Where are these Mushroom Kingdom Stadiums, and how much do they cost? Part 2

Some three years ago I was inspired by Brian David Gilbert and Jon Bois videos and decided to write about my true passion in life, Mario Sports games. Well, soon after, the two of them stopped making as many videos, and I lost that cadence of theirs where they just spent 20 minutes talking about random banal things in the most fascinating styles. But I’ve found myself rewatching their videos again, and I’m finding it’s time to Unravel yet another Dorktown.

If you missed the sneaky hyperlink or the 10,000 words scared you off of that previous blog post, well, you’ll probably be scared by the length of this one too. But regardless I’d like to talk about some more stadiums in Mario Sports games with the main goal being answering the questions “how much did this cost?”, and “where in the Mushroom Kingdom is this?”

For price, Brian David Gilbert equated 8 coins to 1 USD but I will stick with the 1 coin to 1 USD ratio I determined. Also, I will probably forget about that dimension of my analysis halfway through, and I apologize.

For location, I’m always much more interested in figuring that out. The idea that there’s some actual map that could be made showing the general locations of Mario Circuits 1-5 from the SNES compared to the general location of Mario Circuit from Mario Kart 8 is such a fun idea, but Mario games that aren’t RPGs don’t tend to have a grounding location. For instance, The Dump from Mario Strikers Charged is a literal dump full of nothing but mud and a single drain in the center, which seems like a pretty bad dump. I would’ve figured there’d be some litter or something. Regardless, it is a soccer stadium and must be a “real” location somewhere in the Mushroom Kingdom that would make sense for a dump, so I said it was close to the Kero Sewers from Super Mario RPG.

In that previous post, I went through and sussed out the locations of Mario sports stadiums from Super Mario Strikers, Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Superstar Baseball, Mario Super Sluggers (kinda), and Mario Sports Mix. They’re my five favorite Mario sports games and the ones I have the most passion for. Which means that this post will cover Mario Power Tennis, Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, Mario Golf World Tour, and Mario Sports Superstars, four games I’m nowhere near as passionate about. They say “write what you love”, but I think “write what you lukewarm” is just as good.

Mario Power Tennis was a game I rented often from Blockbuster, and was the final game my Gamecube played before it stopped reading discs. So I have fond memories of this one.

The Peach Dome is actually home to three distinct courts. You got the Hard Court, the Grass Court, and the Clay Court in the Peach Dome. I’d love to riff on it, but it is an extremely boring stage that you will see half your time playing since it is the court set used for the “non-gimmick” cups in Mario Power Tennis. Peach is no stranger to vanity sports projects. 4 years after opening the Peach Dome, she’d open the insanity of Baseball Island for Mario Super Sluggers which is far more interesting than Peach’s equivalent to Wimbledon. The Peach Dome could be literally anywhere but we’ll just place it about a mile away from the castle in a stadium district with Peach Gardens from Mario Superstar Baseball and Peach’s Castle from Mario Sports Mix. It probably cost the most of the three to build, to be honest. And with renovations of Wimbledon being >100 million Euros, well, let’s just say the Toads aren’t pleased at how many Piantas and Nokis are in the crowd instead of them.

Bowser’s Castle Court is a lot like Bowser’s Castle from Mario Sports Mix. You got a tilting platform suspended over lava that tips against the team in front, a fire source randomly coming out to burn competitors, and literally nothing else visible from the playfield. How does Bowser ferry people to these fields? And why do people agree to play there? There’s no amenities! Not even a locker room, let alone stands for fans to sit in. Again, Bowser spared all expense on this stadium and passed the savings to his military to hire another 1000 Goombas from poor families to perpetuate the war. Thanks sportswashing! Oh. And it’s in Bowser’s Castle. Did I have to clarify that?

Delfino Plaza Court is another easy to locate court in the Mushroom Kingdom. It is in the plaza… of Isle Delfino… While setting up the court just required some paint and the shoddiest fence I’ve seen, there is a rather expensive gimmick that they installed. See, hitting one of those circles on the court causes a goop piranha plant to spit goop onto the court, slowing down competitors. And it is insane that the politicians of Isle Delfino signed off on this when this was literally what Bowser Jr. did to the island in order to ruin the beautiful vacation destination. But, just as Super Mario Sunshine also showed, the politicians and justice system in Isle Delfino is easily circumnavigated when convicted criminals are just asked to promise that they’ll do community service after destroying half the country. I still don’t think this cost much to make. Let’s say 3 million coins mainly for goop piranha plant food.

