Credit to TheRunawayGuys on YouTube for the gameplay screenshots besides the one of Waluigi moving and the ones of the card events. And Credit to blueberrymuffin on TheTexturesResource for the sheet featuring all the different cards.

Today we're going to be taking a peek into Bonus Mode! This mode, hosted my Mamar, is an evolution of the Extra Room from Mario Party 4 but I personally feel it seems a lot more intentional. Where the Extra Room felt like the devs were repurposing otherwise unused minigame concepts, this mode seems more focused on replicating the idea behind Beach Volley Folley: minigames that are a bit too involved to be treated as regular minigames, but utilize the game's engine and assets in fun and interesting ways.

Bonus Mode is much less visually interesting, at least on a surface level, compared to the Extra Room. It's just a menu in front of a swirling orange background, like every other mode in the game. The real meat of the mode doesn't begin until you select one of the three available games.

Last time, I teased that we'd be covering Volleyball first. However, since the game defaults to Card Party first on the menu, I thought it only made sense to start with that.

Introduction to Card Party

Card Party is a strange little game mode that imagines Mario Party, more literally, as a physical board game. Before I even get into the actual content of this game mode, I want to put emphasis on the presentation. The game is set within a cozy study in the evening, really painting the "Game Night" feel, a smooth jazz tune plays the whole time you enjoy the atmosphere, which is always healing for the soul. And there's even cups of tea prepared. How lovely!

"Card Party" appears to be the literal in-universe name for the tabletop game you're about to play. When you're ready to play, the box opens up and reveals its contents to you. There is a deck of cards, a pair of dice, and a set of seven pawns themed after the main characters. Sadly, Boo and Koopa Kid are not accessible. This time, they both have an excuse since they're implemented into the game itself. Toad is also missing, sadly, and has no such excuse. Which I find strange because he could essily fill the awkward Donkey-Kong shaped hole in this 7 character roster.

Setup

The first thing you're asked is what length of game you'll play. Short (7x7), Starndard (8x8), Long (9x9), and Longest (10x10). This correlates to the size of the game board, the number of cards that make it up, and the number of targets you'll have to reach within it. I'll elaborate in a bit. The longest game took about 30 minutes to complete, so none of these are painful time sinks, I'd say. And the longer you play, the more likely you are to experience some of the game's rarer events. So I do recommend the Longest setting personally. But a Short game might be more your speed if you just wanna get a taste for what the game mode is like.

After deciding the board size, you'll select your characters, and then decide turn order by selecting one of four cards with a number on their reverse side. 1 goes first, 2 goes second, and so on. This actually gives you quite a big advantage because the turn order is also used when deciding your starting location. And since your starting location is the first strategic decision you get to make, I'd say it's where the game begins.

Rules

The goal of Card Party is, as you can probably guess, to obtain more Stars than your opppnents. If two players tie for first in the end, the winner will be decided by a special minigame where the two players take turns flipping cards until someone reveals one final Star Card. The game will go on indefinitely until the last star card is flipped over.

At the start of each turn, you'll roll a dice and move that many spaces. When you reach the edge of a card, the card will flip over revealing whatever lies underneath. Certain cards have special marks that correlate to different kinds of events, similar to spaces in Party Mode. But don't assume the blank cards are always empty, they, too, can hold lovely or nasty surprises.

When you roll, you can choose your direction of movement, but you cannot change your direction mid-move. For example, if you are at a junction and turn left to flip a card only to find that card doesn't actually go the direction you wanted, you are committed for the turn and cannot turn around to go the other way. However, on the following turn, you can choose to turn around freely.

Aside from rolling the dice, you can also choose to use an Item Card you have collected.

Cards

There are a variety of cards you can find throughout the game. It's important to plan your route around what can happen!

The number of cards on the board are dictated by the game length you selected at the start. Among the cards, there will be a number of Event, Item, and Star Cards equal to the number of rows and collumns distributed randomly throughout. In other words, on a Longest game, the board will be made up of a 10x10 grid of cards, or 100 cards total, with 10 star cards, 10 item cards, and 10 event cards. Likewise, a Standard Game will be made up of an 8x8 grid of 64 cards with 8 Star, Item, and Event Cards.

