Mario Golf (Game Boy Color version)

Adorable, but hardly essential. This sports RPG does a fine job of simulating number crunching and conveying one’s growing level of skill, but as anyone who has done some role-playing knows, RPGs are mostly about the social systems and consequences that arise out of play and Golf’s lack of memorable characters, aside from one delirious windbag that I think lives in a treehouse, is the sort of baffling flaw you’d think a company like Camelot would have resolved early in production. The campaign is short and there’s hardly anything to do after that, but it’s plenty agreeable while it lasts.

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