Collection essentials #527: Mario Golf Advance Tour (GBA)

I previously covered Mario Golf on the Nintendo 64, made by Camelot. What I DIDN’T cover was Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color, which was somewhat of a “sister title” to the N64 Mario Golf, a rather different game where you could train and build up your own characters and transfer them to the Nintendo 64 title. That GBC Mario Golf is probably quite good for what it is, and I do own a copy, but honestly I’ve never played it for more than just a few minutes or so, leading to its lack of presence on this list (at least for now).

In the next console generation, Camelot wanted to make a “brother-sister” pair of Mario Golf games in much the same style. And so, a Mario Golf game was made for the GameCube (stayed tuned for that), and this here is its Game Boy partner title.

You’ll find pretty quickly that this game is a little weird. If you’ve played a console Mario sports title, you’ve likely developed a certain set of expectations for what such a game is like, and this game will not match them. Most strikingly, there is a surprising lack of Mario characters or general Mario influence. It’s not as though there aren’t any of those things, but they’re not around when you first start the main single-player campaign. The main story features rather generic human characters and a much more “normal” world than that of Mario. In fact, the graphics and audio design are very clearly recycled from those used in Camelot’s GBA RPG Golden Sun, which as I like to joke makes the game feel like “Golden Sun Golf” instead.

It’s not like the game’s box art is an outright lie though, as it does bear the text “role-playing golf,” and that’s a pretty accurate descriptor of the game’s main campaign. You play as a young golfer honing their skills and making a name for themselves in competition. As you play more and win more, your character will “level up,” and you’ll be able to use points awarded upon leveling up to improve attributes of your choice. If you have the GameCube Mario Golf, you can transfer the character you’ve trained up in this game to play in that one, and if you level them up enough you can really create a monster of a golfer capable with superhuman skills and make the GameCube far easier.

The player can freely roam the world, choosing to take on whatever the next big tournament is, or some other way to play such as doubles or match play, and also an interesting mode called “Club Slots” where you have to compete using a random limited selection of clubs. There’s even a shop where you can make your own custom clubs!

And the actual golf mechanics at work here are every bit as good as you’d want them to be on a GBA title. Visually of course it’s not the most impressive golf game due to hardware limitations. The camera doesn’t trail behind the ball as it often does in 3D golf games, and instead the perspective switches to a zoomed-out overhead view of the whole course as the tiny ball moves. But there’s practically no compromises with gameplay, as pretty much every significant feature from console Mario Golf (to my memory) is also present here.

Although I had the Mario Golf on GameCube back in the day, I didn’t own Advance Tour at that time. I didn’t get it or play until many years later. But when I finally did, I found it highly addictive! I don’t tend to spend a lot of sports games in my adulthood, but I was happy to make an exception for this one.

Sadly, this is NOT one of the GBA titles available on the Nintendo Switch…at least for right now. It’s moderately priced, not dirt cheap but also not expensive, though you’ll probably want to have an actual Game Boy Advance to play it on (as opposed to something backwards compatible) so you can connect it to the GameCube game. 

Most of my GBA essentials are games I played in adolescence. Part of this is because I prioritized playing the best games in the library back then, but it’s also harder to make an impression on me as an adult gamer with so much experience. So it’s a testament to Advance Tour that it’s made this list. Definitely a birdie!