Path Cards

Every card will ultimately flip over and turn into a Path Card. A Path Card contains 3-5 green spaces. There will either be a turn or a wall in each of the three directions ahead of you. From the center space, you'll have to decide whicu direction you want to move. Mid-roll, you cannot turn back!

Note: Since this game uses a real die, you can typically only roll 1-6.

Though this game provides an illusion of being a physical card game, there is algorithmic logic applied to ensure the paths are connected and there are no impossible to reach islands and no dead ends. There will also never be a path that leads off the edge of the board.

You can use this knowledge to predict which paths will be available when a card is flipped. At minimum, you will know that the path will connect with all paths that lead into the card, there will always be a wall along the edge of the board, a path will never lead into a wall, and there will always be at least one path leading away from your current location. Under the right conditions, you can predict exactly where you can and can't go from a flipped card without committing to that direction!

Blank Card

The most common card type, blank cards usually only flip over to reveal a path. But as I alluded to before, every once in a while you'll be surprised by a special event!

Hidden Dice

Of these special events, you can find a hidden dice! The dice will immediately be rolled and added to your total, almost always a very good thing! In my experience, this is the most common event that can be triggered from a blank card, so it's often worthwhile to take a slight detour across an unflipped blank card in the hopes of finding a hidden dice. But make sure you bear in mind where the paths can and can't be. If you can't logically predict you'll be able to continue in the direction you want, the detour may not be worth the risk.

Bowser Card

Bowser Cards are looming, disguised among the blank spaces. They'll flip up and reveal Bowser's face. Either Bowser or Koopa Kid will emerge from the card. Koopa Kid will use a Cursed Mushroom on you and immediately end your turn. But he could also call Bowser to issue one of his events as a fake-out.

Bowser's events are much more game shaking. His Bowser Breath will send everyone on the board back to their starting positions, Item Shuffle will shuffle everyone's items around, or a Star Present where Bowser gives a Star Card to a random player only for the Star to reveal its true form as a Ztar!

After Bowser or Koopa Kid's event plays out, the Bowser Card will flip over again to reveal a Path.

These events are potentially devastating, but in my session on a 10x10 board, I didn't encounter it once, so I don't think it's paericularly common.

Star Cards

The Star Cards are your primary objective. A special event can occur when there is only one Star Card remaining, but I'll detail that further down the line.

You might assume that Star Cards are pretty straightforward. You flip a Star Card and get a Star. But there's actually a bit more variance in them than that.

When a Star Card is flipped over, it'll be added to your storage and your star count will be updated to reflect the total value of all Star Cards in your possession.

Star

The most straightforward kind of Star Card. This is worth a single star.

Double Star

A lovely reward! This card has the value of two stars instead of one!

Ztar

You definitely don't want this one. This card's value is -1. And indeed, your star total can go into the negatives! This is a nasty surprise! Believe it or not, though, the Ztar isn't necessarily an entirely bad thing.

Fakeout

These Star Cards can also fake you out. Sometimes, a Star will crack away and reveal that it's actually a Ztar in disguise! And vice versa, the Ztar can break away to reveal a Star!

Item Cards

Every once in a while, you may find yourself in a race with another player toward a target destination! At these times, it can be useful to have an Item Card!

Item Cards are marked with a Mushroom icon. Flipping them will reveal one of three different items. A playee can hold up to a maximum of three items at one time.

Mushroom

This allows you to roll a second die! Remember the way the odds work out! You're more likely to roll close to a 7 than a 2 or 12. This mushroom effect can counteract curses, so it's not necessarily a bad idea to hold onto it. I personally prefer to pop them right away, though, because they can help you combo off into getting more Stars or Items.

Cursed Mushroom

Your target is chosen by roulette--and it's a different kind of roulette than the one from Party Mode. I'm not sure if it's timeable because I wasn't actually able to get my hands on one during my session. But the target player will receive a Curse and only be able to roll a 1-3 on their next turn if they don't have a Mushroom to counteract the effects.

