Mario Golf (Game Boy Color)

In the summer of 1999 Camelot Software Planning had two golf games on the go. The Nintendo 64 Mario Golf came out in Japan in June; its Game Boy Color namesake followed in August, wearing near enough the same box art. Underneath, the two could hardly be more different. The handheld game swaps the big 3D courses for a neat top-down view of each hole, cutting to a behind-the-golfer view when you line up and strike, and swaps a roster of Mushroom Kingdom stars for a story starring four young newcomers.

That story is the point. Pick Kid, Sherry, Azalea or Joe and you walk around the Marion Club and the countryside beyond it like the hero of a role-playing game, chatting to staff, taking lessons, playing practice contests and mini-games, and entering tournaments. Everything you do earns experience; every level gained lets you strengthen your golfer. Win a club’s tournament and its champion will take you on in match play. Win all four club tournaments and Princess Peach invites you to her castle.

Mario and Luigi are there from the start, but only for practice and one-off rounds outside the story, and Wario turns up as a rival to beat. It is the story mode that reviewers singled out then and now: Nintendo Life’s 2012 review of the Virtual Console release called it the thing that gives the game its identity, and IGN had awarded the original a perfect score in 1999.

There was one more trick. With the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak, your story golfer could be copied across to the N64 game and keep levelling up there, which made this the first stop on a road Camelot would travel again with Mario Tennis on both machines a year later.

Short answers to the questions people ask most about the Game Boy Color Mario Golf; the sections below go into detail.

The set-up is simple: there is a Grand Champion to become, four Club Champions to beat on the way, and plenty of golfers around the clubs with tips to share. Your golfer begins with modest stats and a clubhouse nobody has heard of, and the aim is to raise its standing until you are good enough to challenge Mario.

You start by creating a file (there are three save slots), choosing a gender, a handedness and one of two portraits for each gender. The four portraits are the game’s heroes: Kid and Joe for the boys, Sherry and Azalea for the girls. Here is how the story unfolds, club by club.

The Marion Club

Home is the Marion Club, the beginners’ course. The first job is to report to the Director in his office; after that the building is yours to explore. The Caddie Master signs you up for a practice round or the tournament, there is a trophy room to fill, and the doors lead out to the practice ranges, the first course to the north and the overworld to the south.

The practice ranges teach driving, approach play and putting, each with contests that pay experience, and staff such as Pro are on hand with advice. Win the Marion tournament and the club’s champion, the bespectacled Parisian Putts, agrees to a match. He calls himself a thinking golfer, and he is the gentlest of the four champions.

The Palm Club

The second club is a tropical course among the palm trees. Its champion is Grace, a German-raised prodigy who calls herself the Queen of Women’s Golf, plays in a red mini-dress and drives a dead-straight 220 yards.

The Dune Club

The Dune Club is the desert course. Its champion is Tiny, a muscle-bound Hawaiian in a red-starred tank top who treats every match as a power contest and hits a 250-yard draw. Clearing the Dune Club tournament also opens a one-player doubles match with its own rules, in which you team up with Lime, Lily or Flint.

The Links Club

The fourth club is a seaside links with heath and bunkers on its fairways. Its champion, Gene Yuss – the Birdie King, by his own account – is a short, sharply dressed know-it-all whose name is a pun on “genius”. His Japanese profile tells challengers to come back once they have beaten the other three, and he fades the ball 240 yards.

Beat all four champions and a cut-scene marks the moment your golfer has arrived. Three more rivals then wait to be challenged in match play, in rising order of difficulty: Luigi, Wario and Mario.

An invitation from Peach

With the four club tournaments won, Princess Peach sends an invitation. A rainbow gate appears on the overworld map and leads up into the clouds, where a Bob-omb Buddy loads you into a cannon and fires you to a floating island with Peach’s Castle on it. The castle grounds play an arrangement of “Inside the Castle Walls” from Super Mario 64, and the Mushroom Kingdom crowd are all there to meet you: Mario, Luigi, Baby Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Bowser and Peach herself.

