YMMV / Mario Golf

• Accidental Innuendo: World Tour has a rather infamous one in Match Play, where after a character (of any gender) wins a hole, the game very matter-of-factly states "You won this hole!".
• Awesome Music: Has its own page, like its sibling series, Mario Golf is loaded with great music, way better than you'd think belongs to a Golf spin-off, all the way from Mario Golf 64 to Mario Golf: Super Rush.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The final course in 64, Mario's Star. Eschewing the normal (if somewhat outlandish) hole layouts of the previous courses, Mario's Star fully embraces its own hole designs, each shaped like elements from the series. While the other courses do make you feel like you're playing a golf game, Mario's Star really makes you feel like you're playing golf in the Mushroom Kingdom. It's also backed by an amazing tournament theme and a great remix of Mario's most famous theme. The course reappears as DLC in World Tour.
  • Mario's Star gets a successor in Super Rush's All Star-Summit, with a Mushroom Kingdom-like layout just like the one that made Mario's Star beloved, just modernized.
  • New Donk City in Super Rush is amazing for Super Mario Odyssey fans, it looks just like the well-beloved SMO place and adds a great remix to the mix.
• Contested Sequel: Super Rush is probably the most divisive of the golf games. A lot of fans disliked the overhaul of the power bar, changes to character voice clips and animations that took away personality compared to the very elaborate ones from Toadstool Tour and World Tour, unpolished graphics in a few areas, and the Adventure mode especially is regarded as a severe disappointment for its sometimes clunky missions and short length. Several others are much more fond of the game finding its different modes (particularly speed golf and battle golf) make it an especially strong multiplayer game, actually prefer the new power bar or don't mind it being changed that much, find the character abilities/special shots add more strategy, think it has the strongest playable cast of characters, has some really nice courses (like Balmy Dunes, New Donk City and All-Star Summit), and enjoy the Adventure mode despite its shortness compared to prior installments (especially the GBC/GBA ones) or think the game makes up for it in other areas.
• Designated Villain: Wario, Waluigi, and Bowser in the Toadstool Tour intro. At worst — Wario and Waluigi just act arrogant, but don't actually do anything underhanded. Likewise — Bowser just minds his own business until one of their balls gives him a black eye, and his Roaring Rampage of Revenge only targets them instead of Mario and co. Yet the narrative paints it as their just desserts when Mario's ball causes them to get nuked by a Bob-omb. The same is true for the same three characters in the Super Rush intro, with the added quirk that it wasn't even Bowser's Bob-omb this time, but their legitimate opponent King Bob-omb.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The human characters from Mario Golf 64, Mario Golf (GBC), Mobile Golf, and Advance Tour have a bit of a following among fans who wish they would appear again in a future installment. Special mention goes to Plum, Maple, Kid, Azalea, Gene Yuss, Lisa, and Rozary.
  • When Super Rush was revealed in the Direct, many people were absolutely flabbergasted by Wario's golfing outfit. It is louder than a flashbang grenade, with his bright yellow polo shirt, a cowboy hat and some downright outrageous purple and yellow checkered pants. People fell in love with the design and noted that it fit Wario perfectly, often claiming him to be styling on the other characters.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Toadstool Tour (and its handheld counterpart Advance Tour) build upon what made 64 (and GBC) so great while re-balancing the characters in the roster in the process. Both are considered the Tough Act to Follow of the series and some of the best Mario sports games, if not the best.
  • Mobile Golf is essentially Mario Golf GBC with more characters (9 new characters and 7 returning) and more modes (such as mini golf, Club Slots, and Go-Go Gates), giving the game far more replay ability than it’s predecessor.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • While Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was the game to debut the baby versions of Mario and Luigi, it made sense because the story took place in the past. Mario Golf 64 was the first game to depict Baby Mario alongside his present, adult self. Not a huge problem at the time, but the babies have shown up in a lot of spin-offs and increased their number since then. Mario Kart 8 would go on to feature five baby characters, a contentious point for some fans.
  • 64 was also one of the first installments to feature Metal Mario as a separate character from regular Mario, which would set the stage for his appearances in games like Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart 8, Mario Tennis Open, and Mario Sports Superstars, which were far more controversial amongst fans.