Warp Pipe

This item doesn't even come close to acting how you would expect (switching places with another player) or what the in-game description describes (that it "ensnares everybody"). What the Warp Pipe actually does is allow you to place it onto any blank card adjacent to the card you're currently standing on, and override whatever that path would be with a special 4-way junction with only one space in the center. Additionally, the cards adjacent to the Warp Pipe will also be flipped. This is great both for gaining knowledge and creating a shortcut by cutting two spaces off the total distance you need to traverse. Just bear in mind that warp pipe will linger for the rest of the game, so anyone behind you can potentially benefit from its effects as well.

Event Cards

Event Cards are not always very intuitve with their icons. So it's good to know what they do ahead of time. You may notice that the events that relocate you abruptly end your turn. If you're going for a happening space, you may not want to use a Mushroom, or you may want to make sure you get the most out of your roll first and hit the card at the end of your roll.

Boo

Boo will allow you to choose a target by roulette and steal a Star Card from them to give to you. Be wary, though, as you can potentially steal a Ztar Card if the target has one! Likewise, you could also potentially steal a Double Star Card for a huge advantage! You can check exactly what Star Cards each player has by pressing Start before you roll at the start of your turn.

Don't get too hasty flipping over event cards, though, because...

Red Boo

Red Boo is the reverse of Boo. He'll be grumpy when you disturb him and will lash out to steal one of your Star Cards and pass it off to a random other player. If you have a negative Star total, that may be prime time to seek out Event Cards rather than Star Cards. It's a great way to pawn these off. In my experience, Red Boos seem like the most common event.

Swap Places

Represented by two arrows forming a loop. Your placement is swapped with a random other player and your turn will end abruptly.

Send to Start

An arrow points from a green space to a black space. This card sucks you into a black hole that transports you back to your starting position and abruptly ends your turn.

Send Away

Perhaps the most confusingly designed card. It depicts a green space with four arrows pointing to four different locations. To me, this card reads that it would send every player back to start or swap everyone's places. But instead, it simply moves you to a random space on the currently-revealed board and abruptly ends your turn.

Last Card Event

When only one Star Card remains on the board, and the player currently in last place starts their turn, the Last Card Event will initiate! Mamar will givd this player a special advantage in hopes that they can make a comeback! It's important for the last place player to use their advantage carefully, because simply getting that last Star Card might only secure their loss. Instead, they'll likely want to go for Event Cards to get rid of their Ztars or steal Stars from players who are hoarding them.

A lot of the effects of the Last Card Event seem really powerful, but the harsh reality is that, at this point in the game, it's likely too little too late. Consequently, I don't recommend intentionally holding yourself back to bag this event for yourself. Especially with how many uncertainties there are. Just use this as a crutch for the occasional game that beats you down.

Star Chance

The player is given two special star dice, each has a 1-in-6 chance of landing on a Star. For each Star you roll, you'll be given a free Star Card!

Dice Bonus

For the rest of the game, the player rolls an extra die by default. A mushroom will allow them to roll three instead of two!

Stop Time

Perhaps the most powerful event. The player is given a special blue die (1-6). The number rolled is the number of free turns the player gets, nobody else gets to move until those free turns are used up.

Item Present

Perhaps the weakest event, the player is given as many item cards as they can hold. Considering Stop Time and Dice Bonus both effectively give you Mushrooms for free and have way more powerful effects, there's really no universe where you want this one.

Ending

Once the last Star Card is flipped, the game ends. The player with the most Stars wins! And if two players are tied for first, the winner will be decided by a tie breaker game. Eight cards will be placed on the table and the two players will take turns flipping cards until someone gets one last Star.

Conclusion

If I'm being entirely honest, this mode is kind of awful. No matter how much strategy you employ, win or fail is always determined by whether or not your plans work out. You can manipulate the odds a bit here and there, but it's nothing like Party Mode.

