Mario Golf Toadstool Tour: Stroke of Betrayal

netherlands 13th century some wrapped leather around a ball dropped it on the ground and hid it around with the bent stick the stick was referred to as a club or as the dutch would say colf and when later give this new activity its name moments later this same app introduced this activity to his friends and somehow convinced them that it was a game and that it was fun in truth the origins of the sport we know as golf remain a mystery and this is just one of many plausible explanations however we can easily trace the origins of modern golf to scotland and to this day golfers around the world consider the royal an ancient golf club of saint andrews to be the mecca of the sport for the research provides evidence that to this day some people still consider the sport of golf to be fun hey everyone and welcome back to an all new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them and i'm sorry if i just shot on your favorite sport golf it's just not for me i've tried it a ton and i am not great at it and i have no desire to be great at it but like many things that don't initially interest me throw it into a solid video game and that can change my entire outlook such was the case with mario golf toadstool tour now you may have noticed that i don't venture into the world of sports games often but when i do there's a pretty good chance that it has mario's name on it and thanks to all of you awesome folk in the patreon tier in the mini producer tier specifically link to join that in the box down below they all overwhelmingly nominated mario golf told stool tour as the way to go so i was willing to set my bias on the sport of golf aside as mario had never led me astray in the past i had complete trust in mario [Music] i had complete trust in mario uh i had complete trust in mario i had complete trust in mario i had i had complete trust and worry i had complete trust in mario to turn things around and give me an awesome golfing experience let's begin yes all glory goes to the winner oh i started playing toadstool tour and i saw it i saw what others saw in this game this was a game that i was enjoying and it was golf how did we get a game that was so polished so addicting and yet centered around a sport that appeals mainly to wealthy out-of-shape retirees well i did some digging and things started to add up for one thing golf games have been around almost as long as home video game consoles and personal computers have existed games like computer golf and pro golf one paved the way in the late 70s and since then we have consistently had at least one new golf game come out every year some years we had 6 golf games 2019 almost became a golfless year but fortunately what the gulf debuted in september and saved the day so when nintendo partnered with camelot to bring golf to the nintendo 64 with a mario makeover they already had 20 years of golf games to draw from furthermore camelot had already proven itself worthy of making a successful golf game with hotshots golf aka everybody's golf for the playstation i remember seeing this game on the shelf at every video game store as a kid and thinking why who would make this why only to find out recently that a lot of people liked it it's also no surprise that with the success of mario golf 64 camelot would also be called upon to make the gamecube's successor mario golf toadstool tour camelot obviously had harnessed the power few other devs have ever possessed they knew what it took to make a golf game more than something to keep your dad occupied between games of actual golf they knew what it took to make a golf game fun and fun for everyone how did they do that well at the crux of all their games is the power meter to simulate the challenge of hitting an accurate ball in real life the power meter requires precise timing from the player pressing a button causes the meter to fill and once the desired power is reached the player presses the button again the line then moves back to the point of origin and the player must stop it as close to this point as possible the closer the line is to the point of origin the more accurate the ball will be this kind of power meter was actually introduced by nintendo for mario open on the famicom back in 84 and has been borrowed by numerous golf games ever since camelot used it for hotshots and there was no reason to fix what wasn't broken for the mario golf games camelot also knew to throw a shade of humor over their games while people expect an earnest realism with the tiger woods franchise camelot had the freedom to make their characters more like cartoons giving them outlandish personalities and silly animations that humor and the fact that their games never slacked on visuals were major variables in their formula for making a universally fun golf game so when nintendo recognized that camelot had a sweet golf game recipe they trusted the dev company with the most quality most choice of ingredients mario charming humorous characters are great but having the most charming and beloved characters in gaming history will tee you up for almost guaranteed success and camlock had its eye on the ball very closely even with the repetitive gameplay that is inherent in golf they knew they could mitigate that with more antics more personality and of course more mario camelot was even trusted to create the gross antithesis to luigi that's right camelot made waluigi granted it was for mario tennis but the fact still remains nintendo trusts camelot with mario they did it in 97 and they did it for all subsequent mario golf and tennis games including