Mario Party

Out of sheer, brain-numbing boredom, I recently decided to read through my back issues of Game Informer and discovered that they seem to have a sort of virulent hate for the Mario Party series; in fact, their 200th issue had a small column on all the bad stuff they've said about it in their reviews. In my experience, the series is good for some laughs and some rage, nothing spectacular, but certainly not terrible... though I admit that I haven't played any since the fourth or fifth. Does Mario Party have an extensive hatedom, or is that limited to Game Informer?

Laconic: how do you feel about MP?

I loved MP as a kid, but tbh I can't see myself being interested anymore. I think that if it does have a large hatedom, it's because all eight (soon to be nine!) games are, gameplay-wise, almost exactly the same and they used to make at least one every year, resulting in oversaturation. I suppose you could say it was the Guitar Hero of its day.

General consensus is that the recent ones have been pretty underwhelming, except for the DS one. The whole series can also be a case of Your Milage May Vary.

I myself have only played MP 1, 2, 3, 5, and DS.

Liked the first 3 and the DS one, and the Super Duel Mode in the 5th.

That being said, I'm actually hyped for Mario Party 9. It looks better than 6, 7, and 8 for sure.

edited 7th Jul '11 2:29:52 PM by Folt

I understand that in the early years. Mario Party was reviled for being casual and kiddy. We are not talking about the usual complaints against nintendo we are talking about hatred on levels of common gamers against zynga.

Also random chance which outside of an rpg is a crime against all gamers...

edited 7th Jul '11 2:30:35 PM by stevebat

I've only played the first five (and only played the fifth for about an hour or two, I think). Here's my opinion...

• Mario Party - decent. Fun for a stretch. A clever concept, all told.
• Mario Party 2 - a genuinely good game. I might still enjoy playing it. The costumes were cute.
• Mario Party 3 - obvious cash grab. Looks and plays cheap. The changes to the formula were crap.
• Mario Party 4 - decent. Better than 1, not as good as 2. Fun enough.
• Mario Party 5 - weird.

I'm thinking it's time to give the next one a go, though, maybe rent 8 or something...

Way more fun with friends.

What? There's a hatedom for this game? I loved this game as a kid, and it's probably one of the few games my family has that we could all play. Wii Party on the other hand....

I hope Mario Party 9 has something like the Minigame Island or the Minigame Coaster again...

It's one of those games where it's only really fun when played with others. Online Multiplayer would really do the series a good service...

I played 5, 6 7 and a bit of 8 when I was younger because my mother and sister really liked the games for some reasons and they'd ask me to play with them. The series is ok, though playing with the CPU is predictably awful since the computer is both a cheater and a retard.

my thoughts on the invidual games:

5: The minigames were mostly average or mediocre with a few outstanding ones. I remember there being way too much duels for whatever reasons. very average.

6: My favorite at the time. I remember it having the best boards and the most consistently good minigames. The Mic is a weak gimmick but nothing offensive.

7: Boards were too gimmicky. Minigames were decent. Better than 5 but far behind 6.

8: We rented this once and I played for like 15 minutes. Mostly I remember the motion controls being terrihorribad.

edited 7th Jul '11 3:29:29 PM by Glowsquid

I think some of them aren't all that great, but never terrible. My favorites are 4 and 6 (that's the one w/ the Night and Day gimmick, yeah?), but my all time favorite is 2 (Light Out ftw).

Because the main game is a standard, the real way the series shines is in the minigames, which can range from great to meh depending on the game, and fun to play breaks from the standard board game theme, which are usually not that great (except for when they are).

A combination of neither being all that good is why 8 is my least favorite of the series.

But a Hatedom? Well, I know the series gets a lot of hatred from "hardcore" gamers, possibly moreso than any other game, but I haven't seen much outside of that.

I'm sure there is a massive hatedom of Mario Party 1 made entirely of destroyed palms.

For me, I preferred 1, and 2(being a nice upgrade with more), 3, not so much 4, and 5. The rest... kind of went downhill, imo.(discounting DS, haven't played it yet) 4 overused Button Mashing. 6 was kind of boring, especially since "story mode" was completely different. You could unlock everything by watching the computers play outside of a select few minigames. 7 and 8's new style of boards didn't interest me. It's a cool concept of having variation, but I don't think it was broken as is.

Advance suffered from being somewhat more difficult than it should be.

I share the opinion of "There's a hatedom for this game?" Played 2 and 5 only, own 5. It was probably one of two or three games I could get my sisters to play with me before I grabbed the 360.

The others being Melee and 007: Nightfire, funnily enough.

I'll agree with you on that one, it's the reason there are no rotating-control-stick-as-fast-as-possible in the later ones. I still wish they could put it up on Virtual Console, just with those games' controls changed into something more comfortable.

I'm under the impression that anyone who hates Mario Party must have never played it with other people, or is too competitive to just enjoy the freakin' game.

A friend pulled his copy of 6 out at a party a few weeks ago, and got an entire room of college kids laughing and screaming all night. It was a riot.

I mostly played the game by myself. I had fun though. And yeah, it promotes Multiplayer, after all. That, and the single player modes are actually fairly decent overall.(the first Five were pretty good, although it seemed to go downhill afterwards)

MINIGAME ISLAND! I MISS YOU!!!

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!