DK Jungle Court is another court that put all its money into its gimmicks. This looks like it’s just upstream from the DK Jungle baseball stadium in Mario Superstar Baseball. And, obviously, it is just a piece of wood suspended over a river. I can’t imagine it cost anything but paint to make this. And it is a major safety hazard just for existing. The gimmick here is that the cannons near the net will shoot klaptraps onto the court which will then bite players’ legs. This is slightly more safe than Bowser’s Castle court but only slightly. Otherwise, it’s a tennis court painted onto a hunk of wood in DK Jungle which I’ll say is in the Forest Maze of Super Mario RPG. You can’t stop me. No cost estimate, we don’t have a real-world equivalent to a cannon that shoots piranhas.

Gooper Blooper Court is another very easy to locate court. It is in Ricco Harbor in Isle Delfino. My real question here is how close the Isle Delfino is to Rogueport. This is a tennis court on a weird set of catwalks up in Ricco Harbor’s shipyard. They filled in a major hole with a tennis court instead of putting fences around the thing catwalks or anything else that would’ve made sense for improving safety. I’m noticing a pattern with this game where, similar to Mario Sports Mix, all the stadiums were done on the cheapest budget possible. I would bet the Isle Delfino government gave Ricco Harbor funds to fix their catwalks and they stretched that money to put in a gimmick court where balls hitting platforms with arrows on it will cause those platforms to move that way and make the area under where they were to be out of bounds. And all I can say is “why?” Those poor Piantas and Nokis working there…

Luigi’s Mansion Court is obviously just outside of Luigi’s Mansion. There have been three Luigi’s Mansion games and yet none of them have actually answered where Luigi’s Mansion is relative to the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom. Other than that it is close to Professor E. Gadd’s laboratory. Which is revealed to be on Thwomp Mountain in Mario & Luigi Partners in Time. So, we don’t see the mansion in that game, just the lab, but I think that’s a sufficient answer for the relative where of Luigi’s Mansion. And, once again, this court cost nothing to make. I mean, you can see it. The spooky interior design candles from Pier 1 Imports and the court paint job was all it took to bring this to life. Or should I sa… death?!?!

Mario Classic Court is a fun court idea. Between the time that Mario Power Tennis and the original Mario Bros. arcade game the court is based on, 21 years had passed. It has been 19 years since Mario Power Tennis was released. Will we get a Mario Power Tennis Power Classic Court in Mario Tennis Aces 2 when that comes around in 2 years? The court itself is underground in the sewers, but a very clean part of the sewers. Official Mario Bros. Arcade Game Lore states that the sewers are New York, under the Mario household. I think the game proved that the water in New York is truly different. I gotta hand it to Mario on this one. He cleaned his house’s sewers so well that he could put in a tennis court. This one couldn’t have been cheap to build. Simply replacing a sewer line is somewhere between $1250-$25000, but replacing a sewer line with a tennis court? That’s probably got to be at leaest $25001.

Finally, the Wario Factory Court. It is very strange to me how Wario became synonymous with factories in the Mario Sports universe. There’s three different games with a Wario Factory stadium, and it is the most consistent thing the side games have given Wario. In Mario Sports Mix, it’s revealed he’s making treasure chests filled with coins or Bob-ombs. In Mario Hoops 3 on 3, there are only Bob-ombs. And, here, Wario is only making… arrow signs? The stadium is relatively high-cost compared to the other stadiums here because cutting out pieces of conveyer belts and interlocking them into a tennis court must’ve taken some ingenuity and labor. 10′ of a 10″ wide conveyor belt is around $1570, and a tennis court is 78′ long by 36′ wide so, uh, you do the math. Not cheap! I continue to maintain Wario’s factory was Smithy’s old factory from Super Mario RPG.

And, with that, we come to Mario Golf games. Now, golf in the real world costs so much between the opportunity cost of some 160 acres of usable land as well as the actual cost of grooming the land and watering the grass that it is frankly ludicrous that anyone allows them to get made. But video game golf is perfect. You can just invent 160 acres out of electronic thin air unless some weirdo decides to look into the logistics of the courses. So, “here we go” – Luigi. I’ll be skipping Mario Golf 64 for now because all those courses were canonically torn down, and I do not care about the Mario Golf game on the GBA (nor the Mario Tennis one either). If you disagree, you can make your own analysis about the costs of building those courses and clubs. But I’ll stick with the first good one I played, the Gamecube’s Toadstool Tour.

