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Just another day living ten coins at a time.
"Smash Bros. is how you build friendships. Mario Party is how you destroy them. Ironic, isn't it?"
Random commenter on an unrelated page, whose comparison sums up the series.

Mario Party is Nintendo's long-running series of multiplayer games for the Nintendo 64, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Wii, DS, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch. It started off developed by Hudson Soft and CAProduction, though Hudson's acquisition by Konami led to 9 and later games being developed by NDcubenote , developers of Wii Party. The series also created arcade adaptations, which are developed by Capcom.

The series combines a digital board game with various competitive mini-games. Besides Mario, Luigi, and their friends, some of the enemies from Super Mario Bros. are playable characters in the Mario Party series. About a dozen Mario Party games have been released so far: eleven on home consoles, one on the Game Boy Advance, one for the e-Reader (actually a non-collectible card game with included minigames), one on the Nintendo DS, two in arcades, and three on the Nintendo 3DS. The basic format of the game has mostly remained the same: Four players (computers filling in if there aren't enough human players) take turns rolling dice to move across one of several themed boards, with the ultimate goal of obtaining Stars, which are classically obtained by a player who reaches a Star Space and buys a star for 20 Coins, after which the Star Space is (usually, but not always) moved to a random location on the board.

After all players have had their turn, a mini-game begins. The players are placed on Blue or Red teams based on what spaces they had landed on (Green players are randomly marked Blue or Red) and a roulette begins to pick a game. The winner(s) of these games are typically awarded with 10 coins (in the first Mario Party, the loser(s) may lose coins), although there are special games where the goal is to collect coins, in which case everyone gets to take however many coins they collected in the game with them.

Mario Party 9 changed the board game concept to have one vehicle that all the players take turns captaining. Mini-games only start when a mini-game space is landed on (and sometimes at random on blue spaces). Coins are gone, and stars are replaced with mini-stars, which are collected several at a time both on the board and in mini-games.

Mario Party 10 retains 9's changes, but its star is Bowser, who is playable for the first time (not counting a bonus game in 4 and Super Duel Mode from 5). Whoever plays as him can ruin the other players' days. The game is confirmed to have amiibo functionality: The game is compatible with Super Smash Bros. figures, but there is also a new set of figures dedicated to Mario Party 10. This set includes Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, and Toad. Mario Party 10 is compatible with 9 figures in total: The first six, plus Rosalina, Donkey Kong, and Wario.

The games are infamous for their high propensity for screwing your opponents over — random chance and luck are large components in these games, and it's not uncommon to see people lose their shot at winning and sink to the bottom of the leaderboard, and for those who have had terrible luck all game to suddenly be in the lead. Despite this, skill in the mini-games and careful planning are also equally rewarding and useful, and a smart player can easily maneuver themselves into a good spot. It's also known for its AI-controlled opponents, which can be equal parts ludicrously stupid and deviously intelligent, capable of feats of incredible planning and execution followed by stupidity in the minigames after their turn.

Starting from Mario Party 3, several games have included some form of Single-Player or Story campaign, which typically involves playing against computers on the game boards, but the mechanics may be slightly different.note  The mode has since been absent after its presence in Island Tour (as Bowser's Tower), and has yet to return to the series.

    Games in this series 
Each entry typically has a unifying theme that dictates the aesthetics and occasionally gameplay, along with a character or group of characters serving as the host.

  • Mario Party (Nintendo 64, 1998note ): The first game in the series has boards corresponding to the six main characters and Bowser (plus one bonus board), but no unifying theme otherwise. Toad serves as the host.
  • Mario Party 2 (Nintendo 64, 1999note ; Wii Virtual Console, 2010): The theme is "costumes" and "theme parks", as every level sees you dress up in a new outfit and take part in a sort of play. Toad once again serves as the host.
  • Mario Party 3 (Nintendo 64, 2000note ): This game's theme is "storybooks", and the game has a kind of pop-up book aesthetic to it. Hosting duties are shared between two new characters: The Millennium Star, a star that only shines once a millennium, and Tumble, a magical die that was brought to life by the Millennium Star.
  • Mario Party 4 (GameCube, 2002): This game's theme is "parties and celebrations", and has unique "hosts" for each board, like a Toad or a Goomba. It also introduces the option to play party boards in a 2vs2 fashion.
  • Mario Party-e (Game Boy Advance e-Reader, 2003): A physical card game in which the goal is to collect the Superstar's Hat, Clothes, and Shoes and then play the Superstar card to win. Other types of cards can be used to benefit the player or hinder opponents. Some cards include minigames played with the e-Reader, which can either allow the player to use the card for free (rather than needing Coin cards), provide a roulette result, or enable a duel between two players. Card art for the game is based on Mario Party 4.
  • Mario Party 5 (GameCube, 2003): The theme this time is "dreams", and each level takes place in a themed dream, like a pirate cove or a toy-themed area. The game is hosted by the Star Spirits from Paper Mario, marking one of the few times a character from that series has appeared outside of it.
  • "Super Mario Rolling Mystery Party" (Arcade, 2004, Japan Only): The first of several arcade installments for the series, developed by Capcom and released exclusively in Japan. This installment shares many similarities to 5. Up to 6 players can participate in the game.
  • Mario Party 6 (GameCube, 2004): This game's theme is "day and night" and features boards that alternate between day and night, dynamically changing the way you move about them. The game is hosted by Brighton and Twila, the embodiment of the sun and moon, respectively.
  • "Super Mario Rolling Mystery Party 2" (Arcade, 2005, Japan Only): The second arcade installment. Like its predecessor, this game also shares similarities with 5, but with a key difference being support of up to 6 players.
  • Mario Party Advance (Game Boy Advance, 2005): This game focuses more on single-player, though there are multiplayer modes as well. Its story mode features one big main board that the player can explore to complete quests. The game also features small interactive toys called "Gaddgets", similar to the souvenirs from the WarioWare series. Tumble returns as the host for this game.
  • Mario Party 7 (GameCube, 2005): This game is centered around an international world tour, where the boards are The Theme Park Version of real countries like the USA, Egypt, and China. Toadsworth serves as the host. This game is also exclusively compatible with 8 players, both in Party mode and Minigame mode.
  • Mario Party 8 (Wii, 2007): This game has a "carnival" theme, and is the first to incorporate motion controls into its gameplay. The game is hosted by MC Ballyhoo, a big-mouthed circus ringleader with a talking hat.
  • Mario Party DS (Nintendo DS, 2007): This game's theme is "Incredible Shrinking Man", incorporating boards and minigames being made out of normal objects. Like Mario Party 4, each board has its own host. There's also a narrator for general purposes who never appears in person.
  • "Mario Party: Spinning Carnival" (Arcade, 2009, Japan Only): The third arcade installment. This one takes influence from 8, with slightly redesigned minigames.
  • "Mario Party Mysterious Rolling Catcher" (Arcade, 2009, Japan Only): The fourth arcade installment, also taking heavy influence from 8.
  • Mario Party 9 (Wii, 2012): This game introduces the "car" mechanic, having all players move together on the board rather than separately. The game is hosted by Blue Toad and Yellow Toad.
  • Mario Party: Island Tour (Nintendo 3DS, 2013): Exactly What It Says on the Tin, this game takes place on the floating islands known as the Party Islands, with various play modes. Instead of trying to collect Stars, the boards are focused on racing to the end of a one-way track. Blue Toad and Yellow Toad once again host.
  • Mario Party 10 (Wii U, 2015): The first game with Bowser as a playable character in his own Asymmetric Multiplayer mode where the other players have to survive against him, and the second to have more than 4 players playing at once. Once again, various Toads serve as the hosts (except for Bowser Party, where they share the role of host with Bowser Jr.).
  • Mario Party: Star Rush (Nintendo 3DS, 2016): Places the spotlight on the Toads, with each player moving simultaneously and less emphasis on minigames and the other characters. The gameplay is vaguely similar to that of the Hudson Soft-produced titles, with the main focus being collecting the most Stars and Coins while recruiting "allies" on the boards, albeit on a much smaller scale. Yet again, the hosts are Toads.
  • "Mario Party Mysterious Challenge World" (Arcade, 2016, Japan Only): The fifth arcade installment, being largely based on 9 in terms of visuals and gameplay.
  • Mario Party: The Top 100 (Nintendo 3DS, 2017): A Megamix Game compiling the 100 best minigames from the 10 home console Mario Party games. Toad and Toadette host, but non-Toad hosts and other characters from the previous console games make cameos in the Chronicle section.
  • Super Mario Party (Nintendo Switch, 2018): A complete reboot of the series. Returns to the board game mechanic prior to Mario Party 9 mixing with a few elements from later games (such as the "ally" recruiting mechanic from Mario Party: Star Rush). It also features a Co-Op Multiplayer mode in which you can recruit up to 3 of your friends for a river expedition under a time limit which can be extended by popping balloons for playing specialized minigames, and another which takes emphasis on "dual screen" gameplay across two Nintendo Switch systems: River Survival and Toad's Rec Room, respectively. Toad and Toadette return as hosts, while Kamek also serves as a host when characters land on a bad luck space.
  • Mario Party Superstars (Nintendo Switch, 2021): Another Megamix Game. Like The Top 100, it includes 100 minigames from across the series, but it also includes a selection of boards from the Nintendo 64 games. Toad and Toadette return as hosts once more.
    • Tetris 99 featured a theme based on this game for the 27th Maximus Cup.


This series provides examples of:

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    Tropes A-M 
  • Abandon Ship: In 2, a minigame of the same name has players climbing the masts of a sinking ship.
  • Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: The female announcer in the N64 games is prone to this. "New Re-CORD!" "GOT It-EM!"
  • Adapted Out:
    • The Koopa Kids were present in Mario Party 4's "The Final Battle", but when the minigame was remastered for The Top 100, they're nowhere to be found, with Bowser Jr. taking their place. Likewise, in Mario Party Superstars, Bowser Jr. replaces Koopa Kid in the remastered version of the "Archer-ival" and "Quicksand Cache" minigames from Mario Party 2, as well as all of the Item Mini-Games.
    • In Mario Party Superstars, the unique Toads seen in Mushroom Village (now called Village Square) were replaced by Toadette, a Yellow Toad, a Shy Guy, and Kamek.
  • Advancing Wall of Doom:
    • Running of the Bulb from 1 has the players collaborate to get a lightbulb to the end of the level without Boo catching up to all four of them.
    • Cheep Cheep Chase from 3 has four players compete to outswim a giant Cheep Cheep.
    • Granite Getaway from 6 has all four players running away from a giant boulder.
    • Funstacle Course from 7 has all four players try to reach the end of the course while being pursued by the Koopa Kids in a flamethrower vehicle.
    • In 10's Bowser Party mode, the player controlling Bowser pursues the car the four other players are riding in, and if Bowser catches up to them, he forces them to play a Bowser mini-game that can damage and knock them out of the game.
  • Advertised Extra: Donkey Kong still appears on the boxarts for 5, 6, and 8 despite not being playable in those games.
  • A Lizard Named "Liz": Shroomlock the Toad detective from Advance.
  • All for Nothing: Subverted in Mario Party 3. After the player character finishes all of the Millenium Star's challenges and beats him in a fight, they beg the Millennium Star to make them the greatest superstar in the universe as promised, only for him to confess he's a fraud and fly away, and the character completely sulks dumbfoundedly, thinking the whole journey was a wasted effort. Then the real Millennium Star appears and reveals that it was watching the player the whole time, returns everything to normal, and promises them they are the greatest superstar in the universe.
  • The All-Seeing A.I.:
    • Torpedo Targets in 2 has you looking for targets and shooting them. The computer always knows where they are, even though there is no map or radar to help the player.
    • For Ground Pound in 1, the AI always gets one wrong for every one that it gets right (but usually still win anyway). However, at the beginning of the game, you can see and memorize which posts are right and wrong before the butterflies land on them.
  • Always Night: Boo's Haunted Bash from 4, King Boo's Haunted Hideaway from 8, Boo's Horror Castle from 9, Kamek's Carpet Ride from Island Tour, and Haunted Trail from 10 all take place at nighttime due to being horror-themed boards. Subverted in Horror Land from 2 and Superstars and all of the boards from 6, where it's night only half of the time.
  • Always Over the Shoulder: Most of the split-screen tank games in the series, such as Shell Shocked/Tread Carefully in 2/Superstars and Mario Mechs in 5, take place from a third-person perspective with the camera being glued to the player's back.
  • Amusement Park:
    • Bowser Land in 2 is of the Amusement Park of Doom variety, with board elements being themed after various rides and a "Bowser Parade" traveling across the path every few turns. Bowser's Enchanted Inferno in 7 reuses this aesthetic, but sets it inside of a volcano with less rides to be found.
    • Toad's Midway Madness in 4 is a more traditional amusement park, with coasters to ride across the board and teacup rides that deposit players at alternating junctions.
    • The framing device of 8 is the Star Carnival hosted by MC Ballyhoo and Big Top, though this isn't very present on the boards themselves as they each have their own unique theme.
    • Mushroom Park from 10 is similar to Toad's Midway Madness in that it is set in a more conventional amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, and various other typical carnival rides.
  • Amusing Injuries: The playable cast go through impressive amounts of these every game, usually because of negative board events or minigame losses.
  • Anthropomorphic Typography: Toadette's Music Room in DS gives the role of selling stars to musical notes. Each note uses words that start with letters that correspond to it when speaking and gives a different price.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Generally speaking, if the players are on the final turn of a game board, item shops and set pieces that need coin investments will be automatically skipped, because there would be no advantage in buying an item or plunking down coins for something that a player couldn't use.
    • Starting with 2, players can practice any minigame, which allows them to play it with nothing at risk before playing it for real. It's a very useful way to get a sense for how a mini-game works. Starting with Super, players can practice the minigames on the instructions screen as well.
    • If a player has to keep retrying a minigame in The Top 100's Minigame Island, the game will reduce the difficulty of the CPU opponents. It's very useful if you can't mash or rotate hard enough in certain minigames the first time around.
    • King of the River from 7 allows the player to move onto the next minigame if they happen to fail one, fixing a problem that plagued Minigame Island and Minigame Coaster from 1 and 2, respectively.
    • In Super Mario Party, where a player lands after their dice roll, what a space does, and how far they are from the star are immediately apparent at all times. Additionally, players can practice minigames on the minigame screen without having to go to a separate screen, and the minigame won't start until all players are ready.
    • Failing a minigame enough times in Super Mario Party's Challenge Road will result in a Toady giving you the option to skip it and move on to the next.
    • In Super Mario Party, whenever there is a minigame that hasn't been unlocked yet and it's deciding between that and other already-unlocked minigames, the game will always pick the minigame(s) that hasn't been unlocked yet, ensuring the player will at least unlock one new minigame during each playthrough.
    • The Top 100 and Superstars add colorblind-assisting symbols and patterns to many remade minigames, such as the platforms in Hexagon Heat/Mushroom Mix-Up and the blocks in all the puzzle games.
    • The "Roll Call" game from 2 changes its rules slightly in remakes to allow for a more successful win; instead of having to guess the exact count to win the game (no one guessing correctly will result in a draw), the players now have to guess close to the correct count to win, even going a little over.
  • Apologetic Attacker: In Super Mario Party, many NPCs that penalize the player will be significantly less jerkish and more apologetic if that player happens to be Bowser or Bowser Jr.. Kamek in particular will shake like a leaf and beg for forgiveness if either of them land on a Bad Luck Space.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From the first installment:
    Koopa: This Star was broken up by Bowser, and he even wrote graffiti all over it! This cannot be permitted!
  • Art Evolution: The first three games had simple, flat boards with pre-rendered 3D models at most. The fourth game had a 3D background, but all the paths took place on the same four-direction metal walkway. Starting with the fifth game, the paths are incorporated into the boards themselves. 4 was also the first game in the franchise to show most of the characters with their current designs (although most of the generic enemies would retain their N64 designs until 7).
  • Artificial Brilliance: There are times where the AI can actually show brilliance in Mario Party:
    • In 2 and 3, if the star is behind a locked gate, the AI knows to buy a skeleton key from a shop and use it on the gate to get to the star. Also, if a star can be reached by going backwards through a fork in the path, especially if this allows you to avoid otherwise using a skeleton key, the AI may even buy a Reverse Mushroom (exclusive to 3) and use it to actually go backwards after they pass the fork if they're close enough.
    • The AI will buy Mushrooms/Golden Mushrooms or Magic Lamps in 2 and 3 (or their equivalents in later games) if they can afford them, to help them get around and to instantly warp to the star next turn respectively. They may also buy Plunder Chests and their equivalents to steal items from other players, and in 2 you can even use the snatched items on the same turn, which they do.
    • Bowser encounters can go from penalties to Comeback Mechanic if you encounter them while you're in last place. The AI understands this, even going so far as using Bowser Phones from 3 or the coveted Slow Dice Block from 9 to make it happen for themselves.
    • Generally in Mario Party, the AI will take the correct way to get to the star, and they are quite good at most of the mini-games, even the puzzle-based ones, at least on harder settings (other than the ones that just involve button mashing, which they are always notoriously good at).
    • Super Mario Party's River Survival mode is a four-player co-op game — a timed trip down a river, with minigame scores adding to your time. Although the AI's skill at maneuvering is questionablenote , they will always perform the cooperative minigames with perfect synergy, allowing the time bonus to be made or broken by the player's own skill and not a faulty AI.
  • Artificial Stupidity:
    • With easy computer difficulty, some mini-games can be won with no controller input. Demonstrating this are a series of YouTube videos where "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing", which became a minor meme involving other games.
    • In the minigame "Ground Pound" in the first game, the computer always ground pounds an incorrect pole after each one they get correct, no matter what difficulty they are set on. To make matters worse, they will rarely fail this minigame, meaning the entire point of them always hitting an incorrect pole is to waste more of your time watching them than you need to.
    • In 3, computers will always use a Wacky Watch on the last turn if they have one (which always changes the turns remaining to 5 turns left), even if they are winning, as if they're deliberately giving you another chance.
    • Also in 3, the AI has a peculiar tendency to waste Cellular Shoppers, calling a shop only to immediately "leave" without as much as looking at their wares, even on higher difficulties. This is particularly bizarre when playing against a computer-controlled Daisy, who is programmed to be more likely to buy a Cellular Shopper from a physical Item Shop, only to waste it the next turn.
    • Bowser's Enchanted Inferno in 7 only has one predictable Bowser Time event wherein Bowser will sink the island that has the star on it for five turns, and anyone who happens to be on the island during that time will get sent back to start and lose half of their coins. Any sane human player would immediately try to either avoid or bail out of the starbound island as much as they can when the Bowser Time turn approaches (unless they could easily get the Star on their next turn), but the AI players don't seem to take the hint. They'll still pursue the star with reckless abandon and get punished hard when the island sinks, setting them back a lot. It's not uncommon for human players to curb-stomp the AI players on this board easily for this reason, regardless of difficulty settings.
    • In DS:
      • On the Bowser's Pinball Machine board, there is a Star Zone that you occasionally end up in (rather than the Bowser Zone) where you hit a block and end up getting 1-3 more stars. However, if the AI has a Star Pipe and they get lucky enough to get sent to the Star Zone before using it, they may still use their Star Pipe to get to the regular star on the map, even though they could have just waited another turn and gotten 1-3 more stars by simply staying there.
      • Hexes in that game are traps that can be set on spaces that activate when someone lands on them (like Orbs in 6). These are given out for free for passing a Hex Space. The AI will never turn down a Hex, even if they have to drop an item they paid for to do so. And Hexes are apparently much higher on the AI's priority for item stealing than even items like Triple Dice and Star Pipes.
    • In later games that let you buy multiple items at once, it's perfectly common for the AI to buy more items than it has turns left to use them in.
    • The Story Mode versions of Pagoda Peak in 7 and Goomba's Booty Boardwalk in 8 require you to get to the end of the board first with a certain number of coins. The AI tends to ignore that second part and waste coins buying items that let them reach the end first.
    • Mario Party's AI has even evolved into an online spectator sport where viewers watch a match between 4 bottom-level AIs as they hopelessly stumble around in minigames, unintentionally screw themselves out of stars, and suddenly propel themselves into 1st place against all odds during Chance Time.
    • Even high-level A.I.s can do this on a few occasions, such as in Mario Party 3 where they might use a Lucky Lamp to move the star space elsewhere when they're right in front of it.
    • Yoshi and Birdo's AI in 7 do not use their special orb, the Egg Orb, at all, even when presented the opportunity to scoop up some orb traps for their taking. As such, the AI hoards Egg Orbs as dead weight, leading to a likely scenario that they'll eventually end up with three Egg Orbs in possession that will cripple their run. Given that the AI's programming prioritizes picking up Egg Orbs above all else, they will not discard any of them until their inventory is too full and they pick up a different orb, or if Koopa Kid shuffles everyone's orbs to make room for others.
    • In Superstars, the AI will make baffling decisions even on Master difficulty. While they may dominate in minigames; on the boards themselves, you'll have characters use the Chain Chomp Call to move Stars even while they're close to them, repeatedly pass up the opportunity to steal Stars from rivals when they have more than enough coins to do so, occasionally not choose the path to a Star despite having a high enough number to reach it (apparently prioritising buying things from a shop) and most bizarrely, use a Custom Dice Block to roll a specific number only to stop right in front of a Star or roll a number that makes them land on a Red Space or even a Bowser Space. A Custom Dice Block lets you choose a number so the AI is doing this deliberately.
  • Artistic License – Physics:
    • In Lava Tile Isle from 2, there is no way the platforms would have enough traction to stop on like normal, yet still slide out from underneath you while moving.
    • In Tick Tock Hop from 3 and Superstars, jumping off a rotating clock hand would send you flying outwards in real life, as once you go airborne, you travel according to your linear speed, not your rotational speed. That being said, realistic physics would obviously make the minigame unplayable.
  • Art Shift: The third game uses more flat, 2D imagery, since it takes place inside a toy box. The fourth game onwards switches entirely to 3D.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Over the course of the series, Koopa Troopa, Boo, Toad, Dry Bones, Hammer Bro, Blooper, Shy Guy and Magikoopa/Kamek have all gone from helpers or obstacles and hosting the game to being playable characters.
    • Bowser himself was briefly playable in 4, but only for the volleyball mini-game. He would later become the main star of 10, with his own mode, before joining the playable Mario Party cast proper in Super.
    • Bowser Jr. was originally an NPC in DS and a mid-boss in 9 before becoming playable in Island Tour and Super.
    • Spike went from being a boss in 9 to being a playable character in 10.
    • Rosalina went from making a small cameo in Island Tour to becoming playable in all games from 10 onwards.
    • Diddy Kong was one of the board hosts in DS, then a "mid-boss" in 9, and eventually a playable character in Star Rush and Super.
    • After 20 years of being an extra in minigames, Goomba finally became playable in Super.
    • After being non-playable characters in the Story Mode of 3, Daisy and Waluigi are fully playable in all modes in 4 onwards.
  • Ash Face: In Mario Party 4, whenever the loser of a Bowser minigame is decided, they get a roasting from Bowser, which chars their entire body except for their eyes black. The unfortunate victim then turns toward the camera and blinks twice.
  • Aside Glance:
    • In the original Mario Party, when getting a completely pointless Ztar that costs 40 coins from Bowser in Mario's Rainbow Castle, getting a free coin from Bowser's machine in Luigi's Engine Room (at the cost of 20 coins, equaling a net loss of 19 coins), having a Goomba plant a Piranha Plant trap for you on Peach's Birthday Cake, or getting some free coins from Bowser if you run into him without any coins or stars, the character turns around and, despite the graphics in those days, you can clearly see his/her expression of "What?".
    • Also happens in 3's Story Mode, if you're not playing as Luigi. After each Battle Royale board, the Millennium Star is about to give you a Star Stamp when a character will interrupt and say they deserve the stamp more than you because they suit that stamp's quality better (for example, Mario wants the Courage stamp). If you're playing as that character, Luigi will appear instead, claiming he deserves the stamp. Then your character turns and gives the camera a confused look.
    • In 4, the loser of a Bowser minigame faces the camera and blinks after being roasted by Bowser's flames.
  • Asymmetric Multiplayer:
    • Some mini-games pit one player versus the other three. The lone player is often given some advantage to compensate for their lack of teammates.
    • "Bowser Party" mode in Mario Party 10 is a 1 vs. 4 mode where one player controls Bowser as he chases down the other 4. Bowser gets to roll 3-5 dice each turn and forces the normal players into a potentially lethal mini-game whenever he catches up to them.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Big Boo in Horror Land from 2 (replaced by King Boo in Superstars) can steal Stars from everyone, at the cost of a whopping 150 coins. The high cost alone makes it difficult to use this, but in order to even meet Big Boo, you must have a Skeleton Key and it must be nighttime. With those three conditions, odds are you won't be able to make much use of this. Big Boo's other appearance in Boo's Haunted Bash from 4 is even more restrictive: he arrives for whichever player lands on Happening Spaces for the third time, but there are only two Happening Spaces on the board, both tucked away in one corner that can only be reached if the Red Boo bridges are active.
    • The Miracle Capsule in 5 lets the last place player steal all of the first place player's Stars. The problem is that the drop rate for Miracle Capsules are extremely low, to the point that most 50 turn games would see one or two Miracle Capsules dropped at most. A player also needs to acquire three of them in their inventory in order to activate, which is easier said than done due to the probability of other players or game events making you drop your inventory. Players usually just forego holding on to the Miracle Capsules due to how unviable the tactic is, and to make room in their inventory for more useful capsules that can be used immediately.
  • The Bad Guy Wins:
    • Losing a Bowser or Boss minigame in general is often this, usually resulting in a penalty and mockery from Bowser and his minions.
    • Seer Terror, an unlockable minigame from 6, will often end with bad luck befouling the player should they pull one of the four ropes dangling from the ceiling, with Bowser making a witty remark at their expense.
    • In Mario Party: Island Tour, when the character reaches the top of Bowser's Tower, Bowser will reveal that the destroyed Bowser was a decoy and then proceed to knock the character off the tower, saying that they can come back any time. If Bowser Jr. reaches the top, Bowser will say that he was taking it easy to let Jr. get the chance to be a hero for once. Then, he knocks Jr. off the tower anyway, saying that he can come back any time.
    • This is the GamePad player's goal in 10's Bowser Party mode, where they play as Bowser and attempt to eliminate the four other players before they reach the goal.
  • Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: The Goomba running the lottery on Peach's Birthday Cake operates on this mindset, with the player drawing a seed with Toad's face on it being considered to have lost and the unlucky player drawing a seed with Bowser's face on it being considered to have won.note 
  • Bait-and-Switch: In the early games, the minigame roulette occasionally fakes the player out and appears to have stopped on one space before moving upwards one. Done in a far more exaggerated manner on Bowser roulettes, where it can stop but then move four or five spaces upward rather quickly.
  • Balloon of Doom: In 4, one of Bowser's minigames aptly called "Balloon of Doom" has him force the players to take turns pumping a balloon that has his insignia on it by Ground Pounding a pump. Whoever is unlucky to pop the balloon loses the minigame and suffers one of Bowser's punishments afterwards (whether by stealing their coins, stars, or items) while the other players get off Scott-free.
  • Band Land: Toadette's Music Room in DS, which puts the Mouse World concept the game revolves around into a room full of instruments and musical notes that hand out Stars.
  • Bat Family Crossover:
    • Donkey Kong's board in 9 is clearly based upon Donkey Kong Country Returns, featuring many aspects of that game's artstyle.
    • The Wario and Donkey Kong amiibo Party boards in 10 take heavily after their respective franchises.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In 2, the most you can do to Peach's portrait in the Face Lift game is style her hair, in stark contrast to the other characters whose faces can be distorted to the player's content.
  • Betting Mini-Game:
    • The Battle mini-games. All the players are forced to bet a set number of coins (if they have less, they lose it all) and have to play a minigame. The first place winner gets 70% of the jackpot, the second place gets 30%, and a random player gets any coins that were lost in rounding.
    • Duels have the players betting coins, a star, or a large number of coins for an opponent's star, on a Duel mini-game. Winner takes the pot. Some later games decide the duel reward by wheel after the mini-game.
