Simplicity Reigns Supreme for Me in Golf Video Games

3DSGBAWii

by Neal Ronaghan - October 22, 2012, 1:44 pm EDT
Total comments: 14

So Hot Shots Golf on Vita and Tiger Woods on Wii might be more real than Mario Golf on Game Boy Color, but so what?

I hesitated on buying Mario Golf on Game Boy Color. I figured I had played a ton of Hot Shots Golf on my Vita and Tiger Woods on my Xbox 360 and Wii. I even played a bunch of Let's Golf 3D on my 3DS in the summer of 2011. Why should I reach back into the vault and play a 13-year-old Game Boy golf game? After having the requisite $5 hanging around my eShop account, I threw down for some RPG-heavy golfing fun.

The beautiful simplicity of Mario Golf is wonderful. It came out on a two-button system, but even with that limitation, it does not feel limited. It has the familiar three-click swing, and you can easily add spin onto your ball by using the D-pad while you swing. Putting is even very intuitive, so long as you know how to read the green correctly.

Meanwhile, in Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational on Vita, I was still lost in the myriad options and control methods despite putting somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20 hours into that game. It's not that it was difficult to execute, it's just that I didn't want that kind of golf experience, and because I wanted something simpler, sometimes Hot Shots Golf would be frustrating.

Mario Golf also lets your created character feel like a legitimate threat early on. My biggest complaint with every single Tiger Woods game is that when you start a career, your created player is a huge sack of crap who is forced into competing with Tiger freaking Woods and other top-shelf golfers. You're mostly doomed to lose even if you play your rookie character perfectly.

In Mario Golf, I'm running into a similar issue, but it feels more like I'm Little Mac going up against Piston Honda than Glass Joe going up against anyone. Yes, the Club Champ I'm playing a match game against is better than me in a statistical manner, but with my can-do spirit and smart golf-playing skills, I can win. Or the AI is friendly and the Club Champ will flub an easy putt sometimes.

Mario Golf on Game Boy Color (and Game Boy Advance) aren't overly complicated golfing games, but for most people, that might be what they want. It's why people got really into the golf in Wii Sports. Tiger Woods and other games will offer that sim-heavy experience for those who dream of being on the PGA Tour in another life. It's wonderful that both styles exist (and in certain modes of Tiger Woods, they even exist in the same game), but I'd rather have a nice golfing romp through the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario and friends than anything else.

Images

Talkback

tendoboy1984October 23, 2012

Hot Shots Golf has always been a cartoony golf game, just like Mario Golf. It's nothing like Tiger Woods PGA.

NWR_NealNeal Ronaghan, Owner/Reviews EditorOctober 23, 2012

I didn't say Hot Shots Golf was a sim game, but it has more switches and dials than Mario Golf on Game Boy Color. Compare the Vita HSG to Mario Golf on GBC and it's like comparing Madden to Tecmo Bowl.

tendoboy1984October 24, 2012

Quote from: NWR_Neal

What a horrible comparison. Hot Shots Golf is a fully 3D game with a much bigger budget. Mario Golf on Game Boy is a watered-down 8-bit game. The two games were made in different decades. That's like comparing a 2012 Ford Mustang with a 1995 Toyota Camry. Of course the more modern version will have more bells and whistles.

What's next? Comparing Super Mario Galaxy to Super Mario Bros. 3?

NWR_insanolordJ.P. Corbran, Community ManagerOctober 24, 2012

I'm tempted to ban you from these forums for calling Mario Golf watered down.

tendoboy1984October 24, 2012

Quote from: NWR_insanolord

I'm tempted to ban you from these forums for calling Mario Golf watered down.

I was specifically talking about the Game Boy version, especially compared to the console versions.

NWR_insanolordJ.P. Corbran, Community ManagerOctober 24, 2012

The Game Boy game has more content than the console one.

tendoboy1984October 24, 2012

Quote from: NWR_insanolord

The Game Boy game has more content than the console one.

But in terms of presentation, physics, graphics, etc., it's still stuck in the 1980's. But that's the Game Boy for you.

TJ SpykeOctober 25, 2012

Game Boy Color, there was no Mario Golf for the Game Boy. Plus, the GBC one looked pretty good (and nothing like a 80s game).

NWR_NealNeal Ronaghan, Owner/Reviews EditorOctober 25, 2012

The whole point of the post was that I preferred the lack of "bells and whistles" in the Game Boy Color game after expecting to not like it that much because I played modern golf games recently.

Does that mean we can't compare New Super Mario Bros. games to Super Mario Bros.? Because I think that's is crazy talk.

tendoboy1984October 27, 2012

Quote from: TJ

Game Boy Color, there was no Mario Golf for the Game Boy. Plus, the GBC one looked pretty good (and nothing like a 80s game).

The Game Boy Color was just a Game Boy with a color screen. It still had the same 8-bit hardware as the old versions (slightly more advanced, but it was still 8-bit). Nintendo took a hell of a long time to catch up to the rest of the industry with their Game Boy brand. There was a 12 year gap between the 8-bit Game Boy line and the Game Boy Advance (1989 - 2001).

OblivionOctober 28, 2012

Pretty sure Wii Sports Resort Golf is the best golf. :P

TJ SpykeOctober 28, 2012

Quote from: tendoboy1984

Quote from: TJ

Game Boy Color, there was no Mario Golf for the Game Boy. Plus, the GBC one looked pretty good (and nothing like a 80s game).

No, it was not just a Game Boy with a color screen. To say it was is trolling, plain and simple. Game Boy and Game Boy Color are different systems, so it is factually wrong to say there was a Mario Golf game on the Game Boy.

NWR_insanolordJ.P. Corbran, Community ManagerOctober 29, 2012

Oh god not this again. For some reason TJ Spyke's mission in life is to defend the honor of the Game Boy Color. In reality, it was about half a new system, and half a revision of the Game Boy. If you want to count it as a new system, it was an incredibly small jump, because while it did have a bit more processing power, very few games really took advantage of it, and a large portion of its library also worked on previous Game Boy models. The only other hardware that was really a similar step is the DSi, which like the Game Boy Color was more than just an iteration of existing hardware, but not by all that much.

TJ SpykeOctober 29, 2012

I only brought it up because tendoboy wrongly called Mario Golf a Game Boy game. I won't get into this argument, but Game Boy Color was a new system and that is a fact. It was a stop-gap release to replace an aging 9 year old system, but it was still brand new and not just a new iteration like the DSi.

Add to the discussion!

Log in