Lakitu Valley is the first locale on the Toadstool Tour. Full of lush green hills and simple water and bunker traps, it is as close as you’ll get to a generic golf course in the game. Heck, there aren’t even any Lakitus in here despite the name. This could be in basically any grass world from a Mario game, so we’ll say it’s in Grass Land from Super Mario Bros. 3. Which means that the guy who put this golf course into legislature looks like this:

I’m not surprised to see he was already carrying a golf club.

Cheep Cheep Falls is like Lakitu Valley but in the Pacific Northwest. You can tell because there’s actual elevation gains and drops, and because there are the beautiful Cascades in the background. Which is why I’m proud to say this golf course was chiseled around the dinosaur fossils found in the Cascade Kingdom. It’s got the lush greens, the clear water, and, most importantly, the tall mountains that cause players to completely miss their approach shots and clang their balls off stone. What’s that? The Cascade Kingdom is independent from the Mushroom Kingdom? Well, my interpretation of the ending of Super Mario Odyssey is that Peach owns every Kingdom that she sightsees at during the postgame, so, yes, the Cascade Kingdom is hers. Also, just like how Lakitu Valley has no Lakitus, there are no Cheep Cheeps in Cheep Cheep Falls or in Cascade Kingdom. So boom. Prices for both are the standard $25 million it costs to build a golf course on average (according to Golf Span) since there’s not much terraforming to do, just landscaping.

Shifting Sands is the first course in Toadstool Tour that uses a prior place of reference, though it might be by accident. Shifting Sand Land is a Super Mario 64 level that is nothing but sand, cement, and brick, so turning it into a golf course would require unthinkable amounts of resources to play in a 120 degree Fahrenheit pit of torture. I do not want to think about the costs and Kleptos displaced from this endeavor. I can’t imagine Eyerok signing off on this, and yet…

Blooper Bay is a return to the slightly-off locales in Toadstool Tour. Whereas every other Mario sports game on the GameCube made sure to reference Isle Delfino, “Blooper Bay” is instead chosen as the tropical beach course. This one just feels so strange. Every accessory in this park screams Isle Delfino and yet we’re at non-copyright infringing Jolly Roger Bay instead. It could be any beach anywhere in the Mushroom Kingdom, even one without Bloopers considering the past courses being named after creatures that don’t appear there. I’ll just pick one at random. Plack Beach from Bowser’s Inside Story is the home of the Blooper Open and Blooper Bay. The course was funded by Kuzzle, rich off making YouTube videos where he solves jigsaw puzzles while regaling folks with ASMR stories about his youth. It cost $20 million. YouTubers make bank.

Peach’s Castle Grounds are a fun thought exercise because the course is incompatible with the rest of the depiction of said castle grounds in other Mario spinoffs. Royal Raceway from Mario Kart 64 doesn’t look anything like this. Peach Garden from Mario Superstar Baseball doesn’t have warp pipes. Peach Castle from Mario Sports Mix is the only one that might be compatible since it just needs grass and a fountain. But this game’s claim on the front of Peach’s Castle is as valid as the rest, so I’ll just have to assume there’s random parts in front of Peach’s Castle where there’s over 300 feet between solid ground with a bottomless hole between them as well as a Mt. Rushmore of Mario figures with “Princess Peach in place of George Washington, Mario in place of Thomas Jefferson, Luigi in place of Theodore Roosevelt, and Yoshi in place of Abraham Lincoln.” That’s right. Yoshi freed the Goomba slaves.

Bowser Badlands is set in the Valley of Bowser from Super Mario World. Bowser granted the location license to use his name for advertising purposes but didn’t actually fund any of this, it was all Larry’s idea. Turning a lava-filled area into a golf course isn’t that hard. Life sprang from molten rock, grass grows easily on new land. They just saw the random landscapes that sprung up and said “that’ll be fine”. That’s why Larry was Bowser’s right hand man, for making cost-effective business decisions. Sadly, Bowser Jr. replaced Larry when Bowser found that Larry had used his actual Clown Car for hole 11, and he wasn’t allowed back into the family until New Super Mario Bros Wii 6 years later.