    • Mario Party 3 features Game Guy and his minigames, where you are forced to wager every last coin you have in a game of blind chance; you either win a multiple of what you wagered or lose it all, and some let you keep play to bet more and more.
    • In Mario Party 7, the Mic Minigame space. When landing on it, Toadsworth will ask you how many coins you want to wager on a minigame you'll play shortly after. Win the minigame, and your bet is doubled. Lose, and the money you bet is lost.
  • Big Boo's Haunt:
    • Horror Land from 2 (also appearing in Superstars) is a spooky forest where all the characters dress up as wizards. The main gimmick of the board is the shift from day to night, which triggers the appearance of more Boos and the powerful Big Boo/King Boo, and also closes off certain junctions.
    • Boo's Haunted Bash from 4, which features a Red Boo who controls certain walkways and vanishes and reappears as players walk past it, as well as another appearance by Big Boo.
    • King Boo's Haunted Hideaway from 8 is a randomly-generated mansion with the goal of finding King Boo's location and buying a Star from him, who then kicks everyone out and reshuffles the mansion. The rooms not containing King Boo instead contain a bottomless pit that sends the player back to start, although landing on a Donkey Kong Space will cause DK to cover the pit and offer anyone who finds him a free Star.
    • Boo's Horror Castle from 9 is a tour through a large castle on a flying carpet or bed. The bosses of the board are Dry Bones and King Boo, and Boo will pursue the players through various parts of the castle.
    • Kamek's Carpet Ride from Island Tour changes things up by being a Kamek-themed haunted house instead of a Boo-themed one, and the players navigate through it on magic carpets.
    • Haunted Trail from 10 is a forested board which goes through a town, a graveyard, and a poisonous swamp. Mega Sledge Bro and King Boo serve as bosses, and Boos will hop on and haunt players by steal their Mini-Stars until they're passed onto a different player at certain spaces.
  • Big Fancy Castle:
    • Mario's Rainbow Castle in the original game. This board has a straight path that leads to the castle's turret. You have to get to the turret with 20 coins when Toad is present in order to get a Star. If you get to the turret when Bowser is present, he will charge you 40 coins for a fake Star. Toad and Bowser switch places after someone comes to see them, or when someone lands on one of the Happening Spaces.
    • Clockwork Castle, the sixth and final board in 6, combines this with Clockworks Area. By day, Donkey Kong walks around the board, and by night, Bowser walks around it. The goal is to chase Donkey Kong down so you can collect stars from him, but avoid Bowser, lest he take your stars away. One of the gimmicks of the board is that you can find a switch that changes the gameplay from Day to Night or vice-versa.
  • Big "OMG!": Luigi and Wario in the first game say "Oh my God!" when something really bad happens to them in the Japanese version. This was Bowdlerised to Luigi sobbing, while Wario says in German "So ein Mist!" (literally "Oh crap!") internationally.
  • Birthday Episode: The main story for 4 centers around the birthday of the character you choose.
  • Bladder of Steel: 6's Endurance Alley. You have to beat all 100 minigames in one go to clear it.
  • Blatant Lies: The "Give (insert obscenely huge number of stars or coins here)" roulette option that might appear whenever you land on a Bowser Space. Note that it is physically impossible to hold some of the selected amounts in most of the games due to various caps. The rare time you do land on it, depending on the game, Bowser panics and flees the scene, give you a much smaller amount of mini-stars in the games that have them, or the roulette fakes out and immediately stops on something else.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Not as bad as most cases, but the phrase "Got Item!" in the earlier games does read somewhat strangely.
  • A Bloody Mess: Played straight in Horror Land from 2. The natural path of the map has a car accident/sentient car monster on the far-left side. Traveling up the path reveals a red smear traveling up through the graveyard, with wolves licking at it at night. At the end of the path, just in time for you to veer away from it, you can see it was just a giant crumpled ketchup bottle that spilled open. Interestingly, this background element was removed from the board's appearance in Superstars, most likely to avoid any violent implications.
  • Bonus Space: Some of the Happening Spaces might be this, but the Donkey Kong spaces are more likely to have a nice payoff. Then there's the Lucky Spaces in 8 and 9, with the ones in the former being more eventful and often earning you a free Star.
  • Boring, but Practical: Some of the dice blocks unique to each character in Super Mario Party fall under this. Monty Mole's is the same as the standard block numbered 1-6 except instead of a 1, there's a space where you get an extra coin but don't move, making it useful for if there's an undesirable space directly in front of you.
  • Born as an Adult: The Millennium Star in 3 has an elderly appearance and voice, despite the game's narration stating it was a newborn. This could be a visual clue this isn't the real star.
  • Boss-Arena Idiocy: Naturally appears in boss minigames with Bowser, where he is commonly defeated by something left in the arena that the player uses against him.
  • Boss Battle: Aside from 1, 2, 6, Advance, Super, and Superstars, there is at least one boss in each game, usually as the final minigame of the Story/Solo mode:
    • 3: "Stardust Battle", a fight with the (fake) Millenium Star as his final challenge for the player.
    • 4: "The Final Battle!", where the player character across each side of the Final Battle Cube and then fights Bowser. This returns as the boss minigame of The Top 100. There are also duel minigames for each of the initial five boards that effectively function as this: "Bowser Bop" for Toad's Midway Madness, "Mystic Match-Up" for Boo's Haunted Bash, "Kareening Koopas" for Koopa's Seaside Soiree, "Archaeologuess" for Shy Guy's Jungle Jam, and "Goomba's Chip Flip" for Goomba's Greedy Gala. Bowser's Gnarly Party also features 2 duel minigames where the player faces off against Bowser called "Bowser Wrestling" and "Panels of Doom".
    • 5: "Frightmare", which starts with a horde of Mechakoopas and a set of fiery rings before moving onto Bowser, first at normal size and then as a giant.
    • 7: "Bowser's Lovely Lift!", which serves an an endurance test instead of a traditional boss: the player has to hit dice blocks to lift the elevator up to the 100th floor while avoiding attacks from Bowser and Koopa Kid.
    • 8: "Superstar Showdown", featuring Bowser's Koopa Clown Car versus the player wielding the Star Rod. The player must use the Star Rod to attack Bowser while dodging his attacks.
    • DS has a boss minigame for each board against that board's villain: "Feed and Seed" (Piranha Plant), "Hammer Chime" (Hammer Bro), "Hexoskeleton" (Dry Bones), "Book Bash" (Kamek), and "Bowser's Block Party" (Bowser).
    • 9 has co-op boss fights, two for every board, where players have to defeat the boss together while still getting the highest score to win the mini-game: "Sock It To Lakitu" and "Wiggler Bounce" for Toad Road, "Whomp Stomp" and "Bombard Big Bob-omb" for Bob-omb Factory, "Deck Dry Bones" and "King Boo's Puzzle Attack" for Boo's Horror Castle, "Cheep Cheep Shot" and "Blooper Barrage" for Blooper Beach, "Spike Strike" and "Chain Chomp Romp" for Magma Mine, "Bowser Jr. Beatdown" and "Bowser's Block Battle" for Bowser Station, and "Diddy's Banana Blast" and "DK's Banana Bonus" for DK's Jungle Ruins.
    • Island Tour has a boss every five floors in Bowser's Tower: "Goomba Tower Takedown", "Chain Chomp's Lava Lunge", "Mr. Blizzard's Snow Slalom", "King Bob-omb's Court of Chaos", "Dry Bowser's Brain Bonk", and "Bowser's Sky Scuffle". These boss battles are more in the vein of the ones from DS in the sense that the player is by themselves and can take damage.
    • 10 uses the same co-op boss format as 9: "Mega Goomba's Ladder Leap" and "Petey's Bomb Battle" for Mushroom Park, "Mega Sledge Bro's Card Chaos" and "King Boo's Tricky Tiles" for Haunted Trail, "Mega Cheep Chomp's Shell Shock" and "Mega Blooper's Bubble Battle" for Whimsical Waters, "Mega Monty Mole's Maze Mischief" and "Kamek's Rocket Rampage" for Airship Central, and "Mega Mechakoopa's Swing & Stomp" and "Bowser's Tank Terror" for Chaos Castle.
    • Star Rush incorporates its bosses into the Toad Scramble mode's boards: "Mega Goomba's Bad Dream", "King Boo's Light Smite", "Mega Monty Mole's in the Hole", "King Bob-omb's Boom D'état", "Petey Piranha's Shell Smackdown", "Mega Blooper's Bayside Bop", "Mega Dry Bones's Femur Fever", "Kamek's Card Tricks", "Bowser Jr.'s Pound for Pound", "Bowser's Space Race", "Bowser's Shocking Slipup", and "Bowser's Hit-or-Missile Mania".
  • Bowdlerize:
    • In the Japanese version of the first game, Luigi and Wario originally uttered a Big "OMG!" when something bad happened to them.
    • The realistic guns used at the end of the second game's Western Land were changed to toy cork guns, inadvertently making the scene funnier due to Bowser having a Minor Injury Overreaction as a result. Professor Fungi's pipe was also removed so as to avoid any smoking implications.
    • Game Guy Spaces don't return in Superstars, likely due to some countries' strict rules against simulating gambling in video games (or in the case of South Korea, outright banning it altogether).
    • Two minigames that take place in a casino-like setting ("Shuffleboard Showdown" and "Chips and Dips") are removed from the Korean version of Mario Party DS.
    • Because of the aforementioned banning of gambling in South Korea, the Korean version of Mario Party DS swapped out the Star roulette machine in "Bowser's Pinball Machine" for a Whac-a-Mole game.
    • Shell Shocked from 2 had its name changed to Tread Carefully in Superstars, possibly due to the original name (being based on the term "Shell Shock", a form of PTSD that soldiers experience) being deemed offensive to said soldiers.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: In-universe, this is the plot of the first game, with all the characters competing to simply prove who is the best among them.
  • Brought Down to Badass: Rosalina is as capable as the rest of the cast, but her deity-like abilities don't come into play at all. Because of this, she is just as vulnerable as everyone else to all kinds of Amusing Injuries or other types of punishments, such as being comically chased off by a horde of Broozers or being burnt by Bowser's fire breath.
  • Bullying a Dragon: An AI-controlled Donkey Kong in 2 will repeatedly go for the Bowser Bomb in item games, because he apparently believes he can take on Bowser himself. But unless he has the most stars at the end of the game, he cannot. Expect him to lose coins as a result (Bowser takes his own turn on the board at the end of the turn in which the Bowser Bomb is won, with a triple dice block; he bankrupts any player he runs into on his turn).
  • But Thou Must!: In Super, at the end of a 2 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 3 minigame if you compete with teams and in any mode where you compete with teammates, the announcer goes, "Ready… yeah!" and the teammates have the opportunity to high-five each other for coins. No matter what happens, this cannot be skipped or disabled, and the game gives you two opportunities to get the bonus. That being said, the player can reject the others' offer, prompting them to give an annoyed look.
  • Butt-Dialing Mordor: In 3, you can get a Bowser Phone that instantly calls him to deliver misery. When you dial him, he asks who is calling. You can lie and say whoever you want. You can also be honest, which can actually be really helpful if you have no coins when you call him. The final option is "Who do you think?", which yields a random result. Woe unto you if you choose the last option and Bowser guesses correctly.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Wario receives the brunt of the abuse on Mario Party 1's title screens. Donkey Kong's has him falling off of the vines everyone is swinging on, Luigi's has him getting hooked by his overalls, Mario's has him being dragged along on Mario's flight by his feet, Peach's has him apparently drowning in cake frosting, and even Wario's own title screen has him not seeming too enthusiastic about the two armies of Bob-ombs surrounding him and the gang. The other two simply depict him posing with everyone else (on the default screen) and pulling down a volleyball net for Donkey Kong to lay down a mean spike (on Yoshi's screen).
    • Less pronounced than usual, but Luigi also ends up as this on occasion. Most notably in 6's Miracle Book, in which almost every page he's on has something bad happen to him, and in 4's Present Room where most of the descriptions for Luigi's presents insult him.
    • The green Koopa Troopa in 2. He's used to demonstrate the various hazards in each board in the introduction. At the end of each game, he runs afoul of Bowser, and the Super Star has to bail him out.
    • The playable cast in general, when considering the amount of abuse they can (and will) endure every game. Bowser's Peculiar Peak in Island Tour and Bowser Party in 10 are the greatest examples of this, since both are themed around Bowser putting Mario and company through the wringer.
  • Button Mashing: Many mini-games require pressing a button as much as possible. Some other games in the original Mario Party require spinning the control stick.
  • By Wall That Is Holey: "Booksquirm", a minigame in Mario Party 4, requires you to do this with a giant book by running to the holes in the pages when they turn.
  • Call-Back:
    • amiibo Party in 10 operates in the same fashion as the earlier Mario Party games, with Coins and Stars rather than Mini-Stars.
    • Super Mario Party's opening is a direct callback to the opening of the very first Mario Party game, with Mario and his friends arguing over who among them is the Super Star (with the additions of Daisy, Rosalina, Waluigi, Diddy Kong, and Toadette this time around, all of whom were added to the series in the interim). The camera angle the cutscene starts with is even similar to the one from the first game.
    • Superstars features many references to the original game, from the Mushroom Village serving as the main menu to the opening cutscene largely being reminiscent of the first game's to Koopa Troopa explaining the boards' mechanics to the players. It also references events from 2 and 3 on the boards returning from those games by featuring screenshots from those games and mentioning the Millenium Star from the latter.
    • At the end of the first game's Mini-Game Island, Toad would come and challenge the player to a race on Slot Car Derby, acting as the Final Boss of the mode. In The Top 100's Mini-Game Island, Toad returns to challenge you to a race on Slot Car Derby once again, though he's only the boss of World 3 this time around.
  • The Cameo: Plenty of other Mario characters make cameo appearances here and there.
    • MIPS the Rabbit makes an appearance in 3's Woody Woods, among other rabbits.
    • The infamous Mad Piano makes an appearance in 2's Horror Land during the night, playing in a band with other haunted instruments.
    • Dorrie makes so many appearances in the series, he's almost a Running Gag. 4's "Right Oar Left" has boats (called "Dorrie Boats") modeled after him, 5's pool toys in "Tug-O-Dorrie" are likewise modeled after him, and he can sometimes be seen in the background of 3's Creepy Cavern. He makes a full appearance in 3's "Dorrie Dip" and is one of the characters you earn a Gaddget from in Mario Party Advance. That said, he started to make less and less appearances once NDcube took over.
    • Mecha-Bowser makes a cameo as a board element in Toy Dream from 5 and Bowser's Enchanted Inferno from 7.
    • Snowflake Lake from 6 has Whackas and Snow Bunnies making appearances. Additionally, what appears to be a Bone Dragon is frozen in the lake in the middle of the board.
    • Klaptraps appear as part of a minigame in Pyramid Park from 7, with the aforementioned Bone Dragon also appearing in the lower-right corner of the board as well.
    • Nossie, the blue dinosaur from Dino Dino Jungle in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Mario Kart 7, can be seen in the background of DK's Treetop Temple in 8.
    • Rosalina combines this with Ascended Extra, making an appearance in Island Tour's Rocket Road along with a few Lumas, before ultimately becoming playable in 10 onwards.
  • Camera Abuse:
    • The Top 100's version of "At the Chomp Wash" has the Chain Chomp splatter the camera with paint before the minigame begins. The original version in 8 does not do this.
    • "Head Waiter" in 5 ends with the loser getting smashed against the screen before falling down.
  • Camera Screw: 9's Perspective Mode deliberately invokes it for added difficulty, by taking mini-games that normally use a top-down view and putting the camera level with the player.
  • Cartoon Meat: DS has the minigame "Rotisserie Rampage" where a team of three tries to stay on top of a cylindrical cut of meat, while the solo player tries to spin them off.
  • Casino Park:
    • 7's Neon Heights board, a flashy Las Vegas/Hollywood/New York-themed board set atop several skyscrapers.
    • Goomba's Greedy Gala from 4, a gambling-themed board where routes are decided via a roulette wheel and Goomba frequently challenges players to dice games as the progress.
    • Bowser's Pinball Machine in DS combines this with Pinball Zone, featuring many luck and bonus-related mechanics inside a brightly lit pinball machine.
    • Shy Guy's Shuffle City in Island Tour, which takes place atop a poker board and features card-based mechanics.
  • Charge-into-Combat Cut: After the end of the "Squared Away" minigame in Mario Party 5, a cutscene shows a horde of Thwomps chasing after the losing player(s). The losers Face Plant after attempting to flee the Thwomps, but the minigame fades away just as the Thwomps are about to catch up to and trample them. The Superstars version of the minigame instead has the loser(s) doing their normal losing animation while the winner(s) celebrate.
  • The Chew Toy: Baby Bowser/Koopa Kid in 3, as several minigames are about beating him up.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Koopa Kid stopped making appearances in the series after Mario Party 7, being replaced by Bowser Jr. Likewise, Toadette didn't make an appearance in Mario Party 9, but returned for 10.
  • Circus Episode: 8 is this for the series. It takes place at the Star Carnival, a massive Amusement Park, and is hosted by MC Ballyhoo, an eccentric circus ringmaster, and his talking hat, Big Top.
  • Climax Boss: After collecting the first five Star Stamps in the Story Mode of Mario Party 3, Daisy and Waluigi (who are not playable in the mode) show up as special opponents, with Daisy challenging the player to a Duel match on Backtrack and Waluigi challenging them to a Battle Royale match on Waluigi's Island.
  • Coconut Meets Cranium: 3 has a mini-game called "Coconut Conk", which consists of three players butt-slamming coconut trees to make the coconuts fall on the fourth person, who is rolling along the floor in a barrel.
  • Color-Coded Characters: In the Hudson Soft-produced installments:
    • Mario: Red
    • Luigi: Green/Blue
    • Peach: Pink
    • Yoshi: Aqua/Light Green
    • Wario: Purple/Yellow
    • DK: Brown/Yellow
    • Daisy: Yellow/Orange
    • Waluigi: Black/Indigo
    • Toad: Blue/Light Red
    • Boo: Light Blue
    • Koopa Kid: Orange/Dark Green
    • Toadette: Hot Pink
    • Birdo: Magenta
    • Dry Bones: Grey
    • Blooper: White
    • Hammer Bro: Yellow/Green
  • Combat Stilettos: Each Mario Party has a few fighting minigames. Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina retain their normal outfits for these games, but are perfectly fine at going hand-to-hand in floor-length dresses and high heels.
  • Comeback Mechanic:
    • Bowser will normally take Coins or Stars from players. If a player encounters Bowser with no Coins or Stars, however, Bowser will give them some amount of coins.
    • In the ninth game, when a player in last place lands on a Bowser Space and gets "Lose half your mini-stars!" on the roulette, he'll instead double their mini-stars because he feels bad that they are in last. When a player not in last place lands on a Bowser Space, they may have to give their own mini-stars to last place.
    • There are many events that benefits the person in last in the ninth and tenth games, as well as Island Tour. Beginning with Star Rush's release, this trope was severely cut down for the series.
    • Most Mario Party titles present an event when there are five turns remaining where the player in last is invited to spin a roulette wheel/spinning item box, of which most of the results are in that player's favor.
  • Commuting on a Bus: Donkey Kong, who was a fully playable character in the first four games, becomes a mini-game host and board event in 5 onwards before returning as a playable character starting with 10. Koopa Kid was a playable character in 5 and 6, before going back to being an extra in 7 and then being dropped entirely in favor of Bowser Jr.
  • Composite Character: In The Top 100 and Superstars, since Koopa Kid has been gone from the series for years, Bowser Jr. takes on his role as an NPC in certain minigames. In the same games, the running Piranha Plant from "Piranha's Pursuit" is replaced by Petey Piranha.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: It depends. In certain minigames, they have extreme skill that no human could possibly surpass. Despite popular belief, though, they do not cheat in luck-based areas.
    • In the earlier games, whether or not you'll win a race to the finish such as Skateboard Scamper or Abandon Ship depends entirely on whether the computer wants you to. It always comes down to the very last button press, and nine times out of ten, the computer player will dance in victory and you'll be screaming that you had it. Thankfully, in later installments, tie victories are possible and you'll get the money as long as you survive at all.
    • While the AI is usually incompetent for the overarching game, in a game with multiple AI opponents, they suddenly seem to actively team up against the human players, up to and including throwing mini-games to let another AI win and get ahead. This could also be considered Artificial Brilliance.
    • High-level computer AIs are capable of input speeds that are beyond what is possible for a human player, even with a turbo controller. An example of this is in Mario Party 2 when a Hard-level AI has to fight off a coin-stealing Boo.
    • In some entries, as the difficulty setting rises, it becomes increasingly apparent that the AI knows what number the dice will land on before it rolls and will make strategic decisions accordingly.