The fifth and final tournament is played on the castle course, and Mario is its champion. Beating it is, as far as the story is concerned, winning the game.

Peach’s Castle, hole by hole

The castle course is an 18-hole, par-72 course that is pure fan service. Its fairways are dotted with star-shaped bunkers, the background has the domed hills and pillar clouds of Super Mario World, and the course music is the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme. Look at the holes from above and they are pictures.

Hole 1 is Peach’s stained-glass window from Super Mario 64, with her face as a bunker and her earring as the green. Hole 3 is a Shy Guy, 5 a Super Star, 6 a Thwomp with its green on a spike, 8 a Yoshi island putting on the nose, 10 Baby Mario, 12 a Venus Fire Trap with the green inside its second fireball, 14 a Koopa Troopa, 16 a Goomba and 18 Mario himself, with the green on his sideburn. Hole 9 is simply a doughnut around a pond.

Field courses and the Golf Guru

Between the clubs, signs on the overworld mark challenges and mini-games that pay experience and open up as you win tournaments. They include a crow challenge, a target game and a clean-up job; the field courses are Windy Valley Special Hole, Mini-Mini Lake Course, Tiny-Tots Golf Grounds (where some careless kids, Sherry among them, left golf balls scattered about), Raven Woods Golf Course and the Golf Guru’s Pitch and Putt.

The Golf Guru sets a challenge of his own, and beating it unlocks his Pitch and Putt: eighteen short holes, every one a par 3. Elsewhere on the map you will find the Golf Clinic and the Club Maker’s Hut.

Every course in Mario Golf (Game Boy Color)

Four club courses, two unlockable courses and a scattering of field courses for challenges.

1. 
   Marion Club18 holes · first club · champion: PuttsYour home club and the beginners’ course; its name seems to blend Mario with the real Merion Golf Club.
2. 
   Palm Club18 holes · second club · champion: GraceA tropical course named after its palm trees.
3. 
   Dune Club18 holes · third club · champion: TinyDesert golf, with a one-player doubles match once the tournament is won.
4. 
   Links Club18 holes · fourth club · champion: Gene YussA seaside links with heath and bunkers on the fairways, ruled by the self-styled Birdie King.
5. 
   Peach’s Castle18 holes · par 72 · unlocked after four tournaments · champion: MarioA floating course whose holes are shaped like Mario characters and objects.
6. 
   Golf Guru’s Pitch and Putt18 holes · all par 3 (par 54) · unlocked through the Golf Guru’s challengeA compact short course; it returns in Advance Tour as Elf’s Short Course.

The field courses for challenges and mini-games are Windy Valley Special Hole, Mini-Mini Lake Course, Tiny-Tots Golf Grounds and Raven Woods Golf Course, plus the Pitch and Putt above.

Each hole is drawn from above, with the fairway, rough, bunkers, trees and water laid out like a map. Choose a club, aim, and the view switches to a third-person shot of your golfer at address. Its standard golf has been likened to the Nintendo 64 game’s, and GameSpot’s review treated it as an adaptation of the console title; Nintendo Life, coming to it in 2012, thought its swing and putting more like Nintendo’s own NES Open Tournament Golf.

Hazards cost what you would expect: water adds a penalty stroke, and rough, tall grass, bunkers, waste ground, trees and even cacti all get in the way. Wind matters, especially for golfers whose shots bend.

The swing and power shots

The swing is the familiar three-tap meter. Press A to start, A again to set the power and A once more to set accuracy; catch both marks and you get a “Nice Shot” with a little extra distance. B switches between shot types, and the red power shot adds roughly 25 yards to a drive.

Power shots are rationed: six per round. A power shot that lands as a Nice Shot is not used up, but every one you fluff costs you one of the six, so they reward a steady thumb.

Experience, levels and stats

This is the role-playing half of the game. Rounds, practice contests and mini-games all pay experience points, and the better you play the more you get: a hole-in-one or an albatross is a jackpot, but even a lost tournament leaves you with something. Each level brings a point to spend on one of four attributes.