• Game-Breaker: In the Advance Tour version, the Super POW Club and the Super-Straight club. The former increases distance by a great amount, which is well worth the higher height boost, the worse shot, and the worse control, as you have a chance at getting freaking Eagles consistently. The latter straightens out your shot completely, at the cost of some distance, but in this case it will be an advantage as pretty much the only time you could absolutely benefit from a bona fide straight shot is when you're aiming for the pin and are hoping to get a chip-in: You won't need to calculate more than where the ball will land, the wind, and the lie on the green, skipping the angle, and the smaller drive distance makes it easier to manipulate how far the ball will go. Oh, and if you hook up Advance Tour with Toadstool tour, you can use them in that game too.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the beginning of Golf Adventure in Super Rush, several characters watch the opening sequence before the TV is suddenly turned off. Chargin' Chuck complains about this, saying "That was ridiculous! I need to see a replay! Some slo-mo!" As it turns out, Super Rush itself lacks the instant replay feature found in many earlier installments of the series, and this is often brought up in negative reviews of the game.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Rosalina in World Tour on two occasions: Getting an Eagle or better not only has her create a new galaxy but it is fully populated with planets and numerous Lumas happily surround her, including Polari, Lubba, and the Apricot Luma (who still has Mario's cap on him). The second is if she gets a bogey or loses a hole in Match play: She's about to faint when Luma catches her and props her up. She raises her head and smiles.
  • In the intro of Super Rush, Mario and Peach have a very sweet moment where they are holding hands. They even smile lovingly at each other.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Wario's Albatross/Hole-in-One animation, where he summons a Power Star a la Super Mario 64, since he went on to be playable in Super Mario 64 DS.
  • Metal Mario's blue palette swap looks like an early Shadow Mario, who would become playable in the next game.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • In Super Rush, ranked matches each last a mere three holes to the dislike of many players, even though the game tries to increase the pace of multiplayer matches by having all players go at once. This makes stroke play especially problematic, as three holes is not enough to generate a good spread between players' scores and as such the majority of matches will end in victory ties between two or more players.
  • Super Rush's Golf Adventure mode ended up being a disappointment to many players, as it does not take long to complete and there is only one tournament in the entire mode. Players beat the Snow King, expecting more, but then the credits roll.
• Memetic Mutation:"¡Se cayó mi Game Boy!" ^note  "My Game Boy fell off!" This is a line from the Latin American commercial for the GBC game.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Sudden death in the Nintendo 64 version where you get to play under the nighttime sky!
  • Waluigi's eagle animation shows him performing a Michael Jackson-like dance. Many gamers grew fond of Waluigi for this moment.
  • Rosalina gets several in World Tour whenever she celebrates getting a Birdie or Eagle by creating a brand new galaxy.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Anytime you get a birdie or better.
  • "Nice shot!"
  • The sound of the ball sinking into the pin, especially after a tricky putt or chipping in a shot.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • Any "One-Stroke, One-Putt" challenge in the franchise, often required to unlock the par three course for normal play in that game. You must complete 9 holes with heavily random winds, using a maximum of two strokes each. This would be tricky enough - but the first stroke MUST reach the green, and the second stroke MUST be a sinking putt. Even ending on the fringe on the first stroke is deemed a failure, and - regardless of the cause - failure in general means starting over from the first hole. Combine this with what are often lengthy sequences of text, saving, loading screens and animations before getting to try again, as well as the fact that since this challenge unlocks the course this takes place on, you cannot practice individual holes that give you trouble, all in all makes for a brutal, patience testing experience if you want to unlock every course for general play.
  • The fourth putting challenge in Castle Club requires the player to sink seven out of ten putts that, unlike the above challenge, are randomly generated. It's already more demanding than the other putting challenges, which reward close approaches as well, but most of them are over fifty feet long and involve multiple significant slopes on the green. And also unlike the above challenge, this one does not allow you to use any mulligans from Kamek.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Super Mario Kart is often hailed as the game that gave birth to the Mario Sports series, but there was an NES Mario Open Golf game released a year before in 1991. It didn't catch on so the Mario Sports series didn't really become popular until the Kart games.
  • World Tour was treated by fans like the first time Nintendo has done Downloadable Content. They had actually done it before with New Super Mario Bros. 2 as well as Fire Emblem: Awakening.