    • In Mario Party 4, and presumably the other games in the franchise, playing against computer players set to Expert difficulty will allow them to be able to mash buttons on games such as Domination faster than the game controller can register. Unless you're using a Turbo controller, in which case you are a cheating bastard as well, they may be damn near impossible to defeat.
    • The CPU always seems to know when to hit the spinning blocks in Chance Time, even though the last block spins too fast to time normally.
  • Computers Are Fast: Despite problems they may have with some of the more complex games where other players affect them, the high-level AI players always do well on the "rapidly press A", "Press the button that appears", and, most infamously, "spin the stick in a circle" games.
  • Conjoined Eyes: Due to graphical limitations on the N64, Yoshi doesn't actually use his eyelids in the first three games. Instead, Yoshi squishes his irises to create the illusion of "blinking" and "winking". Koopa Troopa has this problem as well.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: If there's only one computer player, even on Easy, it will suddenly become much more competent at mini-games.
  • Consolation Prize: The item Mini-Minigames in 4 feature the normal Mini and Mega Mushrooms, which can be obtained if the player misses every major target.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The start screen featuring Mario's Rainbow Castle in the first game (the screen will change to match the player and the board named after them depending on who wins — beat any board with Mario in this case) features Mario in the forefront wearing his wing cap from Super Mario 64, flying himself and the others over the rainbow and the castle.
    • The hosts of 5 are the Star Spirits from Paper Mario.
    • Banana Shake, one of the DK minigames from 6, features Delfino Plaza in the background.
    • The Bowser Sphinx from Mystery Land in 2 returns in Pyramid Park from 7note .
    • One of the unlockable vehicles for DK's Jungle Ruins in 9 bears a great resemblance to the DK Jumbo from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment:
    • The last-place finisher of a board in the first Mario Party has varying misfortunes or punishments befall them during the ending scene, whereas every other player is spared this.
      • In 3, 5, 6, 9, DS, 10, and Superstars, everyone but the winner suffers some sort of mishap (being dropped off the screen, sucked into a vortex, or chased off by some enemy).
      • Also in Superstars, a picture shown at the end of a board shows the last-place finisher suffering some sort of punishment, just like in the first game (albeit some of the punishments are mild, such as being stuck behind a Thwomp in Yoshi's Tropical Island).
    • The losers of many minigames across the series tend to be subject to cartoonishly harsh fates as the winners celebrate.
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: Super Mario Party's River Survival mode has a greater emphasis on teammwork and working together than most of the series' modes. As such, the mode revolves around helping your teammates pilot a raft down a river network while extending the time limit by playing minigames.
  • Corridor Cubbyhole Run: Banzai Bill's Mad Mountain in Island Tour. While the board is very small, every dice roll runs the risk of setting off Banzai Bills to chase players back, unless they disrupt their movement by hiding in the safe areas.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Several of the items that bestow negative effects on opponents, like the Poison Mushroom and Reverse Mushrooms, can also be used on the player who uses them, which can be weaponized to, for instance, increase the likelihood of landing on desired spaces.
  • Cutting Off the Branches:
    • Zig-Zagged. In the intro to 2, Wario claims the theme park should be named after him because he was the Superstar in the last game, but that could just be referring to the ending where it declares everyone a Superstar.
    • The intro to Horror Land in Superstars depicts Mario as defeating Wizard Bowser and refers to him as the Super Star, implying he was the winner of Mario Party 2 or at least that particular board.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Various minigames that returned in The Top 100 and/or Superstars have had their controls changed from their original iterations, resulting in this reaction from many players. For example:
    • "Face Lift" uses the touch screen (it uses the original controls in Superstars).
    • "Shy Guy Says" uses L and R instead of A and B.
    • In "Cake Factory", you have to press A twice to both grab and place your ingredient.
    • "Dizzy Dancing", "Hexagon Heat", and "Tidal Toss" are affected by the overall change of ground-pounding controls from A>Z to A>Anote . "Bounce 'n' Trounce" has a similar change.
    • "Kareening Koopas" and "Crate and Peril" use the gyro controls of the 3DS instead of the control stick.
    • The controls for "Mario Speedwagons" are reversed — that is, A to accelerate and R to shift gears.
    • In "Three Throw", you press A twice instead of B to throw. This makes it impossible to throw from the ground.
    • "Balloon Busters" and "Dart Attack" do away with speech-based commands in favor of blowing into the microphone (or pressing L).
    • "Cheep Cheep Chase" has the player use the control stick to dive, instead of pressing B or Z to dive.
  • A Day in the Limelight:
    • 10's star is Bowser, who is playable for the first time in the series (not counting a bonus game in 4 and 5) in the Bowser Party mode. Whoever plays as him can ruin the other players' days.
    • While he's never been out of focus in this subseries, the Super Mario Party rhythm minigame "Time To Shine" invokes this with its title regarding Waluigi: the game involves mimicking another character's poses in time with the music, and Waluigi will always be chosen as the "teacher" if nobody is playing as him (otherwise, either Luigi or one of the princesses will take his place).
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Starting in 5, Donkey Kong went from being a playable character to a Good Counterpart to Bowser that appears if you land on his space. He then got his own board in 8 and 9. He is playable again in 10, Star Rush, Super, and Superstars.
    • Koopa Kid went from being playable in the fifth and sixth games to being an extra in the seventh, and then disappearing entirely.
    • Dry Bones dropped off the playable roster after 8, but appeared in DS and 9 as a miniboss. Dry Bones became playable again in Super.
    • Blooper was a Unexpected Character in 8, but then only got a mention in DS before eventually, like Dry Bones, being a boss in 9 and 10.
    • Hammer Bro became playable in 8, but then became the Battle Game referee in 9 and 10. Hammer Bro returns as a playable character in Super.
    • After becoming Promoted to Playable in 5, Boo was knocked down to board hazard in 9, not even getting to be a boss or host. King Boo got to be a boss, though, and Boo was also a playable character in Island Tour, Star Rush's Mario Shuffle mode, and Super.
    • Toadette became playable in 6, but she was then relegated to be the host of one of the boards in DS. In 9, she didn't appear at all. Toadette once again became playable in 10 and Star Rush. Then Toadette was demoted again in Super, but this time as a host.
    • Spike went from being playable in 10 to a minigame extra in later games.
    • Birdo suffered this fate after 9, appearing as a background character in Island Tour and being completely absent from 10 and Star Rush. She makes a non-playable cameo in Super and becomes playable again in Superstars.
    • Toad became playable in 5, but his last playable appearance in the series thus far was Star Rush, having been demoted to a host in Top 100, Super, and Superstars.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • If you somehow have the max amount of Stars (which can basically only be achieved by hacking), the NPCs doling them out will tell you that you can't carry anymore.
    • In the first game's Eternal Star, the Baby Bowsers are programmed to not get the number you've rolled to prevent a tie from happening.
    • Many games across the series that would be completely cheesed by pausing (typically counting and memorization games) will have certain elements disappear while the minigame is paused, only reappearing when the game is resumed. The Mario Party 8 Challenge minigame "Fruit Picker" even accounts for the Wii's Home Menu button being used.
    • In Mario Party 2, the Bowser Bomb is an "item" you can win in Item Minigames. At the end of the turn it was acquired in, Baby Bowser will turn into Bowser, roll 3 Dice Blocks, and steal every coin from whoever Bowser passes. As such, the player cannot physically use it. However, if someone uses a Plunder Chest to steal the Bowser Bomb and proceeds to use it afterward, the game will proclaim it cannot be used at this time.
    • In Mario Party 5, the Miracle Capsules will take all of the first-place player's stars and give them to the player in last place if all three are collected by a single player. However, if the player in first somehow collects all of them (extremely unlikely considering they're both extremely rare and will only spawn for the last-place player), a failsafe comes into play and nothing will happen, as it would be extremely detrimental to the first-place player.
    • In the GameCube Mario Party titles, Waluigi's standard win animation has him chuckle before raising his hands in the air above his head. However, in the "Submarathon" minigame in Mario Party 5 (and only this minigame), the animation is modified to have Waluigi's hands be placed on the same level as his head instead of above it, as they would clip through the submarine otherwise.
    • In Super Mario Party, all Bowser-aligned characters have special dialogue when interacting with Bowser and Bowser Jr., who are both Promoted to Playable in this installment. Special attention is given to the Bad Luck Space should either those two land on it, as Kamek is extremely apologetic as he requests they run the roulette anyway and suffer the same consequences as anyone else.
    • In the Superstars remake of 3's Woody Woods, it's now possible to refuse Woody's fruit by not picking Left or Right, in which case you get no reward. If you try to do this with Evil Woody, he'll force you to suffer the effects of both the Minus Coin Fruit and the Reverse Dice Fruit.
    • In the event that players are tied for first place in Stars and Coins (or whatever other metric a unique game mode tracks) at the end of a board, the game usually settles it with a final dice roll where it cannot roll the same number. In some game modes, the game simply declares everyone in 1st place a winner. The Duel Mode in 3 is a special case that actually declares a draw if this happens.
  • Did Not Do the Bloody Research:
    • In the intro for Grand Canal in 7, Toadsworth will say "The Star will move to another location when someone gets one. What a crafty bugger!"
    • In Shy Guy's Perplex Express in 8, Kamek will say "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!" Copies of the game had to be recalled in the UK so that Nintendo could print a second run where Kamek says "erratic" instead of "spastic".
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Each character in Super Mario Party has their own dice block, with many featuring both very bad and very good options. For example, Boo's die has a 2/3 chance of getting an extremely high roll, but a 1/3 chance of not only moving nowhere, but losing two coins.
  • Disney Villain Death: This is the fate of the player character in the Thirsty Gulch single-player board in 6 if one manages to roll enough to walk past the Goal/Rare Mini-Game Space that serves as the last space on the board. They'll step onto a rock platform that crumbles under their feet and drops them into a canyon river below; the camera cuts off here.
  • Don't Wake the Sleeper: In Super, one of the mini-games is "Don't Wake Wiggler!", where each character takes turns petting a sleeping Wiggler while trying to not be the one to wake him up. As they keep petting him, his Zs become darker and he begins to wake up. The more times Wiggler is pet, the more points the player gets, but the player who wakes Wiggler up loses all their points. The player who ends up with the most points by the time Wiggler wakes up wins, while an angry Wiggler chases the losers away.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: Bowser's minigames in Mario Party 4 are called Darts of Doom, Fruits of Doom, and Balloon of Doom. There's also Panels of Doom (a special minigame available on Bowser's Gnarly Party) and Doors of Doom (a single-player game involving Bowser).
  • Dream Land: The Dream Depot is the main setting of Mario Party 5, and all the boards are formed from peoples' dreams.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The "Rotate the control stick" minigames from the first game, which were entirely eliminated after due to complaints that people hurt themselves and broke their analog sticks. One such game did reappear in The Top 100, likely because the design of the 3DS circle pad made the strategy that caused the problems unworkable. When analog stick minigames returned again in Superstars where there is a full-fledged control stick, Nintendo just put up a warning message on the minigame screen against using said strategy.
    • The first game was also the only one where you could lose coins in the end-of-turn minigames, although your coin total could never go below 0. However, it was possible for the Minigame Star coin total for a given player to go below zero if they lose too many coins in minigames.
    • The Coin Star column in the detailed results page is marked with an "M" in the first game. Most later installments label this column with a "C" and assign the "M" to the Minigame Star instead. (In the first game, the Minigame Star column was marked with a "G".)
    • The first game doesn't have proper items to use during a game. The closest equivalent to them were the alternate blocks that could be bought from the Mushroom Shop between games, which acted more like special options since they can be toggled on and off and randomly replace the player's standard dice block on their turn. There were also items that could toggle Koopa and Boo on and off, which isn't possible in any later games.
    • The second game was the only one where you could only hold one item at a time until you use it. Starting from the third game, you could hold more than one item.
    • The first game had mushroom spaces (which let the player either roll again or caused them to lose a turn) and single-player mini-game spaces. These concepts, while not removed entirely in the second game, were changed drastically to having only mushroom items, and single-player minigames went from being played for coins to being played for an item.
    • The first game is the only installment where playing with Bonus Stars is mandatory. All later installments barring Super give the player the option to turn them off before the match begins.
    • The first game doesn't have any battle or duel mini-games. Some 4-player games were even cooperative, where everyone was supposed to work together to accomplish the goal, although there are several reasons why a player might want to throw or sabotage the game (such as to prevent helping the first-place player), and even the computer players don't try as hard on harder difficulties for these games. The Co-op games didn't return until Super Mario Party in a side mode.
    • 1 vs. 3 minigames in the first game had a small but significant variety of coin outcomes, unlike in any game afterwards where they always gave 10 coins to each person on the winning team.
      • Some of those minigames (Paddle Battle, Tightrope Treachery, and Tug o' War) involved the team of three stealing a fixed amount of coins from the solo player if the team wins and dividing it equally among the three players. Conversely, if the solo player wins, a fixed amount of coins is stolen from each member of the team of three and all are given to the solo player.
      • Crane Game lets the solo player steal a third of another player's coins if they manage to drop them into a pipe. However, the captured player can attempt to wiggle free, and if they manage to escape, the solo player loses immediately, but the team of three gets nothing either. Alternatively, the solo player could ignore the other players and pick up solid cash instead.
      • Bowl Over had the solo player steal five coins each from any players they knock over.
      • Bash n' Cash had three solo players trying to steal as many of a fourth player's coins (the latter of which is dressed in a Bowser suit) as they can by hammering the Bowser-suited player.
      • Coin Flower Shower is so lopsided that it's not uncommon to see the solo player get 30+ coins while the other three get zero. Additionally, the few coins that the trio can get aren't shared.
      • Also with regard to the 1 vs. 3 games, most of the games that are not coin-collecting bonus games will, if the single player loses, result in a "Miss!" declaration from Toad, with losing music similar to a failed 1-player minigame. In later games, such a result will instead result in the team of three being declared winners with victory music.
    • Ztars did not cause the player receiving them to lose stars in the first two games. In the first game, getting a Ztar would only cause the unlucky player to lose 40 coins, and in the second game, they do nothing at all.
    • Hidden Blocks in the first game could summon Koopa Troopa, Boo, or even Bowser, a capability never seen again afterwards.
    • In addition to Bowser Spaces in the first game, Bowser himself also appeared somewhere on each board, and any player who passed him would surely end up losing coins or sometimes stars if they had any. What's worse is that sometimes you had to pass (or risk passing) him in order to get to the star, or just might not even have a choice in the matter. In Mario Party 2, Baby Bowser replaces him, who may even give out coins if you're lucky (and then throws a tantrum over his Epic Fail), but if a player obtains a Bowser Bomb item or lands on a Bowser Space and gets Bowser's Appearing Act, then at the end of the turn, it causes Baby Bowser to turn into Bowser, who then moves around the board and takes every coin from any player he encounters, before turning back into Baby Bowser. In Mario Party 3, neither Bowser nor Baby Bowser appeared on any boards to take coins or stars, but the Bowser Spaces have remained for all the future installments.
    • In the first three games, landing on a Bowser Space wasn't necessarily a bad thing for that player, especially in the first game. Sometimes, all the players would play a Bowser-themed 1 vs 3 minigame (where the player who landed on the Bowser Space is the lone player), and only the losing team would lose coins. You might even play Bowser's Chance Time in the first two games, where the player gets an attempt to choose who will give coins to Bowser. There's also Bowser Revolution, where he makes everyone's amount of coins the same, which would help the player who landed on his space if they had less coins than the other players. In Mario Party 2 and 3, you may even win a free Bowser Phone or Bowser Suit item from him. It is possible to get a Bowser Suit by landing on a Bowser Space in Mario Party 4 as well, but it is much rarer than in previous installments.
    • The first two games didn't have dedicated story modes; instead, each board had its own story, with an ending cutscene showing the winner of the board saving the day in some way. Their single-player focused modes instead consisted of mini-game gauntlets that you had to clear, and most progress towards unlockables was achieved just by playing the party boards. In the first game, you had to collect 100 stars just to get near the end of its "story", whereas in the second game, each board only had to be played once to unlock the final board, which also only had to be played once, so each star the human players had got converted to 50 more coins. The lack of a story mode was recycled in Mario Party 6, and its own final board had to be unlocked the same way that Mario Party 1's final board was unlocked. Mario Party 10, Super Mario Party, and Mario Party Superstars also lack a story mode (though Super Mario Party does have a "Challenge Road" mode that works like Minigame Island from the first game).
    • Mario Party DS is the first Mario Party game to have multiple boss battles (unless you count the Story mini-games in Mario Party 4). Unlike the future games in the series (with the exception of Island Tour), however, the bosses have a certain amount of hit points instead of a health gauge and don't turn red when their health drops to half or below, instead becoming harder with every hit. The boss minigames are also single-player games instead of four-player games.
    • Mario Party 4 is the only GameCube Mario Party to not use the Orb system, instead opting for a traditional item store in the vein of 2 and 3. It is also the first game in the franchise to feature the Mega and Mini Mushrooms, but their designs look decidedly different from the designs that were established in New Super Mario Bros. onwards.
    • Additionally, the Orb system in 5 is less refined than in the other games. Orbs were called capsules and were given at random by a machine with no way to buy them (said machine also had a small chance of giving the player a Bowser capsule, which added no capsules to their inventory, but did turn one red space into an additional Bowser Space). All capsules could be used on yourself or thrown, and using them on yourself required a cost. Finally, all capsule spaces could affect anyone who landed or passed them, including the person who put them there.
    • Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Toad in the first two games used their voice actors from the Japanese version of Mario Kart 64 in all versions, which explains why Luigi suddenly had a weird high-pitched voice and Wario sounded extremely gruff when compared to their voices from the English voice actors in Mario Kart 64. The characters would eventually revert to their English voice actors by the third game (with the exception of Toad, whose voice would remain the same until the fourth Mario Party). Wario's N64 voice is an example of this trope for another reason as well: Thomas Spindler, Wario's voice actor in the first two Mario Party games, stated that the reason why Wario's international losing quote ("So ein Mist!") was in Gratuitous German was because voice director Takashi Tezuka intended for Wario himself to be German. The character's nationality would quietly be retconned to Italian (through the use of a conspicuously Italian accent) once Charles Martinet permanently took over the role from the third game onwards.