Drive is how far the 1-wood carries; Height is the ball’s flight, from low to very high; Shot is how much the ball bends, from a straight hit to a heavy draw or fade (which crosswinds will exaggerate); and Meet Area or Control is how forgiving the accuracy zone is. The four heroes start out weak – Kid’s first drives carry 202 yards – but by level 99 the same boy is hitting 268. Four 1-Up Mushrooms hidden around the map each give a free level.

Tournaments and match play

Tournaments are stroke play: the lowest total over the round wins, and the leaderboard shows rivals’ scores as they go, so an early leader may simply be further round the course than you.

Club champions are fought in match play instead. Each hole goes to whoever takes fewer strokes (halved holes count for nobody) and the match ends when one golfer is out of reach, with a warning on screen when a single hole can settle it. Single-player doubles with alternate rules open up after the Dune Club tournament, partnered by Lime, Lily or Flint.

Mario, Luigi, free play and two players

Outside the story there is a free-play side to the game that leaves your story save untouched. It is where Mario and Luigi live: both are available from the start for single rounds and practice, though not in the tournaments and match games, which Nintendo Life wished it could play as them. Mario drives 270 yards with a strong draw; Luigi 220 with a fade.

Two players can link Game Boy Colors with a cable for a round together. That two-player mode was switched off in the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console release. Holding Select as you choose a golfer makes them play left-handed; the four story heroes are the exception, since you set their hand when you create them.

The Transfer Pak link

Plug the Game Boy Color cartridge into a Transfer Pak on the Nintendo 64 and the N64 Mario Golf can read your save. Kid, Sherry, Azalea and Joe then become playable in the console game, and Wikipedia notes that their stats can carry on improving there. The club champions Putts, Grace, Tiny and Gene are not transferable. On the Game Boy Color side the link exchanges save data and lets you look at the N64 game’s records.

Because neither the Nintendo 3DS nor the Switch supports the Transfer Pak, none of the re-releases of either game can make the connection.

The Game Boy Color Mario Golf reaches further than its size suggests: into the N64 game, a Japanese online sequel, Advance Tour and even Super Smash Bros.

Mario Golf (Nintendo 64)Camelot · 1999 · Transfer Pak partnerThe console game came first, in Japan on 11 June 1999. With a Transfer Pak it adds Kid, Sherry, Azalea and Joe from your Game Boy Color save to its roster.

Mobile GolfGame Boy Color · Japan only · 11 May 2001A Japan-only follow-up built for the Mobile Adapter GB, which connected the Game Boy Color to the internet through a mobile phone. It closely follows this game’s play and story, and brings back Kid, Grace, Tiny and Gene as unlockables.

Mario Golf: Advance TourGame Boy Advance · 2004The sequel brings all eight of this game’s human golfers back, grown up and now the champions of the clubs, for new heroes Neil and Ella to beat. Kid has become the Grand Champion.

Super Smash Bros. UltimateNintendo Switch · spiritKid appears as a Support spirit, using his Game Boy Color artwork.

AdvertisingTV commercial and print advert · 1999In the TV commercial Mario tees off with a purple Game Boy Color in place of a ball. The Latin American version has Charles Martinet speaking Mario’s lines in Spanish, which is usually counted as the first time Mario officially spoke the language. A print advert ran in North America.

Mario Golf: World Tour and Mario Sports SuperstarsNintendo 3DS · 2014 and 2017World Tour’s Forest, Seaside and Mountain courses are said to be based on the Marion, Palm and Dune courses, and Superstars’ Emerald Woods and Crystal Beach on Marion and Palm.

Four newcomers to play as, four club champions to beat, and the Mario stars at the top of the ladder. Distances are the golfer’s 1-wood carry at the start; trajectory is the natural bend of the ball (draw curves left for a right-hander, fade right).