The last stop of the tour is Congo Canopy which doesn’t have a single good picture on the internet. But I think you can tell from that green stop sign that the golf course takes place on massive tree branches and some treehouses. It’s a cute interlocking golf course that overlaps on itself as you get to hole 18, probably the most thought-about layout in the game. It’s a small par 3 only course but the insurance needed to get this built made it cost around 30 million coins because anyone falling from this height will die. Some brain geniuses on the Super Mario Wiki think this is located in Kongo Jungle because of the name and the DK theme. But those people are morons because this is Congo Canopy, not Kongo Canopy. No, you don’t need to sound off in the comments and tell me that Kongo Jungle from Smash Bros 64 was incorrectly localized as Congo Jungle initially thus meaning Congo Canopy befell to the same fate because this is actually located in the Bafflewood of Paper Mario Sticker Star.

Phew, thank goodness we’re done with the rinkydink Toadstool Tour. It’s time for the Mario Golf: World Tour on the 3DS. I spent 3 and a half months in London and I spent probably 3 full days of that time playing this game. It was very good. Part of those 3 days was spent doing the Castle Club campaign mode where you raise your Mii to become the best golfer the Mushroom Kingdom has ever seen. Below is the Castle Club.

Now, at first glance, this looks like it’s just Peach’s Castle. But the flora will reveal that it’s just a golf club built to look like Peach’s Castle but in some more tropical area. Like, maybe in Mario Florida, which I think is world 2 of New Super Mario Bros Wii. This place is as bougie as it gets but I can’t find any figures for how much a high-end golf club would cost, only figures for how much high-end golf clubs cost. Onto the courses!

Sky Island is a misnomer because it’s actually an archipelago of islands in the sky. Thank you Tears of the Kingdom for reminding the world of that term. Sky Worlds are in a bunch of Mario games, but the music for this course is a remix of a Super Mario Bros. 3 song. Which means that it is canonically set on a series of random islands in World 5 of that game. The cost for this is incalculable because we literally do not have the technology to transport terraforming equipment into the stratosphere where this golf course lives. But rest assured, the cost is sky high.

Peach Gardens is another Peach area that is just straight up incompatible with other spinoffs. I can only assume that Peach just goes through phases and changes her gardens from being a baseball field, to a go kart track, one golf course with warp pipes in Toadstool Tour and to a different golf course in World Tour whenever she feels like it. Freaking royals, huh? And don’t get me started on the impossible pink grass. That amount of dye cannot be healthy for the plants nor the players–a blade of grass will tear up even Wario’s intestines. The dye and landscaping that makes sure every bunker is in the shape of a heart turn what really could’ve been a cheap operation into an insane overbudget project. Freaking royals, huh?

Yoshi Lake is the Blooper Bay of World Tour in that something about this golf course feels very off. As you can see from the screenshot, basically all terrain in the level is Yoshi-themed. The terrain is shaped either like an egg, a cookie from Yoshi’s Cookie, or his disgusting stomach that turns everything he eats into an egg. And that’s cute, sure, but, this may just be me, I don’t think of “Lake” when I think of “Yoshi”. Yoshi can’t swim. He does the dog paddle in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Why is there a lake claiming to be Yoshi Lake with a bunch of Yoshi-themed land when Yoshi hates the water? It’s because Bert the Bashful is getting his revenge as he turns the Lake Shore Paradise on Yoshi’s Island into a Yoshi Lake golf course in order to deviously trap the green dinosaur. It cost little because Bert got Kamek to do it with magic, but so far the trap has not sprung on Yoshi. So far…

Wiggler Park is a straight ripoff of Mario Party DS’s Wiggler’s Garden, even though the music is a cover of a Super Mario Galaxy song. In that game, Bowser used his Minimizer to shrink everyone in order to steal the Sky Crystals. By the way, the ending of Mario Party DS’s story is that the Sky Crystals make up a Nintendo DS that the cast then play Triangle Twisters on which the game hypes up as this perfect, super fun minigame, but it’s just bad Bejeweled. Of course, everyone who played Mario Party DS would know that it should’ve ended with everyone playing Shorty Scorers, the best Mario Party minigame ever created. All of this is to say that Bowser’s Minimizer is brought back to roam Wiggler Park as a golf course for Koopa knows what. Shrink the players, shrink the cost? I don’t know man. I feel like the power costs on using the Minimizer would drive up the price. But it definitely cut down on the fees making the course–the entire acreage for Wiggler Park fits inside the dress-up closet in the Castle Club. Also, I guess they gave the Minimizer to Wiggler since why else would anyone make a golf course themed around Wiggler? Woah, don’t get mad at me!