I never understood why people are always hating on sequels SOLELY BECAUSE they are sequels...

It would be a fair point if the actual quality decline, and, witha few exceptions, its not the case IMO: (I have played every single one of them, with the exceptions of 8 because no wii :D)

Mario Party:

1: Were it a all started. Fun game, not of the best but it was fun at the time. It just didnt aged very well IMO.

2: I am not quite sure why this one seems to be the most loved one overall. Some of the boards were a bit stupid (I have to make especial comments on some of the "?" Signs. What? I have to go to the VERY beggining of the board AGAIN? Oh, and its perfectly possible to fall in the same signs every single time, too. Or in that space map, when the counter hits 0, I lose ALL coins suddenly? Isnt that just A BIT of an overkill? I mean, I would be ok with half the coins, but ALL? Really, Nintendo? Fail design is fail. And thats just a few examples, but I remember those two begin the worst ones. Not that much of a deal but Nobody in my family wanted to play those two maps, and thus we were playing the same 3 maps all over again, it gets old). It gets a big plus for the minigames thougt, They were pretty damm good, maybe even some of the best collecitons of minigames overall in the entire Mario Party series, and thats saying something. Shame the boards killed this one for me :(

3:The best Mario Party so far, only begin closelly followed by 6-7. Its the one I have dedicated more time, by far. Its just awesome. Boards were cool, minigames were cool, all had variety, it also featured Battles (Althougt I belive than 2 also did but we just didnt paid much attention to it), and Duels. As a litte plus the single player was cool, too (Nothing spectacular, but conderating it IS a mario party game after all... yeah). And the Duel Mode... Yeah, This is one of the best IMO.

4:This one... it was... umg, somewhat dull. I dont know why, minigames were a bit dull (Whats with all the button smashing man? Also, there seems to be litte to no interaction between the players themselves. You know, like a duel game were you can punch and kick the others? none of that on this one) As the maps were also a bit dull, for example, on the Toad map, there was that carussell-like thingy than made you move to whatever path it was pointing. Meaning, with a bad luck streak you can be in a 15 spaces box FOR THE WHOLE GAME (it happended to me and the people who I played with too). Not fun at all (Of course that just one simple explample, but you got it right, it was just dull).

5: This one... It had its charm, but it was still slow paced and also a bit dull, althougt much less than 4. Not sure how to explain it, but I kind of had a sort of Hate-Love relationship with this one. Althougt a few minigames were a bit dull, the boards were-for the most part- actually pretty decent. And the Donkey Kong addition was... okey I guess? (Althougt not so much for the guy who played as him... lol).

6:Oh yeah, this is were we got a bit upwards, at least. Great minigames, more varied, the boards were also quite good (Althougt I didnt liked how some of them had "special modes" like thos with the chain chomps than steal stars or something. Give me a classic Mario Party board ok?) Still, it was pretty good...

7: Pretty much the same as 6, witch is completly good. Also added the bowser time events than were cool, as well as duel spaces... yep.

Also, as a sidenote, Chance time no longer exists in 7. THANKS GOD. EVERYONE WHO WE EVER PLAYED WITH HATED THAT SPACE WITH A PASSION.

It was SO FUCKED UP. I mean, yeah, I admit, it was exciting at times, but something it would be cheap as hell, even for the standars of this game. I could understand giving 1-2 stars MAYBE (and 2 stars is already an overkill IMO, but if it happended really rarely then I guess it could pass)., but ALL STARS? ALL COINS? OR EVEN BETTER, SWITCH EVERY SINGLE COIN AND STAR WITH SOMEONE ELSE?????..............REALLY, NINTENDO, REALLY??????????!!!!!!!...

But yeah, those litte chance timers added to the game after all. Lol. Sure enough, with the Duel space you can also lose 1-2 stars too, but at least YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIGHT BACK (unless it is a luck-based duel minigame... but I dont recall there begin any on duels anyway, and even then, I dont belive they happended that often). So yeah.

Wall of text end. Um, also, as a sidenote, anybody does know if Chance Time is returning for 9? XD (And while we are at it, 9 is for the wii or for wii 2?)

edited 7th Jul '11 6:30:13 PM by NONAMEGIVEN

There is a ! space on the board we saw, so Chance Time might be back. However, that board is possibly in a different mode than the usual boards as it plays very different than what we're familiar with in a Mario Party. There is no Star Space from what I've seen in it and it seems to be more of a reaching a the end of the board (possibly with as many of those silvery stars that a player gets if they drive over them). The players taking turns hitting dice to simultaneously drive a car only strengthens my assumptions in this regard.

On that note: Platform Peril-like minigame is win!

edited 8th Jul '11 8:54:43 PM by Folt

I think 9's for the regular Wii and not the Wii U.

Basically, 8 was about the same as 7, except all the controls were done with the Wii Remote itself.

Um...

Chance Time is back. Fuck. Althougt I DID love the tension it gives.

edited 7th Jul '11 8:13:10 PM by NONAMEGIVEN

I miss donkey kong as a playable character...

I'm definitely a big fan of the Mario Party series, but my opinion on the board games themselves aren't much to speak of; I mainly play for the minigames. And for the most part, all the MP games have been good at having good minigames. (Doesn't mean the games also have several bad minigames, but...)

^^ As do I. At least he's still in the series, though.