalgia Level:
    • DK Jungle in World Tour is a tremendous love letter to Donkey Kong Country fans. It features a lot of elements from Donkey Kong Country Returns in particular, such as Screaming Statues, Chomps and Barrel Cannons. Not only that, but TNT Barrels, which hail from the original trilogy instead of Returns, are on certain holes, which explode if your ball touches them.
    • All six regular courses from 64 return as DLC in World Tour (though Shy Guy Desert, Yoshi's Island, and Boo Valley were remade into Layer-Cake Desert, Sparkling Waters, and Rock-Candy Mines, all of which originated in New Super Mario Bros. U, respectively).
    • Super Rush features a course based on New Donk City with the layout being the same as the iconic Super Mario Odyssey location, just adapted for golf with tee boxes and greens, as well as Dash Panels to speed characters up during Speed Golf and Jump Panels so characters can jump from building to building in the rooftop holes.
  • One Game for the Price of Two: Both the GBC and the GBA versions allows you to transfer your Story Mode characters to the N64 and GCN versions respectively. The GCN version also gets the GBA version's stat boosting clubs while the GBA version nets you more Star Courses and 4 Secret Characters: Luigi, Waluigi, Wario, and Bowser.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All:
    • For the portable games, Impact/Control. Impact improves your chances of not duffing the ball when it lands in the bunker or heavy rough and gives more room for error (and even allows aiming through not hitting perfectly if you're familiar with how hitting the ball outside of the sweet-spot works), while Control makes the ball not veer off its path too much, giving better aim. Maxing out both and getting decent distance allows you to treat the rest of the game as a joke! And because both are raised if you decide to spend your level up point on it...
    • For Toadstool Tour, power is the intended most important stat. Where impact, control, and spin are presented with meters at the bottom of a character's stats card, power is presented at the top with a specific numerical driving distance in a large font. Star characters unlocked in the Get Character mode are recruited according to their power stat in order from weakest to strongest.
  • Original Generation:
    • The N64, GBC, and GBA versions have this type of characters to serve as opponents, helpful advisors, playable Story Mode characters, and to provide a larger selection of available golfers in the N64 version.
    • In Super Rush, there are three new bosses designed like regular Super Mario characters, yet who were never in a mainline Super Mario game themselves- Sacred Firebeast, Legendary Hero, and Snow King.
  • Palette Swap:
    • In the N64 game, the same character can be picked by more than one player, resulting in these.
    • In Toadstool Tour, only Neil and Ella can have them, by loading multiple Advance Tour saves into one session.
    • Metal Mario is Mario with a metallic texture applied to his model.
  • Palmtree Panic: Yoshi's Island in 64, the Palm Club in the Game Boy Game, Blooper Bay in Toadstool Tour, and the Seaside Course in World Tour.
  • Pass Through the Rings: Ring Attack mode.
  • Playing with Fire: The hero of Golf Adventure learns the Power of Flame, which allows them to shoot flaming shots.
  • Previous Player-Character Cameo: In Advance Tour, the protagonists from the GBC game have become the new champions that Neil and Ella face off against.
  • Product Placement: World Tour features Callaway golf gear.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: Averted in World Tour, where numerous pieces of gear in each category share the same stats. After unlocking enough, you're almost certain to be able to get the exact stats you want and look coordinated doing it.
  • Rare Candy: 1-Up Mushrooms are scattered across the GBC game, which level you up instantly when found. Hunting these down is one of the main purposes in the overworld for the portable games.
  • Reality Warper: Rosalina takes this to the extreme in World Tour, creating a whole new galaxy just to celebrate whenever she gets an Eagle.
  • Recycled Soundtrack:
    • As a Shout-Out to her appearance in Super Mario Odyssey, when using her special shot, Pauline belts out a verse from "Jump Up, Super Star!".
    • The original Mario Golf reuses a few sound effects from Hot Shots Golf. We Love Golf! also reuses sounds from Toadstool Tour.
  • Regional Bonus: Metal Mario is exclusive to the North American and European versions of 64.
  • RPG Elements: The first two handheld games (World Tour on the 3DS instead plays more like Toadstool Tour), along with Super Rush.
  • Rubber-Band A.I.: Very blatant in the doubles tournaments in Advance Tour. Your partner is insanely gifted if you are in a sandtrap, but an idiot if you are looking to come out well above par.