mario golf super rush which may have just come out today depending on exactly when this episode airs in other words i think camelot's job security is pretty strong here so with our focus today on toadstool tour what's it all about why have mario and his friends convened once again to hit balls into holes well the same reason they convened the last time same reason they got together to play tennis or race cars around the tracks and it's the same reason they'd later play soccer and baseball games together because why the hell not there's no story here aside from an amusing intro that mainly follows wario and waluigi their heroic counterparts are having a great golf game which really seems to piss them off long story short they in turn piss off bowser the three of them get blown up with a bomb and then you're ready to play some golf to be familiar with the gameplay of the n64 version is to be familiar with toadstool tour basically all elements from the former have been carried over and a few have been added toadstool tour is a game of physics where numerous factors can affect your golf game i.e the weather the type of club you use the point of contact you hit the ball at the amount of incline you're standing on and the type of terrain the ball is currently on but what i feel was toaster tour's main draw for people was that it was simply another chance to play with mario and his friends they have continued to be there for us time and time again so yeah people are going to play plus coach del tour onboarded three awesome antagonists as playable characters since mario sunshine was the most recent mario title at the time the game introduced to us bowser jr shadow mario and pd piranha as playable characters and then you have your usual suspects you guys know the drill mario and luigi peach and daisy you'd love to see it dk and diddy kong always a good wait did i just say diddy kong yo this was it this was a momentous occasion in mario history this was the mario game the very first mario game to include diddy kong as a playable character when it comes to party-esque type games there he is there's my boy i didn't have to unlock or do anything special he's just right there part of the main cast ready to play look regardless of wherever i land on this game overall toadstool tour gets like a million points for finally bringing my boy into the mix and as nintendo obviously understands the rules of no takesies backseas this game set a precedent of including diddy in future mario titles well played nintendo you just made the sport of golf one kong cooler [Music] as i mentioned a huge draw to this game is that it has mario in the game what i didn't mention before was how toadstooltour becomes more of a mario game the more you play and the more you progress take all the characters for instance there are 12 base characters and four i had to unlock there's also the two that had to be transferred from this game's gba counterpart mario golf advance tour but more on that in a little bit these were all the characters i've grown to love from previous games and all of them being here is like one big family reunion i wasn't just hanging out with them i was getting to know them never before had i seen so much personality in these characters each one has a series of animations for multiple events whether you get parr or birdie or a double bogey or whatever your character will do something unique to show exactly how they feel about it camelot had done this in the past the original characters but again we're dealing with our favorite mario characters now winning a tournament will cause them to go all out in a victory celebration and even the select screen provides plenty of opportunity for their personalities to shine much of the personality in these moments is owed to the delightful vocals these characters now have although mario soundbytes are mainly recycled from previous games completely new dialogue was recorded for a bunch of characters allowing us to get to know them more than ever before and i have to say luigi takes the cake i don't know whose idea was to have him shuffle left to right while chanting luigi luigi oh yay oh yay but i ain't man the least when he wins a tournament he sounds like he just scored a soccer goal for team mexico in the world cup but the best is his taunt for character match in this one-on-one mode characters can offer encouragement or insults to their opponents it was an iconic feature of the n64 version and was rightfully carried over to this version nothing i repeat nothing cuts deeper than when luigi tells you you'll look ridiculous no playfulness no bitterness just fact you look ridiculous this is probably the funniest thing i will ever hear luigi say in our lifetime but what's also great is that simple moments like this incentivized me to keep playing and trying out new characters to learn all of their unique personality quirks that's a big deal seeing as how i had to play as every character in order to complete the game at least with all this personality i was getting to know my mario friends better than i ever had before and the incentives don't stop there musically this game transforms into more of a mario game as you progress as well in the first few courses there's nothing to even indicate that you're in a mario game aside from the character you're playing as and the boo in the corner who indicates the wind direction and speed the music is more generic welcome to the grand open than mario music it's great it's privilege in audio form it's what i imagined david miscavige listens to during sex it encapsulates golf and success but