NES Open Tournament Golf

NES Open Tournament Golf (known as Mario Open Golf in Japan) is an NES game featuring Mario characters. As the name of the game implies, it is a golf game and was one of the first golfing games in the Mario series. In the American version of the game, the graphics and soundtrack has slightly changed. The Japanese version of the game features different playable courses and characters. Although the Japan Course and UK Course are also playable courses in North America version they do not contain the same holes. For example, hole 1 in the Australia Course is hole 9 in the US Course. The game does not take place in the Mushroom Kingdom and instead takes place on Earth, or the "real world." The levels are Japan, Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

A version of this game was developed for the Nintendo PlayChoice-10 in America, called Mario's Open Golf.

NES Open Tournament Golf has also been released on the Virtual Console for the Wii for 500 Wii Points, as well as for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The original Famicom game is also one of the 30 titles included in the Japan-exclusive Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer. The game will also be made available for Nintendo Switch Online members from October 10, 2018.

Playable

 * Mario
 * Luigi

Non-playable

 * Princess Toadstool
 * Princess Daisy
 * Donkey Kong
 * Toad
 * Steve (North America version only)
 * Mark (North America version only)
 * Tony
 * Billy

Cameos

 * Monty Mole (on cover art)

Japanese version

 * Japan Course
 * Australia Course
 * France Course
 * Hawaii Course
 * UK Course
 * Extra Course

North American and European versions

 * US Course
 * Japan Course
 * UK Course

Other information

 * Princess Toadstool is Mario's caddy, while Princess Daisy is Luigi's caddy.
 * This is the first appearance of Daisy outside of Super Mario Land, where she first appeared, and her first appearance in color.
 * It is also the first time Daisy is associated with Luigi.
 * This is the second out of the only two NES games (the first being her cameo appearance in the NES version of Tetris) in which Peach is depicted with blonde hair in game, which reflects her artwork by Yoichi Kotabe. All other NES games depicted her as either a redhead or a brunette. While Daisy is also depicted as blonde on the title screen due to the NES only being able to display three colors per sprite (the white areas on Daisy's sprite are transparent), she is properly a redhead in game.
 * Toad appears whenever there is an O.B., and with a blue flag, he tells the player there is an O.B.
 * Donkey Kong tells the player how much money they have, and he keeps it. He will also make comments based on certain milestones achieved, such as when $1,000,000 has been obtained.

Tournament Roster
In the Club House mode in the game, there is a setting called the Tournament Roster. Here the player can change all of the player's names, just like they'd change their own name (which is Mario by default). Here are all the 36 default names on the Tournament Roster.

All of the names starting from Iwata to Uemura are names of the people who developed and produced the game, while Steve and Tony are names of two people who localized it for North America.

Staff
NES Open Tournament Golf was a coproduction between Nintendo R&D2 and HAL Laboratory. Kenji Miki (director of the original Golf) was the director. The game was Satoru Iwata's first experience in developing a game "from start to finish". The title was also Eiji Aonuma's (credited as a sprite designer) very first work in the video game industry.

References to other games

 * Family Computer Golf: U.S. Course: Mario's outfit originated from this game.

References in later games

 * WarioWare: Twisted!: A microgame appears based off of this game.
 * Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U: One of Mario's alternate colors resembles the clothes he wears this game.
 * Super Mario Odyssey: Mario can wear an outfit identical to the one he is depicted as wearing in this game.
 * WarioWare Gold: The NES Open Tournament Golf microgame from WarioWare: Twisted! returns in this game.

Trivia

 * This is the only game where Peach never wears her crown at all (or, indeed, any headwear), even though the illustration of her kissing Mario (right) depicts her with her crown on her head. However, in future sports titles, she wears the crown.
 * On a side-note, Daisy did not wear her crown in sports titles until Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and onwards since her (and Peach's) redesign since Mario Party 4.
 * Dummied data for the game Animal Forest + indicated that Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (or, more accurately, Super Mario Bros. 2) as well as NES Open Tournament Golf would have been included as a playable Famicom game, but it ultimately was cut with not even a ROM or models available inside.
 * Technically, this is the only appearance of Princess Daisy in the games where she is depicted as a blonde, due to graphical limitations. She would later be depicted as blonde with her incarnation from the Super Mario Bros movie.