Cheep Cheep Lagoon is the same location as the Cheep Cheep Lagoon from Mario Kart 7. The golf course is just a few blocks away from the racecourse but they share a large submarine parking lot. “Zuh? A golf course underwater? Boy, I bet their budget is underwater!” is what you may be thinking. And you’re definitely right. The Cheep Cheep Lagoon brand cratered extremely hard after their initial VC money dried up as they failed to establish themselves as an attractive resort. No games since MK7 or World Tour have gone back to the Lagoon. This giant waste of money off the shores of Pi’Illo Island was founded by “Sleepy” Prince Dreambert as the island writ large gambled and lost all its money when Alphadream closed. Bring Mario and Luigi games back!

DK Jungle is actually on DK Island from DKC Returns. I can’t really say there’s another spot in the Mushroom Kingdom it could be with all the obvious iconography from the game. Donkey Kong is a philanthropist (as you would know if you played Mario Party games) so he isn’t behind it other than giving his name away to the project. No, this is a cynical endeavor by Lanky Kong who keeps trying to get back into the spotlight, but knows no one wants him specifically. This course cost a lot more than what one might expect because Lanky eliminated anything superfluous to the course itself, meaning huge swathes of the DK Jungle got cut down and then had the ground completely removed for this thing. Just like regular golf courses!

Bowser’s Castle is a misnomer. You don’t actually get into the castle at any point, nor do you really see it. My impression is that Bowser’s Badlands didn’t draw the fans so he switched the course around and then changed the name to bring the crowds. Bowser already owned all this property and the labor to make the course happen, so it didn’t cost anything according to the books. But if you were to ask the families of the brave Paratroopas who perished due to lack of PPE, this golf course cost everything. And you too can visit the Bowser Castle Resort and Theme Park for only 300 coins a night!

Toad Highlands is next door to Lakitu Valley. Grass Land has tons of space, and very little else to do with it. There is just about nothing to say about the Toad Highlands. It’s too normal. Why would anyone in the Mushroom or Beanbean Kingdom come here on vacation? Go hike the Highlands/Valley instead of going to the golf courses there. Yeesh. Oh, I should probably mention that the final 6 courses covered here are the 6 courses from Mario Golf 64, remade as DLC for World Tour. This is why I didn’t go over them earlier.

The fact that these are remade N64 courses helps explain why Koopa Park is just as boring as Toad Highlands. It has some giant Koopa balloons distracting golfers, and nothing but sand, trees, and greens otherwise. But that’s alright, it’s near Koopa Cape, a nice little Mario Kart Wii track. The cape would be a lovely spot to vacation. Too bad beaches aren’t real. Koopa Koot founded the whole Koopa Cape thing before retiring to Koopa Village back when normal people could afford to do something like that, so it was a modest 1 coin to build. Back in Koopa Koot’s day, you could eat for 3 years with just one coin, so don’t be mad when that’s the reward for fetching his “tape”.

Layer-Cake Desert was actually called “Shy Guy Desert” in Mario Golf 64. Layer-Cake Desert is a world in New Super Mario Bros U. You can understand why there were no more New Super Mario Bros games after that one when all the developers can mustard for level designs is a food pun. Chef Torte got a group of investors behind the food-themed golf idea to fund this golf course’s development. Sad thing is that the investors were Tutankoopa and Tower Power Pokey who demanded the course be built in a desert. The property was cheap. The water was not. Just like Shifting Sands, this place cost over 40 million coins to make. And, this time, it was in a desert even further away from civilization. Awful awful idea from the man who made Bundt.

Sparkling Waters is another level from New Super Mario Bros U., but U may remember it as Blooper Bay. That’s right, the resort behind Blooper Bay knew that people were turned off by it trying to connect to a nostalgic state of the Mushroom Kingdom even though said resort had only been around for 3 years, and it switched to jumping on the hot newness of Sparkling Waters. The only problem is that Sparkling Waters is as soulless as the megacorp and this rebranding of Yoshi Island from Mario Golf 64 flopped on its face completely. Why did they not just stick with Yoshi Island? That is a recognizable brand you stupid morons!