it isn't mario that is until you get to the putting green and a cool version of the mario dungeon music adds a fantastic intensity to the situation and it goes further the third and fourth tournaments start to deviate from realistic green locales to the deserts and beaches of a pleasant mario kart track now we're hitting the big ball over an egyptian pyramid or a big island to a small island the courses are overall less linear and contain more obstacles but have those high risk high reward opportunities that feel akin to taking a shortcut in something like mario kart one thing nintendo does consistently well is match musical tone to the current environment toadstool tour is no different grandiose call to adventure wind instruments we experienced in the first two tournaments are replaced with harmonicas and steel drums for the next two the music direction matches the level design in that it's less generic and more themed i feel that this is common practice for mario games to start you in a generic level and later throw you into a heavily themed one like it'd kinda be weird if the first level of super mario world was underwater or in buu's mansion right these third and fourth tournaments are a nice transition away from the real world and more into mario territory and then we have our last two tournaments peaches invitational and bowser's championship this is where toadstool tour becomes a full-on mario experience for me playing a course on some giant lawns won't hold my interest for long playing amongst some ancient ruins is better but playing a round of golf on the doorstep of peach's castle okay that's pretty damn cool a hole modeled after the iconic bomb battlefield complete with the bomb king at the top oh hell yeah didn't i just mention boo's mansion a little while ago yeah there it is this is what i'm talking about musically yeah it's now all mario all the time all the familiar music feels like a tasty reward for beating the previous tournaments and making it this far and as far as obstacles go you have to worry less about trees and more about chain chomps and giant bombs and piranha plants you get warped pipes that transport your ball from one part of the hole to another it's that high risk high reward factor taken to the next level yes it's going to be hard to hit the ball into a warp pipe 80 yards away with a 15 mile per hour wind blowing east to the west but if you make it in you just knock the stroke or two off your game son see this is what i want in a sports game throw realism out of balance and give me mario and all the silly gimmicks that come with him and then take it a step further with some game modes and challenges that tiger woods couldn't be caught dead in unless you count little tiger hitting a ball from a sandbox into a kiddie pool which i don't no i'm talking about game modes where you hit your ball into the air to collect as many coins as possible at first i was disappointed in that there wasn't a dk level only to find out that it was reserved for the birdie challenge and is far different from the tournament courses dk's congo canopy is totally unique in that it's comprised entirely of par 3 holes it has you aiming for platforms of various elevations success in this challenge then unlocks congo canopy to be played in stroke play which is a great reward in that it gives you the freedom to mess around with this very unusual course without the pressure of having to only sink birdies the birdie challenge along with the congo canopy provides even more diverse gameplay and as dk is now a core member of the mario crew once again makes toadstool tour even more of a mario game however when completely everything there is to do with a single character i'd always save ring attack for last in my opinion this is the most fun and most mario of the game modes instead of merely having to sink the ball on par or below you have the added challenge of shooting the ball through one or more rings it's visually reminiscent of having to fly through rings in mario 64 and demands more from the player if the ring you need to shoot through is on the left but the holes to the right then changing the impact point in order to get the curve on your trajectory is going to be key here if a ring is on the precipice of a chain chomp pit then adding a super backspin to your ball will prevent it from rolling too far in those mushroom kingdom and bowser levels the rings force you to explore those nostalgia inducing terrains a little more some holes are pretty challenging but damn it really seals in that whole mario freshness as a mario fan i get it i get what all of you see in toadstool tour i not only feel better about golf games but to my amazement i feel better about golf now someone insists on playing around in real life no joke it helps me to imagine that yoshi rainbow trailing behind my ball or if i feel a gust of wind that there's a boo that was responsible for doing that and as far as this game's completion goes there are scorecards in the options menu that easily helps track my progress [Music] alright everyone listen up here you know me i've completed a lot of games i've completed a lot of mario games and whether or not i've completed a mario sports game uh i've done one or two on the show i have at least played most of them and have a good feel for what completion criteria would look like so when toadstool tour came across my desk i thought sure little mario golf game i've got some time set aside for it take me a couple of days a week or two at most after all that's been my experience with every other mario game i've played and it's golf the sport