That said, there is something mysteirously alluring about this mode and its presentation that make it deeply fascinating to me. As a kid, I was enraptured by this mode and kept coming back to it again and again. If you're feeling an itch for Mario Party, but maybe just want to turn your brain off for a little bit and just enjoy a simple time with a relaxing atmosphere, it's a strange niche I'm aware, but you might find enjoyment here. I've always thought it would be lovely to play a physical version of this game, but it's all too clear it would need to be modified at least a little to actually work as a physical product.

Anyway, this is by far the most complex game in Bonus Mode, the others will be much simpler and likely will share the same post. See you next time! 🏒

This was the one that taught me I had to actually drain their health instead of just survive to capture the card RIP

It took me over 40 retries before I realized you're supposed to move opposite her to damage her while dodging the red kunai.

This one was more a knowledge check than a skill check, but I still feel like it's made me a bit better at dodging random danmaku!

Someone please explain to me why the first board of Mario Party 5 better fits the theme of a birthday party better than any board in the game entirely themed around birthdays?? I guess someone was dreaming of Mario Party 4 being a good game!

Welcome to Toy Dream! The first board of Mario Party 5! Potential Star Spaces are marked with red stars becuase Yellow was too hard to see on the bright colors. As always, Star Spaces are always Blue Spaces when not active.

I'm associating this board with Toad. Mostly because he's the most child-like character in the game. The village does remind me a bit of Toad Town from Paper Mario, too. I entertained the idea of associating Koopa Kid here because of the Mecha Bowser, but there's no more obvious choice than him for the final board and I'm kinda peeved by the causal mistake of conflating Koopa Kid with Bowser Jr. They are not at all the same character even though I don't think Mario Party acknowledges poor junior until... Island Tour? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Atmosphere [4/5]

Right away, Mario Party 5 does a much better job of utilizing 3D Space in its design. Rather than the strange, ugly catwalk design of 4, the pathways are actually built into the environment of the board itself. Not only that, but there are several levels of height your character will travel to as they navigate the board, jumping up and down ledges, climbing ladders, leaping across gaps. In general, it makes even moving from space to space have more energy than ever before.

And while I do still prefer the N64's highly detailed, pre-rendered look, this does a great job of attempting to replicate a comparable level of detail without overcrowding the visuals or making the game's performance suffer.

By nature of the game's setting in the Dream Depot, each board kind of exists as a diorama in its own little void. Unfortunately, I think this still hurts the immersion factor a bit. You're supposed to believe this is someone's dream, yet the slave is so controlled and grounded to a finite space with clearly nothing beyond. It ends up making the boards feel very "video game-y" rather than small snapshots of a larger world like in 1 and 2.

Anyway, Toy Dream is obviously rhemed around toys. Specifically, it resembles a playset with decorative blocks, toy houses, and a trainset running from the central summit to the base of the playset. The levels are arranged to resemble a small village at the foot of a mountain or a castle, created and decorated with wooden and plastic blocks.

The entire playset is resting on a cloudy floor with several large colorful building blocks in the distance before a cloudy backdrop. On the cloudy floor, there rests a toy boat, star-shaped block, a die and letter blocks as well as a birthday present by the starting platform. Going around the back, you can see some archways made of blocks as well as green and pink rings of some kind. Water tubes, maybe? Right next to these is a large recreation of Mecha Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine! I think this is the first time Sunshine's neen directly referenced in Mario Party! Mecha Bowser overlooks the lower levels of the board.

The first level of the playset features the aforementioned village. Several houses surround a central plaza, and the train runs through the village, stopping at a station near the entrance which causes this board to evoke a feeling vaguely reminiscent of Western Land. Behind the houses on the west side is a large rocking horse. On either side of the entrance is a stairway that leads up and down to and from the second level.

The second level makes up the majority of the board and overlooks the village. It is traversed by the village's rooftops. As you cross the houses on the east, cuckoo birds pop out with digital sounding chirps. Just north of the village is a stack of birthday presents. And further along is a toy car you'll jump down onto from above and a robot beside it. A stack of wooden blocks enables younto platform across to a tower with a ladder leading back down toward Level 1. There are ladders along the path connecting to Level 3.