Rock-Candy Mines was Boo’s Valley in Mario Golf 64. You tell me if the theming makes any more sense. On one hand, you have a golf course in an area named after a ghost (?) that apparently owns a valley (???). And on the other, you have a golf course in a mine (?) full of rock-candy (???) that doesn’t actually go underground (???). Roy Koopa owns the Rock-Candy Mines and must be the one to blame for this weird venture. It doesn’t look like it cost much to terraform, just to plant the grass. Probably the cheapest 18 hole golf course we’ve seen yet. Only 5-10 million coins.

And, finally, Mario’s Star. Rosalina was so grateful to Mario (and Luigi) for stopping Bowser twice from destroying the universe that she made an 18 hole golf course in space with every hole themed and shaped in the form of him or one of his friends using uninhabited planets. You know, normal gifts from friends who are the literal Queen of the Universe. There is no actual location nor an actual price for something like this. It shouldn’t even be in the “World” Tour since it’s in freaking space!

I know I just said “finally” but there are actually three more golf courses in World Tour. The problem is that they are even more generic than Lakitu Valley or Cheep Cheep Falls. They are called the “Forest Course”, the “Seaside Course”, and the “Mountain Course”. And this generic rot ties into the final game I wanted to discuss, which is Mario Sports Superstars.

See, after the Wii, Nintendo decided that Mario spinoff games needed less interesting things. You might remember an infamous Paper Mario Sticker Star interview where Miyamoto said he hated originality and barred anyone from ever putting a hat on a Koopa again. But that extended past Paper Mario games and into Mario sports spinoffs. Mario Golf: World Tour has some fun theming with Peach’s Gardens for instance, but also has this painfully generic trio of courses that don’t even attempt to fit in with the Mushroom Kingdom. Somehow, by trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, the cookie-cutter theming of “Grass Course” sticks out like a sore ? block.

Mario Sports Superstars is where genericism has fully taken over the Mario spinoff ethos. It has five different sports available to play: Soccer, Baseball, Tennis, Golf, and Horse Racing. I’ve already covered how much fun previous games had building stadiums that tied into the Mushroom Kingdom, like Wario’s Palace, or at least they built stadiums that tried to do something even if their existence in the Mushroom Kingdom is bizarre, like the Underground. But the stadiums in Superstars? Well, let’s just list the names of the soccer stadiums:

Village Stadium

City Stadium

Kingdom Stadium

Grand Stadium

Wow. Don’t you really feel like you’re in the Mushroom Kingdom with a name like “City Stadium”? Let’s check out just how grand Grand Stadium is. Ooh, I bet you can see Peach’s Castle from inside!

Absolutely nothing to make it feel like it is part of the Mushroom Kingdom. This is horrible! Surely, the baseball fields must be better! Here’s a list of them again:

Country Field

Town Park

Big Field

Harbor Park

Okay! We got exactly one stadium that might convincingly be a part of the vibrant world of the Mushroom Kingdom! Show me Harbor Park!

Alright! If you squint, you can see a lighthouse beyond the left field wall! That’s, like, almost making a claim that Harbor Park is somewhere! Maybe it’s at Ricco Harbor! Maybe it’s in Seaside Kingdom! Or maybe, as Mario Wiki says, it is based on Oracle Park from real-life MLB team San Francisco Giants and isn’t part of the Mushroom Kingdom at all. Well, at least it’s more of a place than “Big Field” is.

None of the tennis courts are themed in any remotely interesting way, and the golf courses are extremely genericly themed with “Emerald Woods”, “Gold Links”, and “Crystal Beach” which I’m pretty sure are all retirement homes instead of golf courses. Horse Racing invents its own ranch and 5 themed courses that would fit in literally any other horse racing game that didn’t come from a pre-existing IP with plenty of fun ideas for places for horses to race. Instead of going through “Wild Valley”, “Green Farm”, “Cobalt Lake”, “Yellow Leaves Hill”, or “Sky Peak”, the horses could’ve raced literally any Mario Kart track and had it fit in more than this crap.

I think that’s enough proselytizing in my fun jokey article. Thankfully, after the Wii U and 3DS games were done with, Mario spinoffs have returned to more interesting theming. Mario Tennis Aces has a court in “Mirage Mansion” instead of Luigi’s Mansion for some reason, but at least it’s interesting to know that there’s another haunted mansion out there. I’m still annoyed that Mario Strikers Battle League doesn’t give me any lore about how the stadium works in that game, or where exactly it is in the Mushroom Kingdom, but, again, it is interesting. And that’s all I want.