Underneath its heavily branded trappings, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour is a really well-made golf game, with deep control and interesting courses. If I knew anything at all about golf games, I’m sure I’d have a lot to say about it, but to be honest, I don’t know why video games based on golf are ever more than just desk accessories for your PC, since they’re only entertaining for about five minutes at a sitting. The thing that makes MG:TT interesting is the presence of Mario, the undisputed King of Video Game Mascots.
I have to make a confession, though: I have never been one of those really hardcore Nintendo fans, and never owned a console of theirs until the GBA and Game Cube came along. As a child, I didn’t have money for an NES; I also had this weird idea in my head that Nintendo was somehow responsible for the decline of my beloved Commodore 64 as a gaming platform, simply because it’s rise in popularity coincided with the C64’s slow obsolesence (I still don’t know where this idea came from; I was an addle-brained kid, prone to taking random thoughts to absurd conclusions). Mainly, though, it was the money that kept me and all my friends from having one, and I ended up missing out on all those games that everyone always talks about, like River City Ransom, or Dragon Warrior, or, you know, Metroid.
One thing that I and just about every other kid knew about Nintendo, though, was that it was responsible for Mario. He had been present in pre-NES games, as the hero in Donkey Kong and the villain in Donkey Kong Junior, but as a character, he was much less fun than the big ape with the freaky smile. Super Mario Brothers changed all that. In addition to starting the movement towards closed-ended games (it actually ends! You don’t just keep playing the same levels over and over until you die!), SMB’s success established Mario as Nintendo’s most recognizable character. From there, it was just a matter of time until Mario’s face could be seen on just about any Nintendo-related product; not just merchandise, but in games that he otherwise had nothing to do with. Now, the identity of the character and the company are inextricably linked: Mario means Nintendo, and Nintendo means Mario.
Mario’s evolution as a mascot parallels that of another iconic figure, Mickey Mouse. Both figures are symbols of their respective companies, thanks to their immediately recognizable silhouettes (Mario’s big nose and mustache, and of course those ears). As their roles as company pitchmen have grown over the years, their representations have become softer, rounder, and more family-friendly. With Mario, part of the explanation is technological (there’s only so much cuteness you can back into a 16x16 pixel grid), but most of it is the same mascot-making treatment that Mickey got. Their personalities have softened as well: early Mickey cartoons depicted a puckish, jug-eared rat, a far cry from the smooth everyman he eventually became. In Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., Mario had no compunctions about leveling an entire construction site to beat down DK, and didn’t hesitate to lock him up and send a flood of lockjaws out against a baby ape. In Super Mario Sunshine, his main goal is… to clean up the environment. Die Hard it ain’t.
One of the stranger marks of a truly dominant mascot like Mickey or Mario is that the bigger and more iconic one gets, the less important its original reasons for popularity become: when’s the last time Disney made an actual Mickey Mouse cartoon? Similarly, Mario spends more time lending his name and visage to non-platforming games than he does with any of his own jumping and princess-rescuing. A less successfully branded (although more purely iconic) mascot, Pac-Man, can’t sell games based on name or face alone; people aren’t particularly interested in playing a Pac-Man game that doesn’t involve moving around a maze and eating dots. At a certain point, the roles of Mickey and Mario as mascots not only overshadows their cartoons and games, it almost obviates any need for them.
Which brings us back to MG:TT. If I was going to try out a golf game, why Mario Golf instead of, say Hot Shots Golf, which is almost the exact same game? (Developers Camelot created both series.) I play it because I recognize Mario, and I don’t recognize any of the characters in Hot Shots, and I know that it’s Mario’s world, and I’m just living in it, whether I want to play platformers, or fighters, or board games, or tennis, or golf.