The third level crosses over Mecha Bowser's open mouth. Quite dangerous, as you can imagine. On the opposite side, a Rocketship lies in wait. This levels mostly surrounds and supports the uppermost level with support pillars. It looks like an altar of some sort. There's a toy soldier standing up here who gives orders to other toy soldiers manning a canon. I genuinely cannot tell what's going on around him visually, but he appears to be standing in front of some kind of sharp object. Anyway, the canon is aimed at a wall of wooden blocks, ready to fire at a moments notice and bring the wall down. And there's two large ladders leading to and from the fourth level.

The fourth and smallest level rests at the very top. You would think there's something important here, but the most important level seems to be the one below. The only thing all the way up here is another train station. I really feel like the train station should be below amd up here should be some big set piece like a toy dinosaur or something.

The music leans heavily into the train, with heavy emphasis on puffy woodwinds. There's also a constant drumbeat calling to mind the imagery of toy soldiers marching along. The woodwinds are backed by an accordion as well as various simple percussion instruments like the Xylophone and Woodblock to really emphasize that childhood fantasy feel this dream has going for it.

Strategy [5/5]

Strategy in this game kind of feels like we're going back to the basics from Mario Party 1, while this game does still have items in the way of Capsules, it's not so helpful to think of strategies as much as what capsules you'll want under what conditions as it is generally unlikely you'll get exactly what you want. Instead, it's best to focus on how capsules in general can be helpful to avoid dangerous hazards, or booby trap other players.

I've outlined all the basic strategies in the introductory post, but one thing I failed to mention was about the Star Spaces: Try to avoid throwing a Capsule on a star space unless it's something you don't want to linger too long on the board. When a star appears on a star space, it automatically overwrites whatever capsule was on that space. Even when the star is relocated, the space will remain a blank blue space isntesd of regaining whatever capsule effect it had before.

Similarly, while you may be tempted to throw a capsule onto a red space to make it either more punishing or less painful, bear in mind at any point a Bowser Capsule could be tossed onto that space and permanently overwrite it for the rest of the game.

The whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys should always be considered when making decisions around capsules. Is it a high traffic area where a lot of poeole are likely to land on it? Is there a fork where you can elect to go the other way? How bad is the capsule you're throwing if you land on it? How bad is it if someone else lands on it? Is the capsule you're throwing more or less valuable than the capsule you're trying to avoid is dangerous? Who benefits most from this capsule?

None of this is unique to any board, which in turn makes discussing strategies surrounding individual boards quite difficult. But I'll do my best.

Right at the very start, there is a happening space only two spaces away. If you land on it, you'll be able to ride the train to the top of the board. Along the way, you'll play a brief minigame where you jump for coins. You'll typically come out with around 20 coins! Every board has something like this, similar to 4 where each board had some kind of displacement event that utilized 3D space and would usually enable you to collect coins, too.

This is an optional event so regardless of whether or not you want to take the train, it's a yummy happening space for a growing happening star and a healthy helping of coins for that coin star, too! As always, the three bonus stars are the secret key to winning in Mario Party. Keep track!

The first junction allows you to close the loop and return to the start faster with a 21 space circut as opposed to the second shortest 27 space route. Zoom Zike clowned on this route for quite a bit, but I've already gone over the various ways junctions are very important for this game's mechanics. If there is an especially dangerous capsule you want to avoid, or an especially helpful capsule over here, you may want to take this route to try again with a safer roll. And if the star happens to appear on that star space at the bottom, this is the quickest consistent way back to it. But do recognize you're missing out on two whole capsule machines taking this route in exchange for fewer spaces to travel. The biggest weakness is the fact that you'll be stuck on this painfully linear path for quite a while. There are far more junctions on the other routes to give you more freedom of choice.

