 I love RPGs and I love golf games, so why not do both, with Mario Golf Advance Tour for the Game Boy Advance. Remember how clunky, slow, and just downright awful some of the Super Nintendo Golf games were? Mario Golf Advance Tour blows them all out of the water. So yeah, this is the best golf game you'll find on the Game Boy Advance by far. The golf physics here are consistent, reliable, and predictable. You can plan your shot and execute it accordingly, whether it's a pitching wedge from 70 yards, a bunker shot buried in a greenside sand trap, or a 250 yard drive with topspin. It's really impressive. There's a traditional 3-click swing system where you control the spin and select the impact on the ball itself, so you can manipulate your shot in a lot of different ways. My only criticism of the actual golf in this game is that the putting is way too easy. If you putt with some mustard behind your shots, almost any putt will go in within about 25 to 30 feet. You barely even have to aim, but whatever. We start with four courses before the story mode has you unlock more. There's the traditional US Open Style course, there's the Tropical course with lots of water hazards, the Desert course with tons of sand traps, and the Western-style course with lots of tall grass and rain. Each course requires different strategies. Some demand you to be as precise as possible and avoid the hazards, others you gotta go for distance. The role-playing elements in this game are well done. This isn't the novelty act, with RPG elements tacked onto a golf game. This is a real story with characters that have things to say and everything. Although, notice none of these characters so far I'm showing are Mario. Hmm. There's an overworld map where you can pick and choose what you want to do and when. No, there aren't random golf battles, although that'd be pretty funny. Anyway, you level up your character by placing well in tournaments, beating other characters in match play, and with some creative mini-game like slot clubs for instance, a game that randomly selects clubs for you for one hole that you have to par. For example, you could be left trying to par a 500-yard par 5 with just a 4-wood, pitching wedge, and a putter. And there's more conventional mini-games as well, like Closest to the Pin and Pudding Contest. When you accumulate experience, you can buff up specific parts of your game, like driving distance or spin control. I do have one major criticism of this game, where the hell is Mario, and all the Mario-ish stuff? If you're looking for tons of wacky courses with all the Mario characters like Mario Golf 64 or Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, you won't find it here. There's only four Mario characters that you start with at the beginning. Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Peach. You have to unlock a lot to even get to one Mario-themed course. To be fair, it's a doozy of a course once you get it, and there's two versions of it, but still, I would have liked to have seen a lot more Mario stuff here. Anyway, if golf isn't your thing and you're more of a tennis person, it should be noted that this is very similar to the Mario Tennis Power Tour game, also for the Game Boy Advance. It's made by the same developer, Camelot. But if you do like golf games, you can't do any better than Mario Golf Advance Tour. It's light on the Mario elements, but it's a surprisingly great golf game.