Character	Who they are	In this game	Abilities & notes
KidStory hero · junior boy	A lively, mischievous boy in a backwards red cap who started golfing at three and was a prodigy by ten.	One of the four story heroes. You can find the other three hiding around the map, but never the one you are playing as. Transferable to the N64 game.	Drive 202 yards (268 at level 99) Draw +1 · height −2 Meet +2 · control +1
SherryStory hero · junior girl	A 12-year-old with orange pigtails whose mother got her started on golf.	A story hero with the straightest ball of the four and the best touch. Transferable to the N64 game.	Drive 200 yards (258 at level 99) Straight · height −1 Meet +3 · control +3
AzaleaStory hero · older girl	A 17-year-old former track athlete who took up golf two years earlier with her father’s help and now represents her school.	A story hero with a gentle fade. Transferable to the N64 game.	Drive 204 yards (260 at level 99) Fade +1 · height −1 Meet +3 · control +2
JoeStory hero · older boy	A former disco dancer and a bit of a show-off who took up golf when his friends beat him at it, and talks about his game in dance terms.	A story hero and the longest hitter of the four. Transferable to the N64 game.	Drive 205 yards (264 at level 99) Draw +2 · height −2 Meet +2 · control +2
MarioAvailable from the start · final opponent	In the game he wears a short-sleeved red polo shirt and long white trousers rather than his overalls.	Playable from the start outside the story; in the story he is the champion of Peach’s Castle and the last rival to beat.	Drive 270 yards Draw +2
LuigiAvailable from the start	Dressed, like his brother, in a polo shirt and white trousers in his own colours.	Playable outside the story from the start, and the first of the three Mario-world rivals to challenge once the club champions have fallen.	Drive 220 yards Fade +2
PuttsMarion Club champion · unlockable	A Parisian with gelled blond hair and glasses who prides himself on playing with his head and wishes he had a bit more strength.	The first champion you meet. Beat him in match play to unlock him.	Drive 200 yards Draw +1
GracePalm Club champion · unlockable	Schooled for golf from girlhood in Germany, fashion-conscious and polite but fiercely competitive.	Second champion. Beat her in match play to unlock her.	Drive 220 yards Straight
TinyDune Club champion · unlockable	A powerhouse from the wilds of Hawaii with a ponytail and a red star on his vest; he blames a lack of strength whenever he loses.	Third champion. Beat him in match play to unlock him.	Drive 250 yards Draw
Gene YussLinks Club champion · unlockable	Suave, clever and very pleased with himself, in purple trousers and a black fedora. His full name is a pun on genius.	The last and strongest of the club champions. Beat him in match play to unlock him.	Drive 240 yards Fade
WarioRival · unlockable	Mario’s greedy rival, using his N64 Mario Golf artwork.	One of the three challengers after the club champions; the only one of the three you can unlock by beating him.	Drive 250 yards Fade
PlumNon-playable · golf dictionary	A golfer who made her debut, as a playable character, in the N64 Mario Golf.	Not playable here: she explains and defines golf terms for you.	Role: glossary
Princess PeachNon-playable · host	The princess of the Mushroom Kingdom.	Sends the invitation to her castle course once the four club tournaments are won, and greets you in the castle grounds.	Role: host of the final course
Golf GuruNon-playable · challenge	Keeper of a short course. In Japanese he is the golf sennin, a hermit-sage of golf; Advance Tour’s version of the course belongs to Elf.	Sets a challenge that unlocks his Pitch and Putt course.	Course: 18 holes, all par 3

Faces around the clubs

The other people and Mushroom Kingdom residents you meet. Bud, Bloober, Bob-omb and Shy Guy also count among the non-playable cast.

• 
  ProMarion ClubOne of the first people to introduce himself at the clubhouse.
• Lime, Lily and FlintDune ClubYour possible partners in the one-player doubles match. Japan’s version swaps Lily’s and Lime’s names.
• 
  Bob-omb BuddyAbove the cloudsMans the cannon that fires you to Peach’s Castle.
• 
  YoshiPeach’s CastleMet in the castle grounds.
• 
  Baby MarioPeach’s CastleMet in the castle grounds; hole 10 is shaped like him.
• 
  Donkey KongPeach’s CastleMet in the castle grounds.
• 
  BowserPeach’s CastleMet in the castle grounds.