Along the. Way, this route passes by another happening space which will cause a Clown Car jack-in-the-box to pop put and launch you to a random red or blue space around the board. You could end up anywhere including both right before the star and right after. But unlike the train, this is not an optional event and you don't get coins for it either. So this event is more than likely not beneficial to you.

If we give this route a wide berth, then we'll end up passing Mecha Bowser. If you land on its Happening Space, it'll gobble you up and launch you through a canon in its head back to the start. Since this thing isn't very far from the start, this really doesn't have much impact at all. But it will let you pass the capsule machine, train, and star space again!

Immediately after Mecha Bowser is another junction. Heading east leads you to some of the most tightly condensed star spaces in the game. There are two star spaces with only two spaces between! Not only is it possible to get two stars in a single standard roll, it's very likely you'll be able to pass both of these spaces in the same roll. Heading this route will converge with the short route from before, locking you out of the other two capsule machines, though.

The shorter route back to start from that junction is to go east, which will pass by another star space a bit further down as well as a capsule machine! The next junction is a bit silly. The east route is only one space longer but leads to another capsule machine. The choice here is a no brainer unless capsules are used to pressure you away. The west route will converge with the short path right before the three houses.

Back at the Mecha Bowser route, if you decide to head North, you'll pass by a gauntlet of three happening spaces. Landing on any of these will cause the guards to spot you and blast the wall away, knocking you down to the lower level. The point you're dropped to is only a couple of spaces away, so if you get to this junction with 3-5 spaces to go, you may as well head north and drop those extra spaces for a free happening space, just so long as the one star space you'll be skipping isn't active and you need that star.

If you pass these happening spaces, you'll pass another train station where you can ride the train back down, a star space, and your path will converge with the other right before jumping down to the car below.

As you can see, this board is mostly just a series of nested junctions where you'll diverge from the main path for goodies you see along the way, or to avoid hazards you can't risk. This is where Capsules play an integral part of your strategy. If you're in the lead, drop hazards on the paths your opponents will try to take. Discourage players from going for those capsule machines by placing highly dangerous capsules like Mr. Blizzard and Piranha Plants along the way. If you're behind, use your Capsules to cover up the most dangerlus hazards you come across. Remember that the Bubble Capsule can force players to choose their direction at junctions randomly as well as skip past star spaces and capsule machines.

And as I mentioned in the previous post, Chance Time is very common in this game. Don't get greedy with stars, I'd even say turn them down outright if you have more than a 2-3 star lead depending on your confidence with the bonus stars. And don't be afraid to spring a Piranha Plant on yourself before somebody smacks you with a Goomba and hijacks your coin lead. The most high traffic route is that starting area between where the last routes converge and the first junction diverges. This is a choke point everybody has to pass through. So if you have capsules you want landed on, throw them here. The least walked path would probably have to be the rooftops. So this can be a good place to drop beneficial capsules to tempt people into going the wrong way.

I think this board makes for a fantastic introductory board for Mario Party 5. It intuitively teaches unfamiliar players how to properly use Capsules by providing plenty of junctions to give opportunities to weigh pathing options as well as long stretches where you're committed and have to endure whatever hazards appear in front of you. It teaches you both the value of having Capsules to defend yourself as well as the value of influencing the flow of traffic by throwing them in strategic places. It also teaches you the pain of not having capsules, as the "most optimal" (shortest) route starves you of them. The only issue I have with transparency is that I wish it was more clear exactly where you would fall from the crumbling wall, and that the train event explicitly told you you could make coins from it instead of Kalmar just asking you "would you like to ride the train?"

Narrative [3/5]

To start with, the way Eldstar introduces this board is a bit ambiguous in a way I find kind of fascinating. Specifically, he describes it as "a board where the dreams of Toys come alive!"

I assume the intended meaning of this is that dreams about toys come to life here. But the specific verbage uses here could also be interpreted to refer to dreams had by the toys themselves. As if the toys are alive and conscious like in Toy Story, sleeping and dreaming when they're not being played with. Though this is probably not intended, I think it's a really cute way to imagine this board.