  • Most people believe Mario Golf: Super Rush was the first Mario Golf game to give Mario and Luigi golfing attire, however that honor either goes to Mario Open Golf ^note The first golf game to use Mario’s name in the title. (AKA NES Open Tournament Golf or Mario’s Open Golf) or Mario Golf GBC. ^note The second official installment in the Mario Golf series.
• Replacement Scrappy: Starting with World Tour, a Mii of the player's choice replaces the Original Generation characters from the GBC game and Advance Tour. The developers mentioned that they got tired of writing said original characters and they too have likely been Exiled from Continuity because of Nintendo's mandates surrounding the Mario series. Due to the darkhorse status of these characters, it's naturally rubbed a few fans the wrong way. Besides that, you can't play as a Mario character either, so if you wanted to play the Adventure mode of World Tour or Super Rush with them, tough luck, you can't.
• That One Level:
  • Cheep Cheep Lagoon in World Tour. Have trouble putting in the rain? Cheep Cheep Lagoon is underwater, which, for the purposes of putting, means permanent rain. Have fun!
  • For Super Rush, XC Golf is pretty much unanimously considered to be one of the hardest parts of Golf Adventure and a massive difficulty spike. You have to land 3, 6, and 9 holes in 20, 30, and 40 strokes respectively, requiring an insane amount of strategy and accuracy for only the second area in the game. That's not even adding in the fact that it takes place on the one stage (Ridgerock Lake) with an uneven layout, so you'll need to use the finicky geysers more often than not.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The new power bar in Super Rush isn't well-liked by many players due to not only "dumbing down" the gameplay by removing the whole "stop the power ticker at the center" mechanic, but also effectively creating random elements with the red "risk zone" at the top of the power bar.
  • Daisy fans were not happy when the August 2021 Super Rush update changed Daisy's bogey quote from "whatever" to a simple "boo" as they feel it removed a part of her distinct personality from her. Even non-Daisy fans were questioning this change as well. No one knows why her quote was changed, but most fans believe that Nintendo forced Camelot to comply with their mandates on the Mario characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Or rather, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character Outfit in Mario Golf: Super Rush. The new golf outfits for characters were all well received, even reaching Ensemble Dark Horse status. Despite that, to keep fans of all outfits pleased, Camelot also added the classic overall costumes from prior games for Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi so players can pick their favorite look to play as. However, they did not add Peach and Daisy's classic golf mini dresses from prior games as well, which their fans think it's a shame.
  • In Mario Golf: Advance Tour Buzz and Helen were supposed to be the player character’s rival, in execution, they’re only really there for the intro cutscene. Other than that, Helen stands outside her room, occasionally to taunt you, and they appear on the leaderboard, but they aren’t playable and have no presence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In Super Rush's Golf Adventure mode, you only enter one tournament, ever, the one at Bonny Greens. Much is spoken about also hosting tournaments at subsequent courses once the problems plaguing them are solved, but ultimately no further tournaments come out of all that talk. Also an Underused Game Mechanic, especially since past games in the series did have vs-CPU tournament games.
• Tough Act to Follow: Toadstool Tour (and Advance Tour for the handheld games) is generally regarded as the best game in the series, taking the strengths of the original N64 (and GBC respectively) game and building upon them, with World Tour and Super Rush being written off due to not meeting the same critical acclaim mostly due to having less content, and in the case of Super Rush, overhauling the power bar.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Chargin' Chuck in Super Rush. While playable enemies are par for the course, his sport of predilection is football, not golf.
  • Ninji in Super Rush also counts as it is the first time they're playable in a Mario game.
  • Prior to that, Shadow Mario being playable in Toadstool Tour alongside Bowser Jr. wasn't really seen coming by most people, especially since the latter's identity as the former was meant as a major plot twist for Super Mario Sunshine.
  • Baby Mario and Metal Mario’s inclusion in Mario Golf 64 was unexpected at the time of its release, as they had only appeared in their respective debut titles beforehand and weren't Mario spin-off staples yet.
  • Foreman Spike’s appearance in Mobile Golf, especially considering he’s a rather unknown and niche character whose last appearance (at this point) was in Wrecking Crew ‘98, and one of only 4 playable Mario characters in that game.

---