  • Secret Character:
    • The N64 version was notable for having semi-secret characters (including, among others, Mario and Luigi) not be available in the Single Player Mode unless you defeated them in Get Character Mode. It also had completely secret characters in Maple, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and in the case of the North American and European versions, Metal Mario. The first two handheld versions included the champion characters and some prominent Mario series characters (Luigi, Waluigi, and Bowser in the GBA version and Wario in both versions). In fact, the only characters who avert this in both games are Mario, Peach, Yoshi, DK, and Baby Mario.
    • Connecting the GBC or GBA versions of Mario Golf to the N64 version for the former and the GameCube version for the latter also adds four human characters to the N64 version, and the two human characters (male and female) to the GameCube version: the characters that you go through the respective games' Story Mode with. As there is no current way of replacing the Transfer Pack method, you cannot unlock those characters in the VC version of the N64 game (unless you use a hacked save). Partially justified in that these characters stats depended on how you had leveled them up in the GBC versions. The GCN version lets you add up to four versions of both the male and female character though, they will be differentiated through Palette Swaps.
  • Shifting Sand Land: It's standard for installments to have some kind of desert course. These courses generally feature far more sand than rough and little rain compared to other courses. Examples include Shy Guy Desert from the N64 game (remade as Layer-Cake Desert in World Tour), Dunes from the Game Boy installments, Shifting Sands from Toadstool Tour, and Balmy Dunes from Super Rush. Super Rush also has a second desert course, Spiky Palms, but it takes place at an oasis and is more grassy than sandy.
  • Shock and Awe: Wario's special shots in Super Rush are electrically charged.
  • Shout-Out: Bowser grabbing the camera after getting a birdie could be a reference to Happy Gilmore where the eponymous character (played by Adam Sandler) does this after a successful putt.
  • Shown Their Work: All games are surprisingly accurate to the real sport, featuring realistic court sizes, very accurate depictions of golf clubs and effects, and golf scoring mechanics and terminology. The handheld games and Super Rush even include an in-depth golf dictionary, which shows the developers really went the extra mile when it came to understanding how to play golf.
    • For a golf series seen as "casual", it contains a LOT of correctly-used golf parlance, and a very in-depth glossary to go with it. There are many little touches; the scorecard shows that tournaments are played in pairs, pin locations change between sessions, and the star (pro-level) tournaments in Toadstool Tour feature faster greens than normal, reflecting the practice of cutting them shorter than usual for a big tournament.
    • Another noticeable change in Super Rush is that each character has a more distinct set of clubs in their bag, such as Waluigi or Bowser Jr. favoring more fairway woods and hybrids than irons, just as real life players will have their own distinct sets of clubs. The game also keeps flagsticks in the hole when someone is putting on the green, which was a rule change that golf's primary governing bodies allowed a few years prior to the game's release.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Super Rush has two:
    • In the story mode, the upper areas of Bowser Highlands are frozen over. Mr. Blizzards, Freezies, and Snow Pokeys appear on the course, with the former chucking snowballs at the golfers.
    • Outside of story mode, there's Blustery Basin. Certain patches of the fairway are icy, so balls and players skid on it, and there are ice-filled potholes on the course. It also features Snow Pokeys, as well as Cooligans that slide around the course. Instead of rain, the course has occasional blizzards.
  • Sore Loser: Every character in Toadstool Tour, if they get a bogey or a double bogey. Special mention goes to Bowser Jr., who outright throws an ''epic'' kicking and screaming temper tantrum.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Wario and Waluigi's antics (and failures) are what's most focused on in the opening of Toadstool Tour.
  • Steel Drums and Sunshine: Toadstool Tour's main theme is played on steel drums and sets an upbeat mood for the game.
  • Suddenly Voiced: The dialogue in Toadstool Tour goes beyond the series' typical Voice Grunting. The taunts are more elaborate than in 64. The human characters read their challenge prompts out loud. There's also the spectacle of Toad narrating the game's tutorial.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Azalea in GBC and GBA shares quite a few similarities with Daisy (who is non-playable in GBC and GBA).