Key staff

From the game’s credits.

No interviews about the Game Boy Color game itself could be found; this section draws on the credits, the release history and the game’s own link to its console sibling.

Two Mario Golfs in one summer

Camelot Software Planning built both 1999 Mario Golf games for Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 version arrived first (Japan 11 June, North America 26 July, Europe 24 September 1999). The Game Boy Color version followed in Japan on 10 August as Mario Golf GB and in the West that October, on a cartridge that runs only on a Game Boy Color: put it in an older Game Boy and it shows a notice instead.

The handheld team was led by Yasuhiro Taguchi, who directed and was also lead programmer, with Masaaki Uno and Yusuke Sugimoto as assistant directors and Motoi Sakuraba writing the music. The credits name Shigeru Miyamoto, Hiroji Kiyotake and Mitsuru Fukumoto for the original characters, and Yoichi Kotabe and Yusuke Nakano for graphics support.

A Mario look, a new cast

The box and promotional art show Mario and Luigi in their usual overalls, but in the game they wear short-sleeved polo shirts in their colours with long white trousers. Most of the people you meet are new: the eight human golfers were created for this game, and N64 regulars such as Plum appear only as helpers.

Early versions of the box art shown at E3 1999 survive in North American and European forms.

Selling it

Nintendo’s television commercial had Mario using a purple Game Boy Color as his golf ball. In Latin America the advert was voiced in Spanish by Charles Martinet, which is usually counted as the first official instance of Mario speaking Spanish (the second being the Spanish dub of The Super Mario Bros. Movie). A North American print advert also ran.

Firsts and distinctions we could find stated in a source.

There are no cheat codes, but there is plenty to unlock and a few secrets worth knowing.

Unlock the club champions

Win each club’s tournament to earn a match against its champion, then beat Putts, Grace, Tiny and Gene Yuss in match play to make them playable.

Unlock Wario

After the four champions, Luigi, Wario and Mario wait to be challenged. Beat Wario in match play to add him to the roster.

Open Peach’s Castle

Win all four club tournaments. Peach’s invitation follows, and the rainbow gate on the map takes you to the cannon.

Unlock the Pitch and Putt

Complete the Golf Guru’s challenge to open his all-par-3 short course.

Free levels

Four 1-Up Mushrooms are hidden on the map; each one is worth a level.

Find the other heroes

The three story heroes you did not choose are hiding in different places on the map. You never meet yourself.

Play left-handed

Hold Select while choosing a golfer. (The four story heroes are set left- or right-handed when you create your file.)

Make power shots count

Only fluffed power shots use up one of your six per round, so a well-timed power drive is free.

Compiled from Giant Bomb and Freezenet’s review. SLB’s separate cheats page is linked under Reference / Information.

Nintendo’s trailer for the game’s arrival on Nintendo Switch Online, and a full review from Classic Game Room.

• Its Japanese title is Mario Golf GB (マリオゴルフGB), the name it also carries in Chinese on Nintendo Switch Online.

• 

  The cartridge is Game Boy Color only. Try it in an original Game Boy and you get a notice telling you to use a Game Boy Color; the Japanese version has its own notice.
• The three heroes you did not pick are hidden around the map, but you can never bump into the character you are playing as.
• Four 1-Up Mushrooms are scattered over the map, each worth a level.
• Mario and Luigi wear polo shirts and white trousers in the game, not the overalls of the box art.
• The Japanese version swaps the names of Lily and Lime, two of the Dune Club doubles partners.
• The Marion Club’s name seems to mix Mario with the real Merion Golf Club.

• 

  Peach’s Castle’s holes are pictures when seen from above: a stained-glass Peach, a Shy Guy, a Super Star, a Thwomp, a Yoshi, Baby Mario, a Venus Fire Trap, a Koopa Troopa, a Goomba and Mario.
• The castle course plays the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme, and the castle grounds an arrangement of “Inside the Castle Walls” from Super Mario 64.
• Gene Yuss’s full name is a pun on genius; his first name may nod to the golfer Gene Sarazen.
• Tiny’s Japanese profile jokes that Japanese tourists in Hawaii sometimes take him for “Killer Khan”.