    • In the first installment, you would earn 10 coins for looping around the board and returning to the start point. This concept was dropped by the next game. Likewise, all the boards in the N64 era were sprite backgrounds and only the characters themselves were 3D. The GameCube era would have all the boards in full 3D, although 4 is a transitional form with the paths on rectangular walkways resting on or floating above the board environment. On the subject of 3D, character models on the board in the first game would shrink and become low-polygonal if it wasn't their turn.
    • The first two games have the player buy the minigames with the coins they earn after a board before they can play them. Later installments have the game unlocked simply by playing it on a board first, although a handful of minigames still need to be purchased at the in-game shops from time to time.
    • Princess Daisy and Waluigi have appeared in so many games that it's hard to remember they weren't even in the first two; after their introduction in 3, they've never missed a console installment, and the only installment they've missed overall is Advance. Ditto Toadette, who after entering the series in 6 has been present for all further installments in some fashion minus 9 and Island Tour. This also applies to Rosalina, who has been playable in every installment since 10 after making a small cameo in Island Tour.
  • Easter Egg:
    • Super Mario Party has a minigame called Rhythm and Bruise, where the players bop plastic Monty Moles in time to the rhythm of the music. If you play as Monty Mole in this minigame, Monty Mole will spend the entire minigame with a panicked expression and look away when he hits the plastic moles.
    • Should Bowser or Bowser Jr. land on a Bad Luck Space, Kamek will have unique dialogue for the occasion, saying that he doesn't want to inflict bad luck on them but has to.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: Playing Mario Party 2's Mini-Game Coaster on Easy or Normal results in the player only being able to progress up to a certain point: World 3 on Easy, and World 6 on Normal. In order to face the Baby Bowsers at the end of World 8, you have to play on Hard.
  • Effortless Achievement: Mario Party DS has the Mario Party DS Beginner badge, which is given to a file upon starting and serves as the default badge. Its description indeed affirms that it's just for beginning your game:
    Welcome to Mario Party DS! This is the badge given to every new player.
  • Egopolis: In 2, the Mario characters create a new world that is initially named Mario Land, but each one wants to name the world after themselves, so they have a contest to determine who gets to name it.
  • End-Game Results Screen: Some games give a line graph at the end detailing everyone's progress over the course of the game, or a table with assorted stats such as how many of each space players landed on.
  • End of an Age: 3 was the final Mario game released on the Nintendo 64 in Japan, North America, and Europe (in Australia, that honor goes to Paper Mario 64). It was also the last game that used Daisy's classic design (barring her trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee). 7 was also the last Mario game to be released on the GameCube in Europe and Australia (elsewhere, Super Mario Strikers claims that title), and 9 was the last Mario game released on the Wii in all regions (DK and Bowser's appearance in Skylanders SuperChargers notwithstanding).
  • Enemy Mine: The 1v3 and 2v2 games (and 4-player cooperative games in the first installment), in which you team up with other players and everyone on the winning team gets coins. There are rare situations late in the game where throwing such a minigame is the best option.
  • Eternal Engine:
    • Luigi's Engine Room from 1 is set in an engine room owned by Luigi. You don't even find out what it's the engine room to until the very end of the board. Lampshaded, as the announcer says "This is the Engine Room, but what kind of Engine Room is it? I have absolutely no idea!"
    • E. Gadd's Garage from 6 is set in a massive laboratory owned by Professor E. Gadd, and as such is filled with plenty of gadgets and technology, including a fully functional teleportation machine.
    • Bob-omb Factory from 9 takes place in a large factory that produces Bob-ombs, which also serve as a board hazard that can cost players Mini-Stars should they happen to land on a certain space. At the end of the board, players face off against King Bob-omb, whose boss minigame also appears to take place in a factory of sorts.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • If you land on a Bowser space with no stars and no coins to your name, Bowser will take pity and give you some coins.
    • In Bowser's Tower in Island Tour (3DS), Bowser will occasionally give out random "punishments" through a roulette wheel once you reach certain floors. One of these punishments is to send you back down to the first floor; if chosen, Bowser will outright say "That's just cruel, even by my standards!" and won't follow through with it. He also won't take any of your Mario Party Points if "Lose all your Mario Party Points" is chosen.
    • In Mario Party 7, Bowser hosts the "Final 5 Turns" event, stating that the player in last is so lame, he's giving them a second chance by letting them spin a roulette with (mostly) beneficial effects.
  • Everyone Has a Special Move: In 7, every pair of characters has a unique Orb that only they can use.
    • Mario and Luigi have the Fireball Orb, which lets them use fireballs to steal 10 coins from any opponent they pass on the board for the next three turns.
    • Peach and Daisy have the Flower Orb, which causes them to walk on giant flowers that bloom above the spaces, earning them three coins per flower and letting them bypass any Roadblock Orbs in their way.
    • Yoshi and Birdo have the Egg Orb, which makes them eat any enemy Orb spaces and Koopa Kid spaces that they come across within the turn to remove the traps on them. Any Orbs they eat will turn into Orbs they can use later.
    • Wario and Waluigi have the Vacuum Orb, which lets them steal money (amount determined by spinning a wheel) from every other party member before taking their turn.
    • Boo and Dry Bones have the Magic Orb, which has them use a magic wand to double their dice rolls and turn invisible (letting them bypass Roadblock Orbs) for two turns.
    • Toad and Toadette have the Triple 'Shroom Orb, which gives them the effect of a Mushroom Orb (rolling two dice) for three turns in a row.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Toad and Bowser in the first game. Mario's and Yoshi's boards revolve around making sure you reach Toad for Stars while avoiding Bowser (who steals coins as per usual), and they swap around when Happening Spaces are landed on or when either is met on Mario's Rainbow Castle.
    • Starting in Mario Party 5, Donkey Kong became the Good Counterpart to Bowser. This is especially evident in 6, where DK's out at day and Bowser's out at night (literally in the case of the final board, where chasing them down/avoiding them is the central mechanic of the board), and 8, where the two alternate spaces depending on which one everyone has most recently met. In 5, there is actually a special event when landing on a Bowser Space where, if the next space is on the same elevation, Donkey Kong will show up, punch Bowser in the face, and force the Koopa King to flee and only take ten coins from the player who landed on his space.
    • Shy Guy and Kamek are a "board piece" example of this in Mario Party 9's Story Mode. They serve as the third, fourth, or both CPUs, and if they win the board, they'll steal all of the Mini-Stars collected in that board, forcing the player to start over.
    • In Island Tour, Bowser makes evil bubble clones of the playable characters to fight you.
    • Woody has one named Evil Woody, an unpleasant tree whose fruits are a hindrance rather than helpful.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: Mario Party 7 has Bowser's tower from "Bowser's Lovely Lift!", which is so tall it actually rises up into the clouds; the goal of the minigame is to ride an elevator up to the 100th floor while avoiding Bowser and Koopa Kid's attacks.
  • Evolving Title Screen:
    • In the first game, the title screen changes its background depending on what character won the most recent match.
    • In Superstars, it changes based on the previous board played and the participants.
  • Excuse Plot:
    • In almost all of the games, the "plot" will always be "We have a problem in X place with Y thing, help us collect Stars to solve it!" The first one has even less, simply being about everyone going on party adventures to prove who's the best of the bunch.
    • Superstars pushes this even further, the main excuse being "everyone's nostalgic for Mario Party on N64" with the excuse for each board being "the thing that happened before happened again, so play some Mario Party."
  • Failure Gambit: Sometimes, you will want to lose a minigame on purpose. This may seem counter-intuitive, but if you're teamed up with a player who's in the lead in Stars and is just short of coins to buy the next one after the minigame, you might want to make them lose by letting yourself be beaten as well. This way, your teammate won't get too far ahead in the lead, which is a pretty neat outcome in exchange for refusing 10 coins.
  • Failure Is the Only Option:
    • If Bowser sets up a minigame in the original game, then somebody is going to lose coins regardless of the minigame's outcome. The games end in a tie? He just steals coins from everyone. He puts the player in Bash and Cash, a 1 vs 3 minigame where the other players' goal is to hit them and take their money, and they don't lose any coins? He'll take 15 coins anyways. Everyone gets 90 or more points in Bowser’s Face Lift? Better hope you weren’t the one who landed on his space because if you did then you and only you lose coins.
    • Like Woody, Evil Woody offers two fruits to pick from. Unlike Woody, his fruits penalize you by taking coins away or sending you in reverse. Should you refuse to choose any of his fruits, he'll force both penalities on you.
  • Feud Episode: The storyline of 6 involves Brighton and Twila arguing over who is better, which Mario and friends must resolve by collecting Stars.
  • Final Boss:
    • In the first game's Mini Game Island, Toad challenges you to a race in Slot Car Derby near the end. The Koopa Kids take over for 2's Mini Game Coaster in a game of Shell Shocked.
    • 3 has the Millennium Star, who calls himself the final challenger in Story Mode; only by defeating him can your character become the Super Star.
    • In Super Mario Party, the final opponent in Challenge Road varies depending on what alignment your character is: if you're playing as Mario or any of his friends, you'll fight Bowser, and if you're playing as Bowser or any of his minions, you'll fight Mario.
  • Fireballs:
    • Bowser, as per tradition, is capable of roasting people with fireballs shot from his mouth.
    • Mario and Luigi's unique Orb in 7 is the Fireball Orb; when used, it surrounds the plumbers with fireballs for three turns and allows them to chuck a fireball at anyone they pass, stealing ten coins from them.
  • Floating Limbs: Tumble from 3 is a dice creature with floating White Gloves for hands.
  • Foreshadowing: In the story mode introduction to 3, the game's narration said the Millenium Star fell out of the sky because it was just a newborn; however, it has a rather elderly appearance, almost resembling Eldstar, despite being new. This could be a visual clue that this is a fake.
  • Foregone Victory: In 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, and Star Rush, even though there is a definite chance of your character not being the Superstar, there is no chance of Bowser ultimately succeeding. You cannot even lose to the bosses in the latter three games.
  • Forgot About His Powers: Some characters, such as Paratroopa, Boo, Blooper, and Rosalina, are continually hounded by platforming sections and conveyor belts despite being able to leave the ground at will, and some of them don't normally touch the ground at all, although this may just be to keep them in balance with the other characters.
  • Frustrated Overhead Scribble:
    • In the minigame "Skipping Class", a character who is unable to follow jumping instructions will get discouraged, having a scribbly ball in their thought bubble.
    • In the minigame "Growing Up", a character will gain a ball of scribbles if they don't follow the instructions for hitting the brick.
    • In the "Don't Look" minigame, an annoyed scribble appears above them if a character doesn't move in time, or they look in the direction of the arrows.
  • Funny Background Event: At the end of some minigames when a winner is declared and does their victory poses, the losers are seen getting humiliated in the background. In Mario Party 6, every space-themed duel minigames will show the loser in the background floating away aimlessly in space, even at the end of Black Hole Boogie where the loser was shown getting sucked into a black hole mere seconds ago.
  • Gambit Roulette: More often than not, your plan will rely heavily on chance (e.g., the die roll) to be successful. Literally true in Goomba's Greedy Gala in 4, where you will take the path to the Star or not depending on what the roulette says, though you can manipulate the roulette so it most likely gets you in the right path by paying Goomba. In general, a very lucky roll for you might win you the game after struggling so many turns for your plan to work, and a very unlucky one will screw you over for the rest of the game.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: In the Dizzy Dancing mini-game in Superstars, there's a possibility of a softlock which results in a character endlessly walking into the record as seen here. This glitch doesn't occur in the original version of the minigame from 2.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Bowser makes peace with the playable characters and participates with them at the end of Story Mode in DS. However, this doesn't result in him becoming a playable character, which wouldn't fully happen in the series until Super.
    • 3's Story Mode still has Bowser messing with the player if they land on a Bowser Space while facing Waluigi, despite Bowser insisting they defeat Waluigi on his behalf.
  • Gangplank Galleon:
    • Pirate Land from 2, which takes place on a trio of islands connected by bridges. Landing on the Happening Spaces causes pirate ships to fire at the bridges, sending anyone on them back to the start. The characters dress up in pirate garb for this board, and the duel minigame is a fencing match.
    • Pirate Dream from 5 is a craggy coastal area with a ship wrecked next to it and crates, barrels, and digging tools lying around. Players can blast off in the ship's cannon by landing on the Happening Space next to it.
  • Ghost Leg Lottery:
    • One of the 1v3 minigames in the first game is based on this game and goes by the name of Pipe Maze. Here, the screen quickly scrolls up from the player characters at the bottom standing under a series of pipes, briefly showing the turns in the pipes until a treasure chest is revealed at the top. The solo player of the 1v3 must quickly determine which path leads to them, and select the pipe that would ultimately drop the treasure chest and its coin bounty on them. Make a wrong choice and the coins go to whoever the chest lands with.
    • In Mario Party 9, "Chain Chomp Romp" has the players recognise the minecart tracks alternating between paths, whoever chose the path leading to the cannon scores a point, and whoever doesn't get attacked.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: Super Mario Party features the 1v3 minigame "Smash and Crab" in which the three-player team must crush the remaining lone player with a hammer-wielding crab mech that looks like a Sidestepper.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser:
    • Wario is playable in nearly every game in the series with the exception of Advance; Bowser himself usually shows up only as a board effect to mess with the players, although he has been playable from time to time.
    • Other enemy characters that have been playable include Waluigi, Koopa Kid, Boo, Birdo, Dry Bones, Hammer Bro, Blooper, Koopa, Shy Guy, Kamek, Bowser Jr., Spike, and Pom Pom.
    • Mario Party 9 adds Shy Guy and Kamek/Magikoopa, causing trouble for you in 9's Story Mode.
    • Mario Party: Island Tour lets you unlock and play as Bowser Jr.
    • Bowser was playable in Mario Party 4's Beach Volley Folly mode. He becomes a fully playable character in Super Mario Party. Unlike his previous appearances, where he mostly antagonized the playable cast, Bowser is surprisingly amicable in Super Mario Party and gets Kamek to help set up the whole event. Additionally, Pom Pom makes her playable debut in the series here as well.
    • The boards usually contain enemies that Mario kills on a regular basis living relatively normal lives (in 7, Koopas and Goombas populate a peaceful town, Shy Guys run a train in 8, etc.)
    • A non-gameplay example occurs in the final cutscene of Mario Party DS's story. When you beat Bowser's final form, ultimately defeating him, the final Sky Crystal is acquired. All of them together form the then-unlocked side minigame Triangle Twisters. Despite all the hell Bowser and his son put them through in the game, Mario and co. untie the defeated evil pair and invite them to join, to which they happily accept.
  • Golden Snitch:
    • Although the first game's Mini-Game Star was probably going to go to someone already in the lead, the randomization of the types of Bonus Stars in the later games makes it more likely that the person in last could win all three of them and take the lead. Especially in Mario Party 7 and 8, if the person had been falling behind because they were spending all their coins on Golden Mushrooms or Thrice Candy (roll three dice). Three of the possible Bonus Stars that can be awarded in both games are for spending the most on orbs/candy (and Golden Mushrooms and Thrice Candies are pretty expensive), using the most orbs/candies, and moving the most spaces, potentially giving all of them to a single player if they played their cards right. However if the person in the lead has 4 or more stars than everyone else, then getting all 3 of the bonus stars will not save any of the other 3 players.
    • Chance Time can change the fate of the game in a hurry. Try switching stars with the player in first place if you're behind.
    • The Wacky Watch in 3 can shorten or lengthen the game drastically depending on what turn it is, forcing players to start actively hunting and/or chasing down the Stars.
    • The final minigame on each board in 9 functions as this despite posing as a Comeback Mechanic. Unless you're really ahead in mini-stars, whoever wins this game is likely to have the most mini-stars.
  • Gratuitous German: Wario's "So ein Mist!" (literally "oh crap!") in the N64 installments when he loses a game, commonly misheard as "D'oh I missed!"
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Upon failing at Bobbing Bow-loons in 3, the balloon keeping the character afloat will burst and the character will hang there for about one second before gravity kicks in, a la Wile E. Coyote.
  • Green Hill Zone:
    • Towering Treetop from 6 is set around a large anthropomorphic tree in a large green pasture, complete with honeybees, frogs on lily pads, and various other woodland creatures appearing as scenery. Woody and his Evil Counterpart from 3 also return as an integral board element here, and they alternate with each other every three turns.
    • Windmillville from 7 is clearly based on the Dutch countryside, featuring windmills, a sheep farm, giant flowers, and Koopas dressed in traditional Dutch garb that run the item shops. Players can pay a certain amount of coins to own the windmills on the board, which is how Stars are earned.
    • Wiggler's Garden from DS takes place in a massive garden run by Wiggler, and as such has plenty of plants and vegetables growing about. At the top of the board is a massive Piranha Plant (who also serves as the level's boss) that breathes fire on any unfortunate player that lands on the Happening Space in front of it.
    • Toad Road in 9 takes influence from the traditional grassland levels that populate the first world of most Mario platformers, and takes players across a winding dirt road through the hills of the Mushroom Kingdom. There's also a small island that has a series of ancient ruins on it where players can earn Mini-Stars, and a small forest can be seen on the left side of the board.
  • Grenade Hot Potato: Available as a battle mini-game in several versions as "Hot Bob-omb", using a Bob-omb instead of a grenade; true to the trope, you can elect to hold onto the Bob-omb instead of throwing it right away.
  • The Ground Is Lava: The 4-player minigame "Mushroom Mix-Up" in Mario Party 1 and its Mario Party 2 counterpart, "Hexagon Heat", has Toad raise a colored flag telling the players to head over to the same colored platform while the others sink into the water/lava below. If any of the players touch the water/lava, they're automatically out, and the last one standing wins the minigame.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • How to obtain some of the Solo Mode bonuses in Mario Party 6, since you never receive any hints on how to obtain them.
    • The final Board Feature reward in Mario Party DS is a Toad Statue. It shares the "This is a secret item. No hints! Do your best to find it!" message with the other hintless items, but you need to get all the collectibles of the board features that are of the Event Spaces (e.g. "Bothersome Barrel" from DK's Stone Statue) and then place first in the multiplayer games in Free Play (e.g. Step Up, Rocket Rascals) six times in order to get this.
  • Hailfire Peaks:
  • Handcar Pursuit: The first game, 2, The Top 100, and Superstars have the team mini-game "Handcar Havoc" that is a race between two handcars, where you have to coordinate with your partner to speed up, slow down, and bank around sharp corners; the first game made it possible to bank too far and fall off the track completely, meaning a draw would occur if neither team reached the finish line, while 2 does not, ensuring there will always be one winning team and one losing team (The Top 100 uses the version from 2 while Superstars uses the original version). 8 also has a two-player mini-game in this vein named "Pumper Cars".
  • Happy Dance: Bowser of all people has one in the N64 games, but whenever he's dancing, he's probably the only one happy about it.
  • Harder Than Hard: The CPU difficulty can be set above Hard to Very Hard, Super Hard, Brutal, Expert, Intense, Harder, or Master, depending on the game, which usually needs to be unlocked. The AI is clearly better at some minigames than others. 9 was the first installment to include two difficulty levels above Hard.
  • Head Desk: In the first three Mario Party games, one animation Mario might perform upon losing a Mini-Game is to slam his head into the ground. By 3 however, he immediately recoils from it in pain.
  • Hell Hotel: In 5, the "Hotel Goomba" minigame involves the players trying to make it to the top floor of a hotel populated by Goombas. As the Goombas block the paths, the player needs to punch them to move them. The first player to make it to the top floor wins.
  • Home Stage:
    • The six starting boards in the first game are named and themed after each of the six playable characters; Mario's Rainbow Castle, Luigi's Engine Room, Peach's Birthday Cake, Yoshi's Tropical Island, DK's Jungle Adventure, and Wario's Battle Canyon.
    • In 3, Waluigi has his own board with Waluigi's Island.
  • Honest John's Dealership:
    • Bowser has actual appearances on the board in the first game — anyone who passes by him automatically has to buy one of his cheap-as-free and totally-not-bogus items, which inevitably blows up in the character's face the moment they "accept" it. After wasting your time, he then takes most of your coins as payment and then does a merry dance to mock your pain. On top of that, if you don't have the money required to pay for his item, he takes everything you have. This is not the case on the last two boards, where he is a pure Whammy that will steal coins or Stars from you if you pass in front of him; the last board also changes its teleporters if you bump into Bowser. On the first game's boards that returned in Superstars, he actually can force a real item onto the player, just heavily marked up in price.
    • One of the Bowser events in 7 involves him opening a shop again as a possible Bowser Time event; pass by this shop, and Koopa Kid and Bowser force you to either buy a useless Bowser Statue (which is taken from you right away) or a Koopa Kid Orb, which is already given out as a random orb on certain spaces and adds another Koopa Kid space to the board while giving you nothing. Bowser closes shop afterwards and the store he replaced returns. Other Bowser times, he just shows up and charges around ten to twenty coins for photos that you don't get (and occasionally charges extra for it after photobombing them). The final board only has one Bowser Time event that has Bowser sink the island that currently has the Star space on it; anyone on that island is sent back to start and loses half their coins.
    • An obstacle on Kamek's Tantalizing Tower in Super is a shop run by a Toady that will not allow a player to pass it without buying an item. All items cost six coins, but the shop doesn't restock until all three items (a Dash Mushroom, Poison Mushroom, and Choice Dice Block) have been purchased.
  • Hostile Show Takeover:
    • Waluigi's Island from 3 is implied to have belonged to Luigi, and it is indeed implied that Waluigi is in the midst of taking it over. The board is even similar in layout to Luigi's Engine Room from the original.
    • In Mario Party 6, the minigame mode "Speak Up" has a tendency to be taken over by Bowser at the half-way point.
  • Human Cannonball:
    • In Wario's Battle Canyon in the original game, the players travel across the islands on the board by having the Red and Black Bob-ombs load them into cannons and shoot them. Landing on the Happening Spaces changes the positions of the cannons, so that the players can be shot to different islands.
    • One of the 1 Vs. 3 minigames in 4 is "Hide and Go Boom". Each of the three team players must choose one of four cannons to hide in (indicated by the controller buttons), while the single player is given three torches to light them. If the single player manages to shoot all three team players out of the cannons, then they win, but if at least one team player is still in a cannon when the three torches are used up, then the team wins.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Boo Spaces in the early games let you pay coins to take other people's coins or Stars. In the Goomba's Greedy Gala board in 4, after a successful attack, Goomba says "See you later! And remember, kids, stealing is wrong!"
  • Inconsistent Dub:
    • Prior to Mario Party 4, Koopa Kid went by the name of Baby Bowser. In addition, he's called Mini Bowser in European languages and Mini Koopa in Japanese.
    • The hosts of 5 are called the Star Guards instead of the Star Spirits like in their original game, and Toadies are also incorrectly referred to as Magikoopas. These were corrected in later installments.
    • Ztars retained their Japanese name in the English versions of every game they appear in except in Mario Party 6 and Mario Party 7, where they are named "Shadow Stars" and "Dark Stars" respectively.
    • The Capsules from Mario Party 5 were renamed to Orbs in Mario Party 6 and Mario Party 7.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man:
    • "Crate and Peril", a 1-vs-3 minigame featured in 6 and The Top 100, has this happen to the team of three. The solo player chases down the trio while carrying a box and sucks them into it, reducing their size in the process. The minigame proper has the player holding the crate attempt to hit the shrunken characters with Spiny shells by tilting the box to make them slide.
    • The plot of Mario Party DS, where Bowser has made all the playable characters tiny. Minigames and boards play on this theme, with one board being set inside a normal-sized pinball machine.
  • Indy Escape: One minigame in 6 titled "Granite Getaway" involves players running away from a giant boulder.
  • Insistent Terminology: Yes, those are strawberries you're planting on Peach's Birthday Cake. They are definitely not just Piranha Plants.
  • Instant Home Delivery: In 3, there's an item called the Cellular Shopper, which calls a store and lets you buy one item. There's no wait, as you get it immediately.
  • Invisible Anatomy: Zigzagged with Goomba in Super Mario Party. Sometimes it holds objects on its head, other times it grabs them using its mouth, but there are times when it can "hold" items as normal as if it has invisible hands.
  • In-Universe Game Clock:
    • In Mario Party 6, it will change between day and night every three turns, or upon triggering certain board events. When the time of day changes, prices at stores will change, routes will change, some board events will be different, and certain minigames will play differently.
    • Horror Land from 2 and Superstars also changes the time of day once every two turns, or immediately if certain board events are triggered.
  • Ironic Name: "Bowser's Lovely Lift" from 7 is certainly not lovely, given that it's an endurance match against Bowser and Koopa Kid atop a rising elevator.
  • Jack of All Stats:
    • Snifit in the duel maps from Mario Party 3 has 2 in Attack and Defense.
    • Super Mario Party has some character-specific dice fall into this, with characters like Mario and Monty Mole having low-reward, low-risk options for their own dice.
  • Jerkass: Bowser revels in ruining the partyers' good time by stealing their coins and/or stars.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bowser does show a softer side at times, occasionally playing games with the others or giving them bonuses if they're in dead-last.
  • Jump Rope Blunders:
    • Hot Rope Jump from 1, 2, and Superstars has players jump over a flaming jump rope. Players who get hit bounce away in reaction to the burn.
    • Grin and Bar It, an 8-player minigame from 7, involves the eight players jumping over a constantly rotating metallic bar, and any players who get hit by the bar are eliminated from the minigame, which continues until only one player or team is left.
    • Chump Rope from 8 has a lone player try to trip up the other three in a jump rope. Any players hit by the rope are launched off to the side, regardless of the rope's speed.
  • Jump Scare: In Mario Party DS's Hedge Honcho, you'll likely end up finding a bee on one of the leaves you're meant to rapidly clear from the screen. You're meant to leave it alone until it flies away a second later. Touching it will make it instantly fly toward the screen and sting the player character, stunning them momentarily. If you're rushing through the game and aren't careful, you could accidentally tap the bee, which could be a little bit frightening, especially if you're easily startled by bees.
  • Jungle Japes:
    • All of the DK-themed boards across the series take place in tree-filled jungle enviroments, and often incorporate elements from the Donkey Kong Country series such as Barrel Cannons.
    • Shy Guy's Jungle Jam from 4 takes place on a Shy Guy-themed jungle floor. Its main gimmick is a Shy Guy statue that, when angered by chance, floods the river in the center of the board and covers the bridges normally used to cross it for several turns.
  • Land of Tulips and Windmills: Windmillville from 7. You have the flowers, the cheery bucolic atmosphere, the windmills, and even the Koopa shepherdess is wearing traditional Dutch clothing.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: In Superstars:
    • All mini-games are available from the start, no exceptions.
    • In mini-game modes, computer players' difficulty levels cannot be set individually.
    • The Whomps in Horror Land do not talk, despite all previous appearances of Whomps in the Mario Party series portraying them as capable of speech.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The decision to allude to the smaller game system in Mario Party DS by shrinking the characters can be seen as this.
  • Lethal Lava Land:
    • A lava-based board appears in most games, where it is usually a Bowser-themed board, which means it's also likely to be a harder board than the others in some way.
    • The only game where the lava board is not a Bowser board is Magma Mine from 9, which features the characters climbing out of a crystal-filled volcano mine as magma rises up from below.
    • The Solo board Infernal Tower from 6, a tower spire sitting in lava. This is the only Bowser board in the series to not be a standard board.
    • The Bowser multiplayer mini-game "Magmagical Journey!" from 7 is set in this kind of location, requiring the characters to hop across a long stretch of platforms that sink into lava.
  • Level Ate:
    • Peach's Birthday Cake from the original game, which returns in Superstars. It takes place atop a giant pink birthday cake, with fondant figurines (or shiny plastic ones in their reappearance) of the playable cast decorating it.
    • Sweet Dream from 5, a board set across a large arrangement of cakes, tea, and ice cream.
    • Megafruit Paradise from Super Mario Party has islands shaped like a pineapple and a watermelon.
  • Level in the Clouds:
    • Mario's Rainbow Castle from the first game and Rainbow Dream from the fifth are sky-themed boards with corridors made of clouds and unique features erected over them like castles, beanstalks and toy assets. Several minigames in the series are set in the clouds as well, and the objective is usually to reach a goal before all other players while avoiding to fall into the bottom (or, alternatively, making the other players fall and be the last one standing).
    • Rules Land in 2 is a board set in the clouds, but it cannot be played as it's only used as a cinematic tutorial on how to play the game.
    • Airship Central in 10 combines this setting with Levels Take Flight, as you have to go through not only cloudy platforms (some of which also have overgrown beanstalks nearby), but also Koopa airships placed in rows. Another unique trait is that the board is played during afternoon instead of morning or midday.
    • The entirety of Island Tour takes place on the Party Islands, which float on top of clouds high in the sky. Most of the boards display this as a result.
  • The Load: The Bob-omb partners you get in King Bob-omb's Powderkeg Mine in Super. They will automatically "join" a player's party when passing a certain space, possibly forcibly replacing a more useful ally if the player is already at their max partner limit. Unlike actual partners, they leave within a few turns, do not join to help you in Team minigames, do not have their own special dice block you can use, and the bonus roll they give to your movement either adds nothing or deducts one from your total. The Bob-ombs seem to love lampshading this to the ground when they join you.
    "I sure am annoying, huh?"
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: The handheld games' Multiplayer modes are full of this, since they only use Download Play to allow 4 players to play with one copy of the game. The host player's game has to send board and minigame data to every client player every time it's called for.
  • Locomotive Level: Shy Guy's Perplex Express from 8, which takes place on a moving train consisting of five passenger cars and the locomotive where Shy Guy sells Stars. Players have to run through the train to reach the front and then return to the start by running on top of the cars, which is complicated by numerous events that can send them inside and outside of the cars or shuffle their positions around.
  • Long Song, Short Scene:
    • The track "Not Gonna Lose" in Mario Party 2 is only used in the 2 vs 2 minigame "Balloon Burst", the battle minigame "Bumper Balloon Cars", and the bonus one-player minigame "Driver's Ed". The problem with the former two is that those minigames are almost always over in less than 15 seconds, while the problem with the latter is that not many people know that the minigame even exists due to being the special minigame provided by Woody after 100% Completion of the Mini-Game Coaster and the minigame collection. Therefore, the latter half of the song is rarely heard by many players.
    • "Gaming with Bowser", the music played during Bowser minigames in Mario Party 6 and The Top 100, plays for 53 seconds before looping, but none of Bowser's minigames in 6 and Top 100 last more than 30. The music player in Options Mode is the only way to hear it in its entirety in both games.
  • The Lost Woods: 3 has Woody Woods, a forest-themed board. This board is inhabited by Monty Mole and Woody the Tree, as well as other forest creatures. Every turn, Monty pops out of his hole to switch the directions the players move. He also does this whenever a player comes to his army-like hut to pay him five coins, or lands on the nearby Happening Spaces. Woody the Tree gives players Plus Coin Fruit (which gives them five coins) or Plus Block Fruit (which allows them to roll again). The player has to decide which fruit to have by going either left of right, and if they can't, Woody will decide for them. Woody's evil counterpart will give the players Minus Coin Fruit (which takes away five coins) or Reverse Block Fruit (which makes players roll again, but backwards). Woody Woods returns in Superstars.
  • Luck-Based Mission:
    • The entire series is this to much of an extent, but Game Guy's minigames in Mario Party 3, various "Russian Roulette" style minigames in every single entry in the series, and a good deal of the board events certainly fall under this.
    • Some 2-on-2 minigames are won or lost instantly depending on if an AI opponent has a particular position or not. For example, Torpedo Targets in 2 has two two-man submarines, one player steers and the other fires torpedoes at targets. The AI always knows where the targets are even though they can't be seen due to the narrow view screen, so if an AI is piloting your sub, you've already won.
    • Goomba's Greedy Gala board form 4 has a roulette in the centre that determines which quadrant of the board you go to (although the scales can be tipped), and to progress around each quadrant, you have to win a dice-rolling game against Goomba or be sent back to Start.
    • It is a once-per-game tradition to have at least one or two completely luck-based minigames in the roster, nearly always assigned as a duel or a battle minigame to raise the stakes even higher (sometimes, but less frequently coming in standard 4-player flavors). These minigames offer the player little to no control over the outcome.
  • MacGuffin: The Stars, which are the main point in the series (9, Island Tour, and 10 use the Mini-Stars and bananas instead).
  • Macro Zone: The entirety of DS takes place in this, since everyone is shrunken down and plays on boards such as a garden, a room filled with musical instruments, a Taken for Granite Donkey Kong, a library, and inside a pinball machine.
  • Make My Monster Grow: 5's final boss has Bowser drink a potion to make himself giant.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: In-Universe in Super Mario Party, Kamek takes on the role usually fulfilled by Bowser, who is now playable, and causes bad things on the board. However, according to Toadette, he's actually a really nice host and the two develop an Odd Friendship.
  • Megamix Game: The Top 100, as its name implies, features one hundred minigames taken from the ten numbered installments of the series, with redone graphics and sometimes different controls. Superstars is similar, but also includes a selection of boards from the Nintendo 64 games.
  • Million to One Chance:
    • Winning Game Guy's Sweet Surprise with at least 32 Coins on a x32 Multiplier, or 16 Coins on a x64 Multiplier, will set you for the entire game with 999 Coins. The chances of this happening are very low (losing in the regular board will bankrupt you).
    • Mario Party 5 introduces the Miracle Capsule, which gives all the Stars of the player in first place to the player in last place. However, the huge catch is that this action (which is the most powerful single action in the series' history) requires one player to have three Miracle Capsules in their inventory to activate and the odds of getting even just one Miracle Capsule are very low. To give you an idea of how bad the odds are, most 50-Turn games will only see two Miracle Capsules appear at most.
  • Minigame Game: The very point of the series, and the Trope Codifier. Coin earnage, which determines whether players can buy stars that go towards winning the game, is primarily driven by who can win the minigames played after every turn.
  • Mighty Glacier: With introduction of Character Dice in Super, some of the dice can go really far but come with a high chance of the player not moving or losing coins. To wit:
    • Bowser's dice has a high number side, however the side effect is that the dice comes with sides of -2 coins and 1.
    • Donkey Kong's dice comes with two sides of 10 which is helpful for those trying to collect sides, but three other sides are 0 and the final side is +5 coins, giving you a 50% chance of earning any sort of coins.
    • Downplayed with Diddy Kong's dice. His dice comes with only three sides of 7, but only 2 sides are 0 and 1 side gives +2 coins.
  • Mission-Pack Sequel: With the exception of Advance, all games in the series prior to 9 fall under this trope, keeping the basic formula the same but adding new gimmicks to the boards and changing up characters, mini-games, and item systems. 10 is also this to 9, using the same vehicle and boss mechanics for each board.
  • Money for Nothing: In 8, once you buy everything at the Surprise and Minigame Wagons (or if all minigames are unlocked), your Carnival Cards will be completely useless. The same applies to the Mileage Cards from 7 and the Stars from 6.
  • Monument of Humiliation and Defeat: In Island Tour, Bowser builds a huge tower as a monument to his awesome power and locks all the fun of the other Party Islands away.
  • Multiple Endings: The Story Mode ending for 4 is different depending on which character you play as, complete with the final message reflecting that character.
  • Musical Nod:
    • The title screen theme of the first game contains part of the original Super Mario Bros. overworld theme at the end of its loop.
    • The music for Peach's Birthday Cake also contains part of the original Super Mario Bros. theme.
    • Bowser's Magma Mountain in 1 contains the starting riff used in both of the Bowser's Keep themes in Super Mario RPG.
    • "The Room Underground" from the first game is a remix of the underground theme from Super Mario Bros., as is the Option House's theme.
    • "Dodging Danger", also from the first game, is a remix of World 8 from Super Mario Bros. 3.
    • The staff roll music from the first game references the Super Mario Bros. theme.
    • The first notes of "The Blue Skies Yonder" from 2 are very similar to the beginning of the song that plays in the Princess' Secret Slide in Super Mario 64.
    • Creepy Cavern from 3 contains part of the Super Mario Bros. underground theme.
    • The main menu music from 7 is a remix of Castaway Bay from 6.
    • The BG music to the minigames "Ghost Guess" and "Pedal Power" from the first game is very similar to the map screen music from Super Mario Bros. 3's World 6.
    • The results screen music for Shroom City in Advance as well as 9 and Island Tour is a remix of the main theme from Super Mario World.
    • "In Calm Water", which plays in 5's "Submarathon", is a remix of the Super Mario Bros. underwater theme.
    • There are three remixes of the Starman theme heard throughout the series: when a player is under the effect of a Mushroom in "Toadstool Titan"/"Mush Pit" (3, the version in Top 100 and Superstars instead remixes the Mega Mushroom theme from New Super Mario Bros.), when the player is under the effect of a Metal Mushroom in Star Sprint mode (6), and when under the effect of a Star in "Cheep Cheep Leap" (10).
    • In "Bowser's Peculiar Peak," the first verses after the intro are "Koopa Road" from Super Mario 64.
    • The boards in amiibo Party from 10 use themes that correspond to the board's owner. For example, Luigi's board getting an upbeat remix of Luigi's Mansion's main theme or Rosalina's board getting the Comet Observatory from Super Mario Galaxy.
  • My Grandma Can Do Better Than You: There's a minigame on the Neon Heights board in 7 where you audition for a gunslinger role in a movie, and have to shoot the Koopa Kid targets while avoiding hitting the Toadsworth targets. Should you shoot one of the latter, the Shy Guy running the audition cuts it short and shouts, among other things, that "my DOG can do better!"
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The minigame "Face Lift" in the first Mario Party is directly based on how you can manipulate Mario's face on the title screen of Super Mario 64. The background even reads "Super Bowser 64".
    • In 2, Bowser runs around causing trouble under various alter egos like Cap'n Bowser or the Bowser Sphinx, just like in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.
    • 7 has a DK minigame called "Jump, Man". Jumpman was Mario's first name in the original Donkey Kong, which this minigame plays similarly to (Toadsworth lampshades this in the minigame's description).
    • In Superstars, when starting a game up in Woody Woods, Koopa mentions that the battle to become the Super Star is a "once in a millennium" chance, referencing that game's host, the Millenium Star (who doesn't appear in the flesh in Superstars).

    Tropes N-Z 
  • Nerf:
    • Items in general are nerfed in Mario Party 5, since players are forced to pay upfront costs to use any items on themselves. This hits Wiggler (equivalent to Magic Lamps) and Chain Chomp (equivalent to Boo Bell/Boo's Crystal Ball) capsules hard, since both of those innately require even more monetary payment on top of the upfront cost to make them useful.
    • Item shops were nerfed to a selection of three items per visit in Mario Party 6 onwards. Previously, they offered a selection of five items per visit. Some later games would return to five items for sale.
    • Duels took several progressive nerfs from 7 onwards. In games before 7, the duels' stakes are picked by the duelists before the Duel Minigame begins. In 7, the duel's consequences are randomized; the winner of the Duel Minigame must hit a block that randomly picks an outcome. Sometimes this outcome is nothing happening at all. In 8, the randomizer is reduced to a darts game, and the outcomes that can be chosen took an even greater nerf, with star exchanges being impossible in certain circumstances, although the dart boards are often populated by small coin exchange options. Super Mario Party nerfed duels even further, with only a player's Allies at stake; never coins or stars. Superstars returned to manual coin-based bets.
    • Chance Time was nerfed in different ways in 4 and 5. In 3, Chance Time had the option of allowing the receiver to steal (not switch, which is only damaging if the two players' coin and star amounts are very disparate) all of an unlucky donor's coins or stars. Both of these vanished in all future installments to close off the blatant Golden Snitch situations these made. 4 in particular changed the Chance Time to a pinball game where all options other than coin swap being obstructed by Koopa Kids. 5 went back to the old layout of Chance Time but instead nerfs it by taking measures to make it far less frequently occurring, such as Chance Time only activating by Chance Time capsules (whether by placing Chance Time spaces one by one on the board, or paying a fee to use the capsule on oneself), with no boards by default having Chance Time spaces. 6 reverted these nerfs for one last hurrah before Chance Time vanished entirely from the series from 7 until Superstars.
    • The Boo thieves you can pay to steal coins or stars from other players have been majorly nerfed in 5 and 6 before vanishing from the entire series until Super Mario Party, where its counterpart Lakitu not only reverts most of, if not all these nerfs, but offers cheaper prices for thefts.
      • In 5, since Boo is now playable, he is replaced by Chain Chomp, who does the same function. However, the barriers for use of theft capabilities have risen dramatically, since they can only be triggered by landing on a Chain Chomp space (randomly handed out and must be placed by players beforehand and must be landed on by the user; Boo thieves in previous games interrupted any players passing by them, with no need to land on a singular space) or by paying 15 coins to use a Chain Chomp orb on oneself. Additionally, the coin steal function took a severe nerf, stealing far less coins than before; Boo thieves in previous games used to regularly steal around 20 coins, but Chain Chomp struggles to steal even 10. The only leeway you get with Chain Chomp is that theft is cheaper now; coins can be stolen for free and star theft for ten coins cheaper, a price slash that returned in Super Mario Party.
      • In 6, the coin steal nerf in 5 still applies, only managing to scrape around ten coins once again. Additionally, Boo thieves in 6 can only be accessed at nighttime on two boards only (Castaway Bay and Towering Treetop).
  • New Work, Recycled Graphics: Virtually all of the games in the series with the exceptions of Advance, DS, and 9 reuse character models and animations from the previous installment for that system (i.e. 1-3, 4-8, Island Tour, Star Rush, and Top 100, and 10, Super, and Superstars), with only very minor adjustments per installment. The GameCube games in particular are very notorious in this regard, as the amount of assets reused are even more noticeable than with other games in the series (Mario Party 8, which came out on the Wii, at least introduces new animations for each character, while Superstars features new winning animations for each character while retaining other animations, including losing animations, from 10 and Super).
  • Nice Day, Deadly Night: In 6, the gameplay changes from day to night and vice-versa every three turns. By day, Donkey Kong is out, and by night, Bowser is out. By day, landing on a DK space will give you a special bonus or allow you to play a mini-game where you can earn extra coins, but by night, these become Bowser spaces. Landing on one will cause Bowser to take away either a star or coins or make you play a mini-game where you have to win in order to keep either your coins or your items. On the final board, Clockwork Castle, Donkey Kong walks around the board by day, and Bowser walks around it by night. Donkey Kong will give you a star for 20 coins if you come across him, but Bowser will take away a star if you have at least one or coins if you come across him without any stars.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In DK's Treetop Temple in 8, upon landing on a Bowser Space, Bowser will move the Star to a new location. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can be strategic to try and land on a Bowser Space if your opponents are significantly closer to the Star than you are. It's not a guaranteed thing, but Bowser might just move the Star closer to you. Averted on all the other boards, where Bowser exists only to harm anyone who comes across him.
  • Night and Day Duo: 6's hosts Brighton and Twila have a clear sun and moon motif, respectively. Brighton has a sun head and Twila a moon head, and they turn the board to either day or night, respectively, after three turns each time. They also get into an argument over which of them is more brilliant.
  • No Antagonist: In contrast to most games in the series, in Super Bowser is no longer the Big Bad, instead being another competitor in the boards who is subject to the same rules as everyone else, and he has no malicious intent- he just wants to be the Superstar, like everyone else. Kamek, one of three host of the boards, is also not malicious, instead being hired by Bowser to be an impartial judge for the title of Superstar, and while he brings bad luck to players who land on the Bad Luck Spaces, he's just doing his job.
  • No Ontological Inertia: DK destroying the Minimizer in DS by accidentally stepping on it reverts the playable characters back to normal size.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: Losing a board in 9's Solo Mode normally doesn't matter, as you'll go on to the next board regardless of who wins. However, if Shy Guy or Kamek win the board, they'll steal all the Mini-Stars to give to Bowser before vanishing, forcing the player to redo the board.
  • Obstacle Ski Course: Several mini-games take place on these, including "Avalanche!" in 4 where you have to try to outrun an avalanche.
  • Obvious Rule Patch:
    • For a while, the bonus star awards were given to people who A) collected the most coins in mini-games played, B) most coins held at any point in the game, and C) landed on the most Happening spaces. A skilled player could always get the Mini-Game Star, which would usually lead to them getting the Coin Star as well. Additional bonus categories were added, such as "most spaces traveled" or "spent the most coins on items", in addition to "most coins held at any point in the game" being removed. This was made so that there would be more diversity in playing styles and give other people a chance in winning bonus stars.
    • Chance Time was removed starting with 7 so that players would have a more fair chance of winning or catching up instead of just winning at the very last possible moment because of a luck-based event. It didn't return until Superstars, by which point it had become an iconic part of the earlier games that many players wanted to see return.
    • The Reverse Mushroom was introduced in 3 and promptly ditched in 4. It was supposed to hinder the target by forcing that player to go backwards on their next turn. However, going backwards could actually be very handy, allowing the player to go back to the Star they might have just missed, visit Boo more than once without having to go around the rest of the board, get into areas which are supposed to be inaccessible without a Skeleton Key, and, once you reached an intersection, you could choose to move in any direction but the one you came from.
    • 3 featured locked doors on one-way paths. The player could "bounce" off the door, going backwards from it back to the main path, in order to land on a different space there. Later games reverted back to locked doors only being at the start of a path, and when Woody Woods from 3 returned in Superstars, the Skeleton Key gates were reversed to prevent this from occurring.
    • The Sluggish 'Shroom Orb in 6 and the Slow 'Shroom Orb in 7 slowed the dice block down and made it count up by one as opposed to being random. Unfortunately, it turned out to be all too powerful, as it was very commonly used to get an easy 10 instead of landing on a precise space. 8 nerfed it so it could only go up to 5, although that also made it easy to get a lucky space. Superstars would buff it back up in the form of the Custom Dice Block item, which lets the user manually set a roll from 1 to 10.
    • Similar to Chance Time, the removal of Hidden Blocks was likely to prevent one person getting a lead based on a luck-based event with no way to predict. It was brought back in Super Mario Party and Hidden Blocks can also be obtained as items. Unlike the previous versions, the coin awards are slightly randomized in value and a spinner was added to show you whether you would get a Star or coins. Superstars goes back to the standard for Hidden Blocks but makes coin rewards much more common than Star rewards.
    • It was standard in earlier games to have players that lost a minigame not earning anything. In Super Mario Party, you can still earn a few coins if you lost. The only time you don't get any coins is if you come dead last in a minigame that ranks players from 1st to 4th. This rule also somewhat neuters the problem of one skilled player winning most of the minigames and winning all the coins from it while the losing players get nothing. Coin based minigames are exempt from this rule since, like in the previous titles, your winnings depend on how much you collected. Superstars also features this to an extent, mostly for returning minigames that originally ended as a draw if two or more players lasted to the end.
    • In entries that play traditionally (fixed turn count, four players move independently), there's an event held at the fifth to last turn, giving a player (usually last place) an advantage and/or changing game mechanics. Turn counts for these games are always multiples of five However, when Mario Party 7 added a mechanic where Bowser hijacks the game every five turns, the mechanics change got bumped back one round so it wouldn't take place at time same time as the Bowser event.
  • Oddball in the Series:
    • E+, Advance, DS, and the 3DS' Island Tour, and Star Rush. Not only are they the only exclusively handheld system titles prior to The Top 100 (the series' first Megamix Game), but none of their minigames appear in said title, as the focus is on the numbered, home console Party games.
    • Since every other handheld Mario Party has varying styles of gameplay, this ironically makes DS the oddball among the handheld titles for not making any major changes and maintaining the original Hudson Soft gameplay style.
    • The Japan-exclusive arcade installments are largely this as well, as aside from being developed by Capcom rather than Hudson Soft or NDcube, they also support up to 6 players in minigames and are essentially condensed versions of various home console installments.
  • One-Steve Limit: Money Belt from 6 is renamed X-Ray Payday in Superstars, likely to avoid confusion with Money Belts from 4 (which is also included in Superstars).
  • One-Winged Angel: Instead of turning red like the rest of the game's bosses, the boss battle against Bowser in 10 (not to be confused with the playable version of him in "Bowser Party") has him turn into Dry Bowser when his health reaches half. Not only that, but his attack patterns change from him riding a tank to him trying to blast you with his blue fireblasts while standing in lava. He thus ends up zig-zagging the Turns Red trope as he actually has a whopping five phases; his first four have him actually get weaker over time, and his ultimate form is much stronger.
  • Only One Save File: The first two games had only one save file. Come 3, multiple save slots were added. It reverted back to one save file starting with 9.
  • Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: In Superstars, games that require spinning the control stick come with a warning that tells you not to use your palm to spin it, which was a common practice with the original Nintendo 64 version. Doing so could lead to getting blisters or lacerations, so this notice was likely put in place to prevent any legal action from players who hurt themselves. When playing the original game on the "Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online" app, the game puts up a pop-up that tells the player not use their palms as well.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: Mario Party-e was a tabletop card game rather than a video board game like the rest of the series — however, the e-Reader could be used to play minigames like those in other Mario Party games.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: Normally, one doesn't try to lose games on purpose, but throwing a mini-game if it's 2 vs 2 can be a valid strategy so that the partner you're with doesn't get ahead in coins/stars. How your "partner" reacts to it is a different story altogether unless they're an AI character.
  • Pain to the Ass: The series is full of this. The playable cast have, among other things, gotten their butts burned, poked, stung by bees, electrocuted, bitten, swiped by Bowser's claws, hit by torpedoes, whacked by giant flippers, and roasted while being shot out of cannons or blown up by Bob-ombs over the course of the series.
  • Palmtree Panic:
    • Yoshi's Tropical Island from 1, which returns in Superstars. It takes place on a pair of islands seperated by two 1-way Thwomp tolls covered in giant fruit, with a wrecked pirate ship nearby, and its main gimmick is a Bubba/Cheep Chomp that swaps the positions of Toad/Toadette and Bowser when landing on an event space.
    • Pirate Land from 2 combines this with Gangplank Galleon, consisting of a port town, a jungle, and a desert island, crossed between on bridges under siege by pirate ships.
    • Koopa's Seaside Soiree from 4 is a beach resort. Koopa manages the Koopa Kabana, which gets funded by passing players and destroyed by tidal waves, and Ukiki monkeys complicate the junctions by throwing down banana peels that make players randomly slip.
    • Castaway Bay from 6, a linear trip across various islands that leads to either DK's boat, where he'll sell a Star, or Bowser's boat, where he'll take one away. Like Mario's Rainbow Castle from the first game, the two can switch positions as events occur.
    • Goomba's Booty Boardwalk from 8, a one-way board across islands and ports that leads to Captain Goomba's ship, where he gives away Stars for free before returning them to the start.
    • Blooper Beach from 9, which takes place on a boat across water instead of on land, and sees the players' boat pursuing a Dolphin to get Mini-Stars or outrunning a Sushi shark to avoid losing them. The board's bosses are Cheep Cheep and Blooper.
    • Megafruit Paradise from Super Mario Party takes place across four islands, with two of them being sandy beaches and two of them being giant slices of fruit.
  • Parasol Parachute: In Mario Party 3, there is a minigame called "Parasol Plummet", where the players have to use parasols as parachutes, causing them to float down while avoiding hammers and grabbing coins.
  • Pet the Dog: Under various circumstances, if you end up losing coins to Bowser but have no coins at all to give him, he feels sorry for you and gives you a few coins out of pity.
  • Pinball Zone: Bowser's Pinball Machine from DS, where players will get knocked around by flippers and bumpers to either reach the Star Zone (letting them get 1-3 Stars) or the Bowser Zone (where they risk losing everything from Bowser's Zero Flame).
  • Player Elimination: Many mini-games involve players being eliminated, with the last one remaining winning.
  • Portable Hole:
    • Losing the dice-rolling minigame against Goomba in the Goomba's Greedy Gala board in 4 causes a hole to appear out of nowhere below your character and spit you back to the Start.
    • In 7, landing on a Bowser Space has Bowser summon an expanding hole below your character that drops them back at the starting area of the board, where the Koopa King hosts his event. Once he's done, Bowser summons another hole to drop them back at the space they came from. This hole returns in Superstars, transporting the victim to Bowser's turf for his roulette.
  • Power Floats: As usual, Boo, Blooper, and Rosalina are always seen floating, though they gain no gameplay advantages because of it. This is most notable in Magma Meltdown from 10, where, despite visibly floating over the platforms, Rosalina will still sink into the lava with them and get her butt burned.
  • Precision F-Strike: In one of the rare instances of profanity being used in a Mario game, whenever something bad happens to Wario in 1 and 2, he will say "SO EIN MIST!", which roughly translates to "Holy crap!" It also counts as a Foreign Cuss Word.
  • Press X to Die: If you reach a Star with enough coins to afford it, you can opt to pass it up. There is close to zero reason for a player to ever want to do this, considering that they're the coupons you need to win in the first place. A player might find a very specific situational circumstance in which this could be advantageous, but generally most players would wonder why they even bothered making getting the star a yes-or-no option at all.
  • Production Foreshadowing: Mario Party 10 launched alongside the Super Mario line of amiibo, which included Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, and Toad. In-game, the first five characters always use these specific designs regardless of whether their Super Smash Bros. figures are used. Oddly, this also applied to Wario, Donkey Kong, and Rosalina, despite only having figures for the Super Smash Bros. line at the time. The following year, Star Rush was announced, as well as a second wave of Super Mario amiibo that includes the Wario, Donkey Kong, and Rosalina figures from Mario Party 10.
  • Proper Tights with a Skirt: Princess Peach wore white tights under her trademark pink dress during the N64 games. Of course, it was only visible to the naked eye during her twirl animation under most circumstances—the best place to spot it in real time would be during the intro cutscene in 1. Daisy also wears tights under her dress in 3 as well, given her model is a modified version of Peach's.
  • Promoted to Playable:
    • Bowser gets this in three different ways:
      • The Beach Volley Folley minigame from 4 features him as a playable character (the version featured in 5, Top 100, and Superstars do not, however), as does Super Duel Mode from 5.
      • "Bowser Party" in Mario Party 10 is a special game mode in which the player controlling the Wii U GamePad plays as Bowser against four other players.
      • After years of being a non-playable Big Bad or restricted to certain minigames, Super Mario Party promotes Bowser to a standard playable character who can play the same modes as everyone else. The very next game turns him into the Big Bad again, however.
    • Toad went from handing out stars in the first four games to becoming playable in Mario Party 5. He has reverted back to his role of host in Top 100, however.
    • After their species serving major or minor roles depending on the game for many years, a Koopa Troopa and a Shy Guy became a playable character in Mario Party 9, although they both went back to supporting characters in following games in the series until Super Mario Party.
    • The most Goombas did in the series was serve as characters in minigames. After 20 years of that, a Goomba finally became playable in Super Mario Party.
    • Boos usually served as thieves for hire in the earlier games, allowing you to steal stars or coins from other players. A Boo became a playable character in Mario Party 5 and it stayed that way until Mario Party DS where they became a supporting characters again. A Boo became playable once again in Mario Party: Island Tour only for them all to become supporting characters again in Mario Party 10, and playable once again in Super Mario Party.
    • After having on-and-off appearances as a supporting character, Kamek became a playable character in Mario Party 9, but that was the only game in which he was playable.
    • Donkey Kong, after being Demoted to Extra in Mario Party 5, is playable once again starting with Mario Party 10, although he returns to a supporting role in Top 100, only to return as a playable character in Super.
    • Spike and Rosalina, who were a miniboss in 9 and a cameo in Island Tour respectively, are also playable in 10, with Rosalina being playable in all games afterwards.
    • Diddy Kong is playable in Star Rush and Super after being a board host in DS and a "miniboss" in 9.
  • Pun-Based Title: The names of most minigames are heavily pun-based, especially in the international versions.
  • Puppy-Dog Eyes: In the ending cutscene to 4, your character is seen with these following the reveal of their constellation in the sky.
  • Puzzle Boss: Many bosses in Mario Party DS. Also some of the bosses from 9, with King Boo being the most obvious example as his fight is a match-three puzzle game.
  • Quip to Black: "Seer Terror", an unlockable Mario Party 6 minigame, consists almost entirely of Bowser making bad things happen to you and making witty remarks in the guise of fortunes. "You'll feel crushed by stress!" he'll say after you're crushed by a Thwomp.
  • Random Number God:
    • Chance Time is usually the moment where luck decides who gets ahead and who gets screwed over, either slightly (Coins) or royally (Stars).
    • Players are guaranteed to hold Game Guy's name in great fear and contempt, as his Mini-games in 3 tend to cheat and rob them of their hard-earned coins more often than not.
  • Reality Warper: Kamek in DS is the one who teleports everyone away to Wiggler's Garden at the beginning, and he also seems to have some Domain Holder-style control over the aptly named Kamek's Library (particularly in his boss battle).
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Bowser Pad in Advance. It's decorated in pink and purple, and Bowser asks you to get him a ring, a necklace, or a bracelet.
  • Remilitarized Zone: Wario's Battle Canyon from the first game, depicting a Bob-Omb warzone where players get around by being blasted out of cannons.
  • Replay Mode:
    • Each and every game has a Free Play mode to get into the unlocked minigames without having to play Story Mode, Party Mode, or any of the other special minigame modes. Some modes also mix it up by making you win minigames to reach a goal, such as Step It Up from DS and 9, or to get the most points within the minigames, such as Decathlon Castle from 7. Later games added boss minigames into the mix, and Top 100 and Superstars feature a large collection of minigames from across the series' history.
    • DS allows you to rewatch any of the story cutscenes you've seen before in the Gallery.
  • The Reveal: The announcement of the Superstar at the end of a Mario Party 2 game is set up like this. During the final score tally, Red Koopa appears to warn the players that Bowser's up to no good, and they rush off to confront him. The game then cuts to Bowser causing mischief, only to be interrupted by a silhouetted figure, which is revealed to be the Superstar.
  • Revisiting the Roots: Superstars opens up with a cutscene that reminisces how the journey to become the Super Star began with the Warp Pipe in Mushroom Village. The game also takes many elements from the first game, such as the hub being set in the village again and the menu for setting up a Party Mode match being set inside of the pipe itself, complete with a remix of their respective themes.
  • Riddling Sphinx: In the Mystery Land board of Mario Party 2, Bowser is cast as the Bowser Sphinx (though he merely wears an Egyptian headdress and isn't winged or lionlike at all) who challenges all comers to identify a silhouette. The Superstar of the board identifies it easily. It's the Sphinx himself. Bowser also appears as the Sphinx when a Bowser Bomb or Bowser's Appearing Act is forced on the board and will ask a riddle to any player he meets (you're not going to get it right; he'll automatically strip you of all your coins if you're in his way).
  • Rise to the Challenge: One of the minigames in DS is called "Crater Crawl". In it, Mario and his friends are inside a volcano, trying to climb to the top as the lava inside it rises. Pressing the A button repeatedly makes them climb, and they also have to watch out for pillars of lava that shoot up, which are indicated by bubbles. The longer at least two players survive, the faster the lava will bubble.
  • Road-Sign Reversal: In Woody Woods in 3 and Superstars, Monty Moles pops out of holes every turn to switch the directions the players move at junctions marked by wooden arrow signs. They also do this whenever a player comes to an army-like hut to pay a mole five coins, or if they land on the nearby Happening Spaces.
  • Roll-and-Move: The board game parts of the games have you roll dice to see how many spaces you'll move. The spaces have effects like making you gain or lose coins, triggering a mini-game, giving you a chance to buy an item, or affecting the board in some way. The games also tend to feature items that can manipulate dice rolls.
  • Rule of Fun: The minigames don't give much explanation to their existence other than to let you have fun.
  • Rump Roast: Happens very frequently, both in minigames and in board events.
    • Mario Party 5's Lava Bubble capsule inflicts this to the user, or to whoever lands on the space it gets set on. It burns the player and makes them moves forward 10 spaces, skipping board events and causing them to drop any capsules they have.
    • Happens to Mario, at the hands of a fire breathing statue, in the Miracle Book page of the minigame Dizzy Rotisserie in 6. Amusingly subverted with Peach, who doesn't get her butt burned, because the statue behind her turns out to be Bowser in disguise, which shocks her.
    • Happens every turn in Island Tour's Bowser's Peculiar Peak. It's the only reason the characters even move towards the goal in the first place, where Bowser is waiting for them.
  • Sad Battle Music: The second half of the final battle in 5 and the first half in 9 feature this kind of music as the players fight Bowser.
  • Save Point: In certain games, such as Mario Party 2 (with Mini-Game Coaster) and Mario Party 7 (with King of the River), there's a mode where the player has to win minigames across worlds or sections. At the start of each world, the player reaches a space where they can save their progress, which becomes handy in such modes because the number of extra lives is limited (and one is lost upon each defeat in a minigame). In the main party sessions proper, the game either provides the option to save after every turn, or does so automatically (though some of the later games do not have the option and thus the player(s) have to keep playing until the end to record the whole party session).