that no one cares about turn on that gamecube and let's knock this one out the amount of work required to fill out every box of the scorecard in this goddamn game is the betrayal by a dear dear friend is the iago to my othello it is the theon greyjoy to my rob stark learning what i had to do was like walking into quicksand i did not fade quietly into that eternal night no oh no i grabbed a goddamn vine all right where do i begin you know let's start with the easy stuff unlocking everything in the game yeah you heard me that's the easy part getting first place in the tournament unlocks the next one beating that unlocks the next one and beating the sixth and final tournament gets you to the credits standard procedure that unlocks the six star tournaments which are the exact same as the regular ones but harder you're able to save and restart any hole so it is still very doable to complete these harder tournaments obtaining the four unlockable characters happened naturally for me as they were mostly rewards for stuff i had to do anyway score a bunch of birdies to unlock boo fine beat the 18 whole birdie challenges to unlock bowser jr a little challenging but i have to do it regardless so fine complete all three difficulties of shot approach and punting practice to get petey done and complete all single player ring attack levels for shadow mario a worthy challenge but an enjoyable one then every character has a souped-up star version that is unlocked by defeating them in head-to-head matches these star versions have better stats than their normal counterparts allowing them to hit further and with more accuracy okay so that's it done no problem this is all still pretty reasonable criteria so far other than that beating some game modes will unlock harder versions of the same game mode let's go back to that birdie challenge i mentioned earlier you play the front 9 which unlocks the back 9 which in turn unlocks the full 18 hole course once again challenging but doable then there's this one-on-one putt mode that they threw in there this works exactly the same as the birdie challenge in terms of unlocking the back nine and then all holes and it's basically the same challenge except that it adds a very pretty tiny bit of you unlike the birdie challenge the one-on-one putt challenge requires your first hit to be on the green although this would be your goal in any occasion sometimes mistakes happen and the game punishes you by starting the challenge all the way back from the beginning if your ball has too much stank on it and barely rolls into the putting fringe you start over if you misjudge how much the wind will affect your shot you start over if you hit a really accurate shot that happens to hit the pole and bounce off the green you and start over and if you're wondering how many times i made it to the 18th hole only to whoop it on the final putt it was oh i don't know a lot hey remember when i said that the ring attack mode was the most fun well it also had its fair share of nonsense completing it with all 18 characters and then doing the multiplayer variations meant i had to beat 720 of these challenges there were some levels particularly that's a volcano that really just felt like a guessing game do i put the impact here no do i use the four wood no do i purposefully botch the timing on the accuracy meter to get around this massive cliff maybe can i hit enough balls at this stone bowser head that it will eventually fall off and give me an open shot i wish it took try after try after try just to get onto this tiny chunk of fairway only to mess up getting onto another chunk of fairway inside the volcano only then can you shoot for the three rings above the volcano and pray the ball lands somewhere near the green that's a mile below for some characters it was difficult for others like koopa troopa who has like no height to his shots it was like banging my head against a wall it's a volcano no it's a burning piece of what it is you know how i just said this was easier with some characters and not others that's because to fulfill every box of every score card all the criteria i've mentioned so far has to be done with every character every character all 16 of them so i don't know there's a month or two of gameplay dedicated to that right there oh i'm sorry did i say all 16 characters i forgot each character has a star version that is tracked on the scorecard as an entirely different character so my mistake it's more like 32 characters okay great it's another month or two right oh i'm sorry did i say 32 characters well we can't forget about neil and ella that can be imported to this game from mario golf advanced tour you all remember your favorite characters neil and ella right yeah me the neither but here these little shits are with their spot on the scorecard like everyone else so one of the weirdest things about mario golf toadstool tour is the fact that you can get secret characters via the game boy advance games if you linked your game boy advance you get two secret characters it's either this boy or this girl however if you do this several times with different games and game boy advances you can get up to 8 different people with different stats and different names it's very weird because online nothing is really consistent about how this works the one saving grace is that while most of these things in the game need to be completed by both normal and star characters ring attack can be completed by normal or star characters however i initially missed this exception and i actually beat ring attack with a few normal characters before catching wise to this