Like other freaks, and probably, in fairness, like most other people, I have something that I just cannot tire of. It is a six year old game, produced for an obsolete portable console that I just won’t stop playing.
I find RPGs dull. If I wanted to spend my days ‘fighting’ in a menu, I’d do text-based adventure games with recursive footnotes. “Adventure games”, where I can actually go a full five minutes without being forced into a menu, if I’m lucky, are better. (I count the Zelda games as adventure games, instead of the mostly menu-based dealies often starring Guybrush Threepwood. Countless others may not. Vocal such specimen can bite me.) I loathe FPSes - my hands are shaky. Worms and its follow-ups are nice. I also like some sports games like the FIFA series and Mario Tennis. (And as anyone who knows me can tell you, I also completely love simple 2D or 3D platformers, like the Mario, Sonic and Mega Man series.)
So what do we end up with as the game I can’t stop playing? Surprisingly, a game that’s not the best I’ve played, a game that’s not the easiest or hardest I’ve ever played, and overall a game that’s not insanely impressive. Yet, I can’t stop playing the 1999 hit Mario Golf for Game Boy Color. Sure, it’s memorable because it was the first game I got for my first Game Boy. And sure, it’s nice because it has Mario characters in it. But even all sentimental reasoning and association aside, Mario Golf stands as an insanely well put-together game, with a minimalist but solid back story (kid wants to beat best golfer which happens to be Mario), perfect control (a review I read about Super Mario Bros once mentioned that if you “slip and fall”, you have noone else to blame for it but yourself, something that applies even more here) and a good challenge.
Mario Golf starts off smoothly with four clubs (Marion, Palm, Dune, Links (which, mischievously, carries a Triforce symbol as its badge)). Each club has a master. Challenge each master and win over them - something that can only be done by boosting your miserable starting stats inch by inch. Practice in specific areas in some clubs, or find new areas in the terrain where you can earn special Stars. But even when it’s all done - a rewarding trip in itself, which ends with meeting and beating Mario on a fifth course in the clouds - you can still play for ages, just climbing levels and carefully choosing which stat of the five to boost.
Climbing levels are deceptively simple, but everything effects how your ‘guy’ will handle in the end. My first golfer to hit Level 99, the ceiling of the game, could hit the ball 350 yards, but had to aim in the woods - so bad did his shots aim, so curved was his hit and so much was his shots affected by the wind. My second golfer just today hit Level 99, and the stats were much more even this time. He hits 314 yards (w00t!) and has a straight shot (as opposed to a fade/slice or draw, which means that the ball curves in different directions), can maximize his power to really whip the ball far, but still hits way too high.
But what’s even more amazing is how the choices you make affect the elegant controls. If you miss the hole by a few feet, it’s nothing but your own damn fault - you need to be careful when aiming, have timing when shooting and pick the right stats on level up to achieve a golfer that hits it your way. This may be the secret recipe, the reason why I simply can’t tire of this game.
I’m now going to go create a third golfer, developing his stats absolutely even to the maximum extent, and I am completely convinced that I have at least another 70 hours of (effective) game play ahead of me, and that I’m going to create a lot more characters before I stop playing Mario Golf.