Mario Golf: Advance Tour (known in Japan as the similar-sounding Mario Golf: GBA Tour) is a Mario-based golf game for the Game Boy Advance. It is a direct sequel to the Game Boy Color iteration of Mario Golf and is also a counterpart to Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour for the Gamecube.

Story[edit]

Mario Golf: Advance Tour
Developer	Camelot
Publisher	Nintendo
System	Game Boy Advance, Wii U Virtual Console
Release Date	Game Boy Advance; JP April 22, 2004; US June 22, 2004; EU September 17, 2004; Wii U Virtual Console; EU August 28, 2014; JP September 10, 2014; US September 25, 2014
Rating	ESRB: E

The player chooses one of two young golfers (Neil and Ella) to control. This rookie is on a journey to win the tournaments held by four different clubs in order to become a professional golfer and earn the right to compete against the champion, Mario.

Gameplay[edit]

This game follows up on the Game Boy Color game and features the same four clubs as well as RPG elements. This includes an overworld to explore and people to talk to outside of the golf games, which utilize standard golf gameplay. The player gains experience from golfing games which helps to boost the character's stats. It is also possible to unlock custom golf clubs. The graphics, character expressions and sound for this game are notably similar to Golden Sun, which Camelot had made prior to this game.

There are also several multiplayer modes, as two to four players can play golf on the same game without the link cable, although it is still possible for multiple players to play a game with the link cable. Players can also trade golf clubs between their games.

Advance Tour can link up to Toadstool Tour to transfer Neil and Ella into the latter game as playable characters. Additionally, this will unlock four more Mario characters (Luigi, Bowser, Wario and Waluigi) for Advance Tour.

Playable Characters[edit]

Within the story mode, the player controls Neil or Ella. In other modes, the following characters are playable:

The following characters are unlocked through the Story Mode:

As mentioned above, Luigi, Bowser, Wario and Waluigi are unlocked only through linking up with Toadstool Tour.

Legacy[edit]

To date, this has been the last RPG-based Mario Golf game and the last one to use the human characters created for this series.

Ports/Remakes[edit]

In 2014, this game was released for download on the Wii U as part of the Wii U Virtual Console.

Sequels[edit]

After this game, a decade went by without any further Mario Golf installments, until Mario Golf: World Tour was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2014.

Mario Golf: Advance Tour

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