so yeah i got normal peach who also has a little height to her shots to the top of that volcano pat on the back for me lastly the scorecard displays who you've beaten in head-to-head matches and on what difficulty which for me means pitting every character against every character at the highest difficulty so that's yet another huge time sync to say that i wasn't expecting to sink 387 hours into this golf game would be a ridiculous understatement mario golf mario golf last thing i'll gripe about then and then i'm done i swear when researching completion criteria i kept seeing these codes for extra tournaments as ready as i was to put this game down i knew i had to check these out there was a code for a camp hyrule tour so i was thinking holy crap they have a secret course thing around the legend of zelda yes i'm so ready only when i input the code the game just loads up an ordinary course that i've already played and then i see a code for hollywood video tour and i'm curious if mario and his friends are going to be swinging their clubs in a hollywood video or something like that you know that should be pretty interesting right and nope same thing just a normal ass course i could not for the life of me figure out what the significance of these tournaments was why they were here and more importantly do i have to play them finally with a ton of digging around i found out that these were for special events occurring soon after the game's release since there was no online play at the time players could enter these codes play the tournament receive another code use that code to upload their scores to the mario golf website and call it a day now this was a pretty dang cool idea that sorta allowed people to play this game online without actually playing online for me however who had no idea that all this was going on in 2003 it was a stressful search until why the hell are these here there's no further information out there beyond what the codes are so i hope that i've helped some poor lost completionists out there into not giving these codes any thought so here we are with a great game and too much to do aside from 101 putt i'm glad that all these modes are here i'm glad that all these characters and their star versions are here i'm glad there's both a normal and star version of every tournament i just wish the scoring didn't have me chasing down every single bit of criteria with every character and as i looked up speed runs for this game i noticed that 100 completion to the speedrunners meant fulfilling all criteria with the best character for each situation and then calling it a day but with so many empty slots on the scorecard that didn't feel right to me so having gone all the way with every character i can look back and say that the scoring for match play was incredibly unnecessary i feel like beating a challenge with the normal character should be sufficient scoring as theoretically everything is easier with the star character i shouldn't have to do so much with both types of characters and it also has me thinking about what should be considered when we say we finish the game in most cases it's pretty easy right once you get to those credits the game's finished but seeing how there's so much to do beyond getting that initial credit roll at the end of all the normal tournaments and then it feels like i'd be missing out on the core part of the game by ignoring stuff like ring attack i decided to push the finish it line further i feel like a true finish it for toadstool tour would require beating all normal and star tournaments all one play ring attack levels all practice shots and both the birdie challenge and one on one putt challenge all with at least one character at least one character the thing is even that is a lot of criteria to fulfill it goes against the pickup and play nature we've come to expect in mario sports games listen if you work a rough nine to five and just need a relaxing game to come home to every night and the 400 plus hours of completion is something you're happy to chip away at then postal tour may be perfect for you it doesn't require much concentration so put on your favorite podcast like i did and hang out with mario and the gang otherwise you can get the best this game has to offer within just a few hours of gameplay i'm certainly not mad at the mini producer patrons who reflect on this game fondly and nominated it again if you want to weigh in on the games that i complete on the show links are in the box down below but i do feel betrayed by mario this time around so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of play it [Music] what [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 255,701

Keywords: mario golf, mario, mario golf super rush, nintendo, golf, mario golf toadstool tour, tour, toadstool, gamexplain, completionist, jirard khalil, g4, g4tv, nintendo life, e3, e3 2021, mario golf toadstool tour gameplay, gameplay, mario golf toadstool tour review, game review, review, game reviews, super mario, super mario golf, n64, ario gold 64, switch, nintendo switch, gamecube, wii, wii u, mario tennis, mario sports, sports, sports game, sports games, luigi, bowser, peach, yoshi, toad

Id: zy03B5iHXQk

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MatthewSmart]

This is easily one of the most nostalgic and fun games I played in my youth, and Jirard described what makes it so enjoyable in a much better way than I could. But yikes, that completion goal looked like a nightmare and a half.

[u/Bidoof2017]

It’s a hard game

[u/QuadrantNine]

I did not expect a David Miscavage joke in a Mario Golf review.