Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
Whether you like Mario Golf: Super Rush or not, it’s easy to see that it features some of the most grandiose courses in the franchise’s history. It wasn’t just Camelot that made that happen either. Apparently, as the team was planning this ambitious feature for the game, they got help from Nintendo professionals in vast map design. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild team apparently lent its expertise to help director Shugo Takahashi realize the Mario Golf courses he had always dreamed of.
Mario Golf: Super Rush director Shugo Takahashi recently revealed this interesting bit of information in an interview with Nintendo Dream, as translated by Nintendo Everything. According to Takahashi, he saw Super Rush as an opportunity to do things with the course maps that were once limited by technology. The challenge of expanding the maps came up as the team was working out the idea of Speed Golf, in which players golf simultaneously and race to get their ball to the hole fastest and in the fewest strokes.
“We only show it in a small part of the game, but we really wanted to make a game where you hit the ball anywhere on the vast courses,” Takahashi shared. “A game where if you hit the ball as far as the next hole, you’d have to go and hit it all the way back. A map the size of Hyrule Field was our goal, and the Zelda team at Nintendo shared ideas with us as to how we could get there.”
A part of this was also creating a fairly seamless golfing experience. Takahashi wanted players to not have to sit on loading screens between holes. It’s another area where the technical experience of the Zelda: Breath of the Wild developers proved invaluable.
“I’ll admit I always wanted to do this, but technology at the time of each previous entry never allowed for it,” Takahashi explained. “Especially in the Mario Golf 64 era.”
There were definitely some things in Mario Golf: Super Rush that weren’t as good as we felt they could have been in our Shacknews review, but the courses were a place where we could even agree Super Rush shined. If that was the goal, then at the very least, Camelot and Nintendo’s devs seemed to have succeeded there.