• 

  Kid’s prominent lips were redrawn as a thin smile in the Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Classics re-release of the N64 Mario Golf; his artwork also exists in an alternative version with smaller lips and brown eyes.
• Neither re-release can use the Transfer Pak, and the 3DS Virtual Console version also lost the two-player link mode.
• In Europe and Australia the 3DS Virtual Console release first went out free, ahead of its general release on 29 May 2014, to people who bought Mario Golf: World Tour on the Nintendo eShop.
• It reached Nintendo Switch Online on 12 March 2024 (11 March in the Americas) alongside Dr. Mario and the Game Boy Color Mario Tennis, as part of MAR10 Day.

The Game Boy Color box borrows the N64 game’s cover pose. Front and back covers from every region, plus the preliminary designs shown at E3 1999.

More from the Game Boy Color original.

Official artwork, sprites, logos and promotional material for the Game Boy Color Mario Golf. Select any image to enlarge it.

The handheld Mario Golf seeded a whole line of Camelot’s sports RPGs, and the game itself has twice been reissued.

Releases and re-releases

• Nintendo 64 companion 11 June 1999The N64 Mario Golf launches in Japan; it can exchange data with this game through a Transfer Pak.
• Game Boy Color 10 August 1999Released in Japan as Mario Golf GB.
• Game Boy Color October 1999North America 5 October, Europe 26 October, Australia 29 October.
• Mobile Golf 11 May 2001Japan-only Game Boy Color follow-up for the Mobile Adapter GB.
• Mario Golf: Advance Tour 2004The Game Boy Advance sequel, with the same RPG approach and the same eight human golfers.
• Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console 2012–2014Japan 3 October 2012, North America 11 October 2012 (US$4.99), Europe and Australia 29 May 2014 after a free early release for eShop buyers of Mario Golf: World Tour. No two-player mode or Transfer Pak link.
• Nintendo Switch Online 12 March 2024Added to the Game Boy library for MAR10 Day with Dr. Mario and Mario Tennis (11 March in the Americas).

The golfers grow up

Five years later Mario Golf: Advance Tour picked up the story. Its heroes are newcomers Neil and Ella, and the people they have to beat are this game’s cast, older now: Joe has taken the Marion title from Putts, Sherry the Palms title from Grace, Azalea the Dunes title from Tiny and Kid the Links title from Gene, and the old rivals have paired up as doubles champions. Kid is the reigning Grand Champion. The Golf Guru’s course returns as Elf’s Short Course. By then the same idea of a sports RPG had also carried Camelot’s Mario Tennis on Game Boy Color (2000), where you play Alex or Nina working up to a match with Mario, and its sequel Mario Tennis: Power Tour.

Reviews and scores

Scores as listed by Wikipedia, with outlet and date where the sources give them. No sales figure from Nintendo could be found, so none is given here.

GameRankings averaged the original at 87.65%. IGN’s Craig Harris gave it full marks and singled out its sound as remarkable for a Game Boy Color game, ranking it as the best portable golf game around; Computer and Video Games also awarded a maximum. GameSpot’s Lauren Fielder was cooler at 7.2, finding fault with mechanics such as putting while still rating it a fine adaptation of the N64 game.

Wikipedia’s summary of the reviews is that critics enjoyed the golf itself and saw the story mode as the highlight. That was still the view in 2012, when Nintendo Life’s Philip J Reed found the RPG-style mode the heart of the game and the presentation gorgeous, but docked marks because the Virtual Console version had lost its two-player mode and the Transfer Pak link.

• Mario Golf (Game Boy Color) Review by GBKing
• Mario Golf (Game Boy Color) Review by blueb11

• Mario Golf – Cheats / Unlockables / Hints

• Mario Golf – Review by blueb11

• Mario Golf – Box Art

• Mario Golf – Rendered Artwork

• Mario Golf – Screenshots

Every fact on this page was checked against the 35 sources listed here.