  • Schmuck Banquet: Part of Bowser's plan in DS involves a party full of food, which the playable characters, along with Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, depart for. At the end of the game, after Bowser and Bowser Jr. are invited to play Triangle Twisters together with the heroes, the table does indeed get cleaned, though only DK and Diddy are shown having partaken in it.
  • Scolded for Not Buying: In the fourth game, some of the item shopkeepers will lambaste you for passing by the item shop without buying anything. Boo, for instance, will say, "What!? Why did you even come in if you're not going to buy anything!? What a waste of time!"
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the rare event that the Bowser Roulette actually stops on a good thing (such as 10,000 Coin Present) in the first three games and Superstars, Bowser will stand there for a second... and then run away.
  • Separated by a Common Language: In Shy Guy's Perplex Express in 8, Kamek says, "Magikoopa magic! Turn this train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!" as he switches the train cars. Since "spastic" is a highly offensive term in the UK for someone with mental disabilities, the game was recalled in the UK shortly after release and the word was changed to "erratic" in later copies.
  • Sequential Boss: The battle with Bowser at the end of Story Mode often is this. Also, the fake Millennium Star serves as this in 3.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • A full-fledged gameplay mechanic. If certain minigames end in a draw or tie, nobody gets paid any coins. If the draw occurs in a Duel Minigame, the duel is cancelled out and everyone involved is refunded.
    • With decent players, an average game of "The Beat Goes On" from 3 consists of over three minutes of pressing the same buttons as the previous players and no one receiving anything for it.
    • The Story Mode for 3 ends with the Millennium Star admitting he's actually a hoax and flying away, and the hero collapses in despair, believing their entire journey was a wasted effort; but then the true Millennium Star appears out of Tumble's head, revealing they had been watching the player the whole time, and promises to make them the true Superstar.
    • In Mario Party: Island Tour, when the character reaches the top of Bowser's Tower, Bowser will reveal that the destroyed Bowser was a decoy and then proceed to knock the character off the tower, saying that they can come back any time. Yes, this even includes Bowser Jr..
    • It's possible for a Rocket Rascals match in DS to end with nobody reaching the center, and thus there being no winner.
  • She's a Man in Japan: Brighton is male and Twila is female in all versions of Mario Party 6 aside from German where they switch genders. This is because, unlike in most languages with grammatical gender, the sun uses feminine pronouns and the moon uses masculine pronouns in German.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Western Land in 2, Spiny Desert in 3, and Pyramid Park in 7. Western Land breaks the trend of desert levels in Mario games in that it has Wild West motifs instead of Middle East ones. The latter two are thematically more familiar in this sense, but while Spiny Desert plays like most boards in the series (its only oddity is that, despite its name, it doesn't feature any actual Spinies), Pyramid Park breaks the gameplay style by featuring Chain Chomps paid to steal the rivals' stars (as all players already have them at hand since the start of the party session).
  • Shooting Gallery: In Mario Party 7, one board-specific mini-game in Neon Heights has your character partake in this kind of game for the filming of a western movie. You earn coins for every Koopa Kid target you shoot, but if you shoot a Toadsworth target, the minigame ends and you'll be left with nothing other than a scolding from the Shy Guy running the minigame.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Dry Bones & Hammer Bro's team name in 8 is What-The-Deuce.
    • When you pass by the milk bar in Western Land in 2, you have the option of inviting the other players to a hootenanny (with the potential of setting them back from getting a star before you can). If you refuse, the Wiggler running the bar will say "Y'all come back now, y'hear?"
    • In Bowser's Warped Orbit in 8, Bowser shouts "Let's do the crime warp again!" before swapping the direction of the board.
    • In 8, in King Boo's Haunted Hideaway, the effect of Bowser's space is described as "resident upheaval".
    • In 8, if the player comes in during a Big Bargain Sale at Toadie's Tooth Decay, the Toadie running the shop will proclaim that they sell "Dirty deeds dirt cheap".
  • Signature Move: In early games, each member of the main cast favored a specific item, which served as both mild characterization and an influence on the AI's gameplay-style.
    • For Mario, it's the Mushroom, allowing him to double his full range of possible moves in any given turn.
    • For Luigi, it's the Skeleton Key, which allowed access to certain alternate paths with shortcuts or special events.
    • For Peach, it's the Plunder Chest, which allowed her to help herself to the items held by other players.
    • For Yoshi, it's the Warp Pipe, which swapped his location with another player's, chosen at random.
    • For Wario, it's the Dueling Glove, which allowed the user to wager both his and an opponent's coins on a mini-game.
    • For DK, it's the Bowser Bombnote , apparently because he figured he could take him in a fight.
    • For Daisy, it's the Cellular Shopper, which let her buy items remotely.
    • For Waluigi, it's the Poison Mushroom, which allowed him to sabotage his opponents' mobility or dramatically increase the odds of landing on certain spaces by using it on himself by preventing them from rolling any higher than a 3 on their next turn.
  • Skeleton Key: An item of this name found in 2 and 3, and allows one to access certain paths that often have shortcuts or unique events. The key is a living being and talks to the player when they approach a gate.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
    • Chilly Waters from 3 is a snowy land inhabited by penguins and Mr. Blizzards. A giant Mr. Blizzard sometimes throws snowballs at the players, forcing them to run if they fail to jump over it. There is also thin ice in the middle of the board that cracks if two players land on it at the same time, an event whose likelihood is increased by the fact that players have a chance of slipping on the ice and ending their turn early there.
    • Snowflake Lake from 6 has a snowball event similar to the one in Chilly Waters, but with no way to dodge it. It also features an ice rink in the middle with different ? Space minigames depending on the time of day: an ice-skating game during the day, and a Snowball Fight at night.
  • The Smurfette Principle: In the first game and 2, Peach is the only female playable character. Averted with the rest of the series when Daisy was added as a playable character in 3 onwards, and since then Birdo, Toadette, Rosalina, and Pom-Pom have made playable appearances as well.
  • Snowy Sleigh Bells: The theme that plays on the Chilly Waters board in 3 has sleigh bells ringing throughout the entire song.
  • Solar and Lunar: The hosts of 6, Brighton and Twila, are anthropomorphized versions of the Sun and Moon, and their motifs tie in to the game's day-and-night theme.
  • Songs in the Key of Panic: In all games starting with Star Rush, the board's music changes to a frantic remix in the last few turns of the game (or, in the case of Star Rush's Toad Scramble, when the last boss appears).
  • Sore Loser:
    • The characters are always completely devastated whenever they lose a minigame, lose three measly coins to a red space while they still have tons, miss their chance at getting a star (and when they get downgraded from one of their rankings as a result), and so on. Characters like Wario and Waluigi doing this makes sense due them being bad sports to begin with, but seeing characters like Yoshi, Luigi, or Peach throwing a tantrum over losing a minigame can seem extremely Out of Character and rather childish.
    • Bowser acts this way in certain games if things don't go his way. For example, in the first game, if everyone wins one of his minigames (mainly Bowser's Face Lift), he will still take the amount of coins from the player that landed on his space in the first place. In 5, if Bowser is stopped by the rare chance of Donkey Kong appearing, he will still take 20 coins from the player, saying he isn't leaving without something.
  • Space Zone:
    • Eternal Star in the first game. It takes place on a giant star up in space that Bowser has broken apart and vandalized with graffiti. The board is unlocked after Bowser steals every Star the heroes had collected across their parties, meaning they have to navigate the board's teleporter maze and challenge Koopa Kids to dice-rolling minigames to retrieve them.
    • Space Land in 2, which returns in Superstars. It takes place on a space station being attacked by Black Hole Bowser, who fires a Bowser Coin Beam across the station after charging up his satellite. Also present are Thwomp/Whomp criminals and Snifit Patrol police, who chase each other around in flying cars while pushing away any players on their path.
    • Future Dream in 5, a trio of space stations that are traveled between using rocket ships and air taxis.
    • The Solo board Astro Avenue in 6, a series of tiny planets and space stations where UFOs can carry the player forward.
    • Bowser's Warped Orbit in 8, a space station parked above a star, with paths and directions controlled by Bowser. It serves as the Star-stealing board of the game, with players using special candy to attack other players as they pass by.
    • Bowser Station in 9, another Bowser-themed space station that players fly above on a spaceship. They can take detours to nearby colonies for bonuses in-between the boss fights with Bowser Jr. and Bowser.
    • Rocket Road in Island Tour, a Super Mario Galaxy-themed board where players acquire Booster items to race to the finish line.
  • Sphere Factor: The Trope Namer comes from 7, where teams of two push a giant ball to the finish line. Better examples would be Bumper Balls from 1 and 2, and Flatiator from 5, where players actually travel atop the balls to attack other players.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • Wii Party, a party series that uses Mii characters instead of Mario characters. The developers of the Wii Party series, NDcube, took over development for Mario Party after Hudson Soft was acquired by Konami and subsequently dissolved.
    • Mario Party itself is somewhat of a successor to the little-known Japanese game Getter Love!!. Both are board games in video game format, have mini-games, have items with which you can get ahead or slow down your opponents, and were (initially in Mario Party's case) developed by Hudson Soft.
  • Square-Cube Law: The 1-vs-3 minigame "Squared Away" from 5 is surprisingly built around this. The solo player is a tiny, quick cube and the team of three players are large, slow cubes that are trying to crush the tiny cube.
  • Static Role, Exchangeable Character: In Mario Party 3, each character has a predetermined stamp aligned with them, except for Luigi, who will fill in the hole in the cast if you choose one of the other characters. For example, Mario's proper stamp is Courage, but if you're playing as Mario, Luigi fills in his spot in the lineup instead. This may indicate Luigi qualifying for each stamp (Wit, Strength, Courage, Kindness, and Love) while the rest of the cast only qualifies for one each.
  • The Starscream: Pulled off by Waluigi towards Bowser in Mario Party 3's Story Mode. The player is abouve to battle Bowser for the Mischief Star when Waluigi shows up having the star in his possession. He even beats up Bowser to prove a point. Bowser then demands that you avenge him and defeat Waluigi. Strangely enough, even though Bowser wants you to defeat Waluigi, he still messes with you if you land on a Bowser Space.
  • Stock Food Depictions: "Fast Food Frenzy" from DS features pancakes with syrup and butter, burgers with standard ingredients such as tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese, hot dogs with ketchup and mustard, and yellow rectangular French fries.
  • Stone Wall: Whomp is Donkey Kong's default partner in the Mario Party 3 duel maps. He has the highest amount of health but cannot attack. Koopa and Mr. Blizzard also have stronger defenses than attacks.
  • Studiopolis: 7 has Neon Heights, which takes place in a movie studio. The movies being filmed are a western film, a Sci-fi film, and a baseball film. This level's gimmick is that the Stars are hidden in one of three treasure chests, which Koopa Kid will open for ten coins. Other prizes in treasure chests will include extra coins, Bob-ombs that will take your coins away, and Dark Stars that will take your Stars away.
  • Super Title 64 Advance: Mario Party Advance and Mario Party DS are named after the systems they were released on, those systems being the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS respectively.
  • Symmetric Effect: One of the possible events that can happen upon landing on a Bowser Space is called "Bowser Revolution", in which Bowser takes everyone's coins, and splits them equally.
  • Swallowed Whole: Happens to anyone who loses the first game's Tug o' War (by a large Piranha Plant) or 3's Cheep Cheep Chase (by the titular Cheep Cheep).
  • Sweat Drop: Done in Mario Party 7 in the duel mini-game "Apes of Wrath", when the two players realize they've stolen apples from some angry Ukikis.
  • Tactical Suicide Boss:
    • Piranha Plant in DS, where you catch the projectiles he spits at you and throw them back at him. On the board itself, he simply breathes fire at you, which cannot be turned against him.
    • Bowser in his giant form in 5. He can breath fire out, and throw orbs that release shockwaves, yet keeps using orbs that leave behind rocks that can be thrown back at him after he uses his fire breath.
  • "Test Your Strength" Game: In 2 and Superstars, the board-specific (no longer the case in Superstars) mini-game in Space Land is "Hammer Slammer". This involves one of these games, with different prizes rewarded depending on how high your character sends the weight up the pole. If your character hits the target too hard, the weight will be bounced back by a spring at the top and land on the Baby Bowser (Bowser Jr. in Superstars) item at the bottom, resulting in your character getting nothing.
  • Theme Naming: In most of the games, though not all, the boards tend to follow a specific nomenclature per installment:
    • 1: [Character's] [Location], one for each of the six playable characters plus Bowser, and the location being two words. Eternal Star is the only one to break the trend.
    • 2: [Noun] Land, as a reference to the intro cutscene where everyone is arguing what they want to name their city.
    • 4: [Character's] [Adjective] [Noun], the adjective and noun being alliterative (except on Bowser's board). The character it's named after is the NPC who hosts the board (except on Bowser's board again, where it's instead Koopa Kid). The noun is also always a synonym for the word "party", to varying degrees.
    • 5: [Noun] Dream, as it takes place in the Dream Depot. The one board to break the trend, fittingly enough, is Bowser Nightmare.
    • 8: Same as 4.
    • DS: Same as 1, but with the character being an NPC, and the locations sometimes being only one word.
  • Token Evil Teammate:
    • Koopa Kid is this in 5 and 6, being a playable character despite his normal role of harassing the players.
    • Hammer Bro and Blooper in 8 serve as Bowser's lackeys in the single-player mode's final board, but are unlocked for standard play after they're beaten.
    • Shy Guy and Kamek are this for Mario Party 9, as they're working for Bowser. They are present in Story Mode as CPU characters, and if they win a board, they'll steal all the mini-stars collected in that area, forcing the player to start the board over. Much like Hammer Bro and Blooper, completing Story Mode unlocks them as regular playable characters.
  • Toy Time:
    • Toy Dream from 5 is a playplace consisting of blocks, toy houses, presents, and a model train running around the outside of the board.
    • 3 takes place within a magical toy box, and the scenery looks like what you might find in a pop-up book.
  • Trailers Always Lie: The promotional material for Mario Party 5 made it seem that the game's plot involved Mario and Bowser running for Mushroom President. The game is actually about Bowser invading the Dream Depot.
  • Trick-Taking Card Game: The minigame "Card Smarts" from 9 is a variation on this concept. Players have five seconds to choose one card from their finite hand, where whoever plays the highest (or tied for highest) each round gets a point, and the first player(s) to three points wins. This minigame is unusual for trick taking games, as players start with the same cards, hands are open, and all plays are made simultaneously, making this minigame mostly revolve around mind games.
  • Tropical Island Adventure: Yoshi's Tropical Island in the first game and Superstars, Pirate Land in Mario Party 2, Castaway Bay in Mario Party 6, Goomba's Booty Boardwalk in Mario Party 8, Blooper Beach in Mario Party 9, and Megafruit Paradise in Super Mario Party, all being Palmtree Panic levels set across a series of islands.
  • Turns Red:
    • Every single boss in Mario Party 9 gets angrier and harder to beat when they reach half health. Additionally, Wiggler literally turns red.
    • Bowser gets redder twice in Superstar Showdown from 8, adding new weapons to the Koopa Clown Car each time. In 7, at the 50th floor of Bowser's Lovely Lift, Koopa Kid will join the fight.
    • This trope gets turned on its head in 10 in Bowser's Tank Terror at first. Bowser's tank loses more of its weapons (except the main cannon) as it loses HP, until the tank is destroyed, at which point the Koopa King ditches his tank and goes One-Winged Angel to become the powerful Dry Bowser, thus exaggerating the trope overall.
  • Two Girls to a Team: With the introduction of Daisy in Mario Party 3, Peach is no longer the only female playable character. However, this means that there were only two female playable characters until Toadette and Birdo were made playable in Mario Party 6 and 7 respectively, and even then there are games like DS and Island Tour in which only Peach and Daisy are playable (with Advance being the only game since 3 where Peach was the only female playable character). Rosalina never missing a single installment ever since being made playable in 10 means that this is no longer the case, and Pom-Pom was also playable in Super as well.
  • Underground Level: Creepy Cavern from 3, an underground cave where the board is split in two, and each section is accessed through Skeleton Key gates or riding on a Whomp's mine cart.
  • Under the Sea:
    • Deep Bloober Sea from 3, a underwater board where an anglerfish can suck players in and spit them away, a Sushi in a submarine guards a junction with missiles, and a giant Blooper can move players from one side to another with its tentacles.
    • Undersea Dream from 5, a coral reef with a sunken ship embedded in it.
    • Whimsical Waters from 10, which is divided into a shallow section and a deep section and sees the partyers' submarine pass by Dragoneel Treasure spaces for a chance at earning Mini-Stars. The bosses of the board are Mega Cheep Chomp and Mega Blooper.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Whenever someone is defeated in a minigame by something lethal (for instance, one minigame in 6 has the loser sucked into a black hole), they emerge completely unharmed on the beginning of the next turn.
  • Unrealistic Black Hole: A black hole of this kind appears in the Mario Party 6 minigame Black Hole Boogie. The objective of said minigame is to mash A in order to swim away from a black hole. The loser gets sucked in, but then the black hole disappears, and they can be seen floating across the screen in the background after the minigame has ended.
  • The Unreveal: Subverted in 2. At the end of the game as Toad is about to announce the final results and the winner of the board, the red Koopa interrupts him saying Bowser is causing trouble. Then later on during the confrontation with Bowser, the character who faces him is indeed the winner of the board, and is deemed the Superstar even before his defeat.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The Miracle Capsules in 5. If the requirements are fulfilled, it takes away all of the stars of whoever's in first place and gives them to whoever's in last place. Unfortunately, meeting these requirements are almost impossible. The Miracle Capsule itself is a very rare capsule to get, and to activate its effect, a player will need three of them, taking up their entire capsule space, so chances are the game will be done before you collect enough of them. To make matters worse, since it gives the stars to the last place player regardless of who collects the capsules, there's no guarantee that collecting them will help you. More often than not, it's just wasting space in your inventory that could occupy more useful capsules.
  • Variable Player Goals: 1 vs. 3 minigames would always end in a massacre against the solo player if most of them didn't require a different objective between the solo player and the team of three.
  • Verbal Tic: In 4, the board hosts each have their own manner of talking. For instance, Boo speaks more hantingly and demanding, tending to adds creepy laughter, Goomba sounds more like an exuberant carney, and Shy Guy often adds "ums", "uhs", and "ers" due to his meek and nervous persona.
  • Versus Character Splash: One appears before the boss battles in 9, Island Tour, and 10.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • Some of the minigames are incredibly cruel and violent to the losers, who will often end up blown up, electrocuted, spirited away, chased and then trampled over by a stampede of Thwomps, chased by mallet-wielding Monty Moles, launched thousands of feet into the air, falling from great heights, frozen, mauled, burnt, drowned, crushed, trapped inside a computer, taken away by Ukikis, and even swallowed by a black hole. Likewise, the fourth-place player that doesn't get enough stars or coins in the first game also meets a similarly mean-spirited fate.
    • In 10, playing as Bowser in Bowser Party is all about bullying Team Mario and clobbering them in all sorts of cartoonishly violent ways.
  • Violation of Common Sense: Invoked in Mario Party 9 during the "Reverse Mini-Game" in a Bowser Event. You play a standard mini-game, but the objective is to lose as quickly as possible instead of trying to play the normal way. The first person to lose the game will win.
  • Walk Into Camera Obstruction: The Pirate Land stage ending movie in 2 does this with Bowser and the winning character.
  • Whammy:
    • The Bowser Spaces typically play this role by penalizing coins or stars (or both) from your total and anyone else's or adding hazards to the board.
    • Mario Party 5, 6, and 7 add the Ztar/Shadow/Dark Star to the roster. This is a black false star that will subtract a star from your total. 5's Card Party mode has a Ztar Star card that can be hidden under a real star card, and in this mode, it's possible to have a negative star total (plus it is possible to have a real Star turn into a Ztar on you; these very rarely happen, however). If there are any Ztars on the board in Card Party, they must be revealed and "awarded" to player(s) to finish the game (Card Party plays until all Star Cards on the board have been revealed). Bowser will otherwise be the one handing out the black Stars.
    • Bowser's Pinball Machine from DS has the biggest one by far: the zero flame, which entirely strips you of stars and coins.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Koopa Kid appeared in the first seven main installments of Mario Party and Mario Party Advance, but never appeared in any other game after that, even outside of the Mario Party series. Bowser Jr. would take his role starting in Mario Party DS, and appeared in every Mario Party after that.note  Bowser Jr. even takes over Koopa Kid’s role in retro minigames from the Top 100 and Superstars Mario Party installments. It is unknown why Koopa Kid (and his colored variants) has not appeared or been referenced since Mario Party 7.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Played for Laughs in Super Mario Party, where if you don't deliver on a high five when prompted to, everyone else gives your character an annoyed look.
  • Who Wants to Be "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?": Mini-Game Attack in Mario Party Advance. 15 mini-games in order to win coins, three special items (Switch, Replay, and Practice). If the player wins five games, they can win 1,000 coins, ten games results in 10,000 coins, and 100,000 coins for all fifteen games. The player can stop and quit at any time, because if they fail, they lose everything.
  • Wild Card: The Happening Star. The Coin and Mini Game stars are widely determined on skill, so it's easier to calculate who's going to get those stars. The Happening Star, on the other hand, is largely based on luck due to dice rolls determining how often a player lands on ? spaces.
  • Wild Teen Party: The commercial for the first game has some cops arriving regarding a wild party. They eventually end up arresting Mario for disruptive behavior.
    "But it's-a me, Mario!" "Yeah, yeah... Tell it to the judge."
  • Windmill Scenery: Windmillville from 7 revolves around windmills. Buying them to get stars is the main goal of the board.
  • Wingding Eyes: In 2, when the characters lose "Look Away", their heads will shrink, spin and disappear in the background. Also, their eyes will change to show their defeat. Mario for example will get the X-eyes, Donkey Kong will get spiral-eyes and Princess Peach will have black stars instead of pupils in her eyes.
  • Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The Trope Namer is a series of YouTube videos where Luigi stands around and does nothing, and the computer opponents, all set to the easiest difficulty, defeat themselves. It later expanded to include the Super Smash Bros. seriesnote  and Mario Kart 8 Deluxenote .
  • Wutai: Pagoda Peak from 7, which represents China in the game's world tour theme. The players must avoid obstacles as they climb up the mountain to reach the Koopa Master, who sells them Stars at variable prices.
  • Xanatos Gambit: If you're a good enough player, you can set up a situation in a board where all possible outcomes in the late game benefit you in one way or another. You'll have to account for the luck factor for this to work, though, and you will need full knowledge about the board and the AI's behavior (or that of the people who play with you).
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: Because of chance and the AI sometimes making more stupid or smarter moves than you predicted, your plan may be foiled several times through the game. You'll have to rectify and change your plans as you go along.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: The first Mario Party's Bowser Space version of Bash n' Cash. If the unlucky solo player manages to escape without losing a single coin to the other three players Bowser is greatly disappointed and takes fifteen coins anyway (in other words, the optimal outcome for the single player is to get hit exactly once and only lose five coins). Also, if there is a Bowser minigame where everyone wins via a four-way tie (i.e. Bowser's Face Lift), he'll still take away coins from everyone anyway.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In Island Tour, when the character reaches the top of Bowser's Tower, Bowser will reveal that the destroyed Bowser was a decoy and then proceed to knock the character off the tower, saying that they can come back any time.

 
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Waluigi Vs. Bowser

Waluigi and Bowser get into a physical fight after Bowser accuses Waluigi of copying his style with Waluigi managing to win the fight.

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