Anyway, let's not beat around the bush. Once again, I have to say that narrative is kind of lacking in this game. There is a story mode, but it mostly equates to Bowser jumping from board to board saying "gwahaha I'll take over this dream abd fill it with mine! You won't stop me this time!" over and over. There's little significance to the boards themselves in the Story Mode, so I won't even bother bringing it up again outside of the final board. Instead, we're stuck with what little Eldstar and Kalmar explicitly say about the board and what we can gleam from environmental storytelling.

The best I can gleam from this map is that it looks like some kind of fortress built to protect from Mecha Bowser. But with the framing that these are all toys, it's likely there isn't any real crisis going on, but thay this is simply kids imagining stories using the toys they have. The train is there to transport soldiers and supplies from the town to the fortress, and the wall of blocks works like a drawbridge. The soldiers blast it away when an invader is trying to cross and then rebuild it. Perhaps they've even already successfully fought off someone who was piloting Mecha Bowser and now the Mech is just still standing where it was last left.

Conclusion

Toy Dream is a very simple board that gives the player a lot of options and benefits greatly from the Capsule mechanic. Without Capsules, or even with only traditional items, this board would be terrible. But Capsules completely change the way you look at a board like this. You might think to yourself you'd never take a certain route, but when the wrong capsule is in the wrong place at the wrong time, you might end up kicking yourself for writing off that inferior path before. I've found this game in some ways feels a lot like Fortune Street. Over the course of the game, you'll be triggering capsules more and more and some of these capsules can be outright devastating. Imagine how soul-crushing it could be to be in first place and have Ukiki throw a Chance Capsule you've been trying to dispose of onto the board right in front of another player who immediately lands on it and swaps stars and coins with you. ASK ME HOW I KNOW HOW IT FEELS.

So over the course of the game, your pathing preferences will be altered. Yet the stars will continue spawning on the same spaces. If you want them, you'll have to navigate the potential minefield eventually. The tension can get really heavy when several capsules with the same icon are placed back to back and you start to forget which are which.

Well, that's all for now! Next time, we dream on with our heads in the clouds. See you soon! 🌈

In the vastness of the cosmos, there exists a place called Dream Depot where all people's dreams come together to create a land of dreams. This land is protected by the Seven Star Guards whose faces might look familiar if you're a fan of Mario's various RPG outings. They are: Eldstar, Misstar, Muskular, Skolar, Mamar, Kalmar, and Klevar--that's right. The Star Spirits from Paper Mario! Though... >! Twink is unfairly omitted !< . I suppose they didn't want to spoil the final twist in Paper Mario for anyone who hadn't played.

I mentioned while covering the scrapped minigame from Mario Party 4 that there must be some Paper Mario fans among Mario Party's dev team and this game really emphasizes that with the inlcusion of these otherwise fairly obscure Mario characters. Fun fact, when I was a kid, I genuinely thought these were original characters akin to Tumble and the Millenium Star because I had only played Thousand Year Door. So I was surprised years later when playing the original Paper Mario on Wii Virtual Console that these chatacters actually came from another game.

Anyway, these Star Guards decided they wanted those with the power to dream to come and visit the Dream Depot because their dreams had created this place. So they arranged many different activities and invited Mario and his friends to join the party because "nobody dreams bigger than they do!"

Similarly to Mario Parth 4, this game goes with a multiple host approach. With each Star Guard arranging their own game mode. Unlike Mario Party 4, Party Mode is only hosted by Eldstar. Each of the other Star Guards are only responsible for their own game modes, with Klevar taking the role of an informant to guide you through the various modes you can play.

We've finally arrived at Mario Party 5! Full disclosure, at some point during playing this game I got bruned out a while back, so I still haven't actually finished playing this game prior to covering it. So, you'll probably find a longer wait between updates if I catch up, I'll have to play the boards in between posts, and I'll likely only have time for that on weekends. If it comes to it, this may be where this series of mine goes into a hiatus. But I'd like to see it through to the end.