  • Taunt Button: Pressing the "down" direction on the d-pad while another player is up causes your character to shout something derisive, usually "fore!" This is expanded on in Toadstool Tour and Advance Tour where each character gets four taunts (one for each d-pad direction) and four cheers (A, B, L, and R.)
  • Third-Person Person: Gene, who usually refers himself as "The Gene".
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Luigi, normally the Butt-Monkey of the series, clanks his tee shot off the pin in the intro of Toadstool Tour, much to the celebration of his brother, Peach and Daisy. This is after he shot his ball out of bounds in the intro to 64.
  • The Unfought:
    • Many characters will show up in tournament results lists that will never be seen otherwise. Your "rivals" in Advance Tour are a prominent example.
    • Most of the names in the lists are an Easter Egg to other Nintendo franchises, such as Link and Fox.
  • The Unintelligible: Adding an odd twist to the Heroic Mime archetype, the Castle Club in World Tour allows you to talk to Yoshi and the Kongs normally (albeit through parentheses), while a Toad has to interpret for Mario and Luigi.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Notable ones in the N64 version include Harry, Mario, Donkey Kong, Wario, Bowser, and Metal Mario. In the GCN version, the notable ones were Daisy, Shadow Mario, Mario, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Petey Piranha. For the 3DS version, it's Mario, Daisy, Donkey Kong, Bowser, Kamek, Birdo, Nabbit, and Rosalina. They tend to have long drives but a more extreme shot path, and low impact and control. Spin was usually on the high end though. Also, Star Characters in the GCN/GBA versions are Unskilled, but Strong versions of Normal Characters that could be unlocked, trading impact for drive. They have the advantage on long Par 4 holes and Par 5 holes. The AI versions kind of subverted it a bit, despite their hard to control drives with pronounced draws and fades, they know how to work with them, get out of trouble areas, and seem to have gotten putting lessons from Phil Mickelson.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Super Rush's Adventure mode has a large number of weather crises threatening the various golf courses, brought about by a chain of events that started when Bowser Jr. picked flowers for his father.
  • Video Game Remake: The DLC courses in World Tour are remakes of the courses from 64.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: All of the handheld games have you customize your own character. World Tour's Castle Club takes this further by using Miis and allowing you to unlock outfit pieces for them.
  • Voice Grunting: Advance Tour as a result of the overworld engine being shared with a more famous Camelot game.
  • V-Sign: Mario, Wario, and Daisy flash this in Toadstool Tour if they get an Eagle or better.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Notable ones in the N64 version include Plum, Charlie, Peach, Baby Mario, and Luigi. The GCN version ones were Koopa, Peach, and Luigi. The 3DS version has Luigi, Peach, Paratroopa, Toad and Toadette. They have a short drive, but a not-so-extreme shot path, and they have good impact and control. Spin were usually on the weak side though. Also, Normal Characters in the GCN/GBA versions is this when compared to their starred versions, trading drive for impact. They have the advantage on short Par 4 holes and Par 3 holes.
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Mario wears a gaudy outfit themed after Old Glory in NES Open Tournament Golf. Its gaudiness is lampshaded in the descriptions for the Golf Cap and Golf Outfit in Super Mario Odyssey:
    Golf Cap: You're not playing golf unless everyone is staring at your hat.
    Golf Outfit: What?! Wait let me turn down my outfit so I can hear you!
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: When Mario gets an eagle in World Tour, he grabs a Super Star and plows through several enemies. Particularly dissonant in that two of the enemies, Koopa Troopa and Paratroopa, have been playable characters in the Mario Golf series, with Paratroopa being playable in World Tour itself.

 
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Alternative Title(s): NES Open Tournament Golf, Mario Open Golf, Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, Mario Golf Advance Tour, Mario Golf World Tour, Mario Golf Super Rush, Mario Golf 64

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Luigi takes golf too seriously

Luigi is so distraught over scoring bogeys while golfing, that the darkness around him actually manifests ghosts!

How well does it match the trope?

5 (20 votes)

Example of:

Main / CornerOfWoe

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