Mario Party

"does exactly what it says on the box"

That Mario certainly gets around. It must be very tiring re-defining genres, but he's even had time to create a brand new one! Mario party is, to all intents and purposes, an interactive board game. Your task is to travel around a themed board, purchase magic stars from toad, and compete in mini-games.

There is a story of sorts. Mario and friends want to know who's 'the best'. The always level-headed toad suggests that they compete in a board game to see who's the best. Instead of knocking him out and throwing him down a hole, they all react to the idea with enthusiasm, and jump down a pipe to begin. Also each board has some sort of a problem, such as missing rainbows or Yoshi's trapped on an island. These rather pathetic attempts at incentive to do well fortunately appear only at the beginning and end of each game and at the end of some of toad's warblings once you get one of his star's 'Oh dear, the rainbows are gone' etc.

The graphics have the flair and enthusiasm of all Mario Games, with some adorable pre-rendered game boards, like birthday cakes or tropical islands. Everything is fast and fluid and extremely colourful, and while not quite impressive, you'll mostly find that graphics are well above average. My only small complaint is to do with character animation, and only really with one character: Donkey Kong. He looks terrible, he is poorly animated and he moves as if he is a robot, this doesn't mean much, but nonetheless, I don't like it.

I find the sound to be endearing, many of my friends disagree and think it's just rubbish, and to a certain extent, they'd be right. However, even if the music isn't up to the quality of some other games, it all carries a nice kiddish cheesiness which makes the game a lot more enjoyable to play and adds character and charm to everything, which, I can only assume, is what developers hudson were aiming for, so well done them. Another aspect of the sound that many people are divided on are the voices. Personally, I don't think any new Mario Game would be complete without the recogniseable grunts and battle-cries of your favourite mascots. Admittedly, Peach's voice grates on the nerves immediately, making losing to her in a mini-game all the more frustrating, as she shouts 'Yeah! Peachie does it!' in a voice so shrill, that I'm sure there are some broken windows in a recording studio at nintendo. However, this just makes it easier to hate her, which everyone I know does, and in a way, adds some more competitiveness to the events.

Now let me explain the format to you in a little more detail. There are several game boards which you must travel around, the objective is NOT to be the first around (although every time you pass back through the starting square you are given ten coins). In each game there are four players, you can have as little as one player with three computer controlled characters or as many as all four participants can be human-controlled. Order of turns is determined by each player head bashing a spinning dice (technically then, a die) above their head, doing so will stop the spinning and a number from 1 to 10 will appear. The spinning is too fast to know the number you will get, so it is all chance. Number of spaces you advance in a go are decided in the same way. Most of the spaces you encounter on the boards are normal blue ones, these do nothing but raise your coin total by 3. Red spaces do the opposite, robbing you of three coins, and also turning your character box red(All will be explained in a second). Question mark blocks will cause an event on the board, Bowser and toad to switch places for example. Chance time spaces is where anything can happen, and can make the winner and loser switch places in seconds. Bowser squares usually end in tears, they entail either just handing over your precious coins or stars to him, or playing a normal mini-game, the loser of which, must hand over their fortune to Bowser. The only other spaces worth noting are star spaces, here you can buy a star off toad for twenty coins. Whoever has the most stars at the end of the game is the winner, if a draw should occur, then total number of coins decides it. Once all four players have rolled their dice, then a mini-game will be played. If all four characters landed on blue spaces then a normal four player mini-game will be played, the same will happen if all players landed on red squares. If one player has a landed on a different colour space than the other three, then there will be a 3 against one mini-game, and if two landed on blue, and two on red, then there will be a 2 against two mini-game.

So now you've been informed on the format by that extremely long paragraph, how does it all play? the answer is tedious and fairly un-involving in single player, and absolutely BRILLIANTLY in multiplayer. There are plenty of different modes to play aside from the main board format. If you and your friends are looking for a more mini-game focused experience, then there is a mini-game stadium on hand for some fast paced playing and lots of mini-games. A more sensible choice for one player, is the mini-game island, which is a super-mario-world style map with each space being a mini-game that you must complete to get past. You can also buy mini-games you have played and play any of them in any order you like, with or without friends. Also, if you collect enough stars, there's a secret to find, but I won't spoil. There are certain things which shouldn't have been left in the game at all. Most noticably, the one player minigames. They aren't that fun to play and are astoundingly tedious to watch other players play. Luckily though, there's far too many great aspects of this game for the bad points to even get a look in. Just about all of the mini-games are great fun and endlessly replayable. I can think of a couple of exceptions such as the monotonous fishing game, but otherwise, you'll have no problem playing through mini-games you've previously faced again. Control is a slight issue here, if you're not very good at track and field style button bashing, then consider yourself in fourth place. The most annoying part of the whole game for me though, is the spinning the analogue stick games. The tug of war, the cycle-powered light-bulb game, reeling in in the fishing game, what do all of these have in common? Unfortunately it's that they all cause considerable pain if you even want to think about avoiding last place, just about all of these games have actually caused huge chunks of my skin (sorry about the detail) to be worn away and ripped from the palm of my hand. I heard nintendo kept these sort of games out of the sequels after some sort of lawsuit, which is good, but the fact is they're still here, so prepare to dread them.

This game will probably last as long as you have your nintendo 64, as the replay value is endless. Games such as hot Bob-omb which is nintendo's equivalent of hot potato, and simple reaction tests such as mushroom mix-up and shy-guy says are a pure joy to play again and again, and even ridiculously simple games like bumper balls and slot-car derby are absolutely fantastic fun, enhanced no end with friends. Some kind of a story mode or something else to keep single-players more interested would have been good, but it serves it purpose as a multiplayer game faultlessly, or at least near faultlessly.

whether you liked his platform games or not, Mario party is a game you simply must not miss. It is up there with goldeneye and Mario Kart as a classic multiplayer (although it unfortunately isn't as easy to jump into) and the sheer range and number of mini-games (50!) means you will never tire of it. Like past Mario games, this has spawned a number of mascot-led clones, none of which have managed to beat the playability and addictiveness of this typically solid Mario fun-fest.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/01, Updated 06/16/01