I will be playing this game on original hardware rather than emulation simply because I actually have my childhood copy and a Wii to play it. As you can imagine from that statement alone, I am significantly more nostalgic with this game than with Mario Party 4. But don't think that means I'll give this game a free pass for its sins. Upon revisiting this game for this project, I'm actually surprised by how many things I'm finding myself criticizing in my head.

These introductory posts have typically gone on for a bit too long. So this time around, I'm going to dial it back and focus primarily on features relevant to the basic Party Mode and summarize the other modes as they become relevant.

Characters

Mario Party 5 is, I would say, the first game to make substantial changes to the roster. So far, the only roster change we've seen was the addition of Waluigi and Daisy in Mario Party 3. But now, the roster features: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Waluigi, Daisy, Toad, Boo, and Koopa Kid.

That's right, three of these chatacters are newly playable and have previously been primarily tied to board events but they're now fully playable characters! I like to headcanon that Toad here is the same Toad who hosted in Mario Party 1, 2, 4, and ran the item shops in 3. Likewise, that Koopa Kid is the same one who harassed you in 2 and 4 as well as one of the multiple who appeared in 1 and 3. It only seems natural to also assume Boo is the same as the one who hosted in 4 as well. I'm less inclined to believe this one is the same as the Boos that steal Stars and Coins from before since both exist simultaneously in 4.

Technically, all three of these characters had their playable debuts in Mario Party 4. But that was only in a single mini-game. I imagine their playable status in Beach Volley Folly is a big reason they became playable in this game. It kind of begs the question, though, why Koopa and Shy Guy didn't make the cut.

Koopa Kid is definitely the most surprising additoon to the crew here, but it's really funny abd surprisingly not entirely out of character for Bowser to just treat him like the rest of the cast.

But there's one chatacter you may have noticed was notably absent from that list. Sadly, as of Mario Party 5, Donkey Kong is no longer a playable character. The reason why will become obvious a bit later in this post. But unfortunately, this is the first cut of the fully playable roster and we won't see DK return in fully playable form until much later in the series.

Though technically, >! DK is still playable in this game in a similar caveat to the hosts in 4 !<.

Capsules

This is the biggest, most polarizing aspect of Mario Party 5 I know anybody familiar with these games has probably been waiting to hear my opinions on.

The traditional item system has been complstely revamped in this game and, while I was wholly expecting to come into this game defending the Capsule system, I have to say after playing a few 50 turn games and spending so much time analyzing various strategies you can apply with items in 2-4... my feelings are mixed.

Basically, Item Shops have been replaced with eccentric-looking Capsule Machines, based on Gashapon machines. As you pass, you can get the Capsule Machine to spit out a random Capsule for you. It's optional, but the strategy of declining a free capsule will rarely be relevant.

Once obtained, a capsule can either be opened and used on yourself by spending a small fee depending on the capsule, or thrown up to 10 spaces ahead where it will indefinitely become an event space which will give the effect of the capsule to anyone who lands on it until it is overwritten. Capsules can overwrite other capsule spaces, to permanently remove events you may not want anyone to trigger, but they can only be thrown onto Red and Blue spaces. Happening Spaces, Bowser Spaces and the like cannot be overwritten by capsules.

To give an example: if you receive a Mushroom Capsule, you have the option of spending 5 coins to use that Mushroom on yourself, or throw it onto the board where anyone who lands on it will gain the Mushroom effecf on the following turn. This essentially means every item can be used both defensively and offensively, as well as potentially reused multiple times. You might use a Mushroom to move faster as you normally would, or place a Mushroom right before an event to force somebody to boost right past it. Similarly, if there's a capsule space you don't want, you can sacrifice your Mushroom capsule to coved up that space at the risk that somebody else might come along and benefit from the Mushroom you dropped.

As you can imagine, there are Capsules that are beneficial as well as Capsules that are detrimental. The aforementioned Mushroom capsule is usually beneficial to your game state as it allows you to roll higher and rolling higher gives you more options. But there are also capsules like Hammer Bro Capsule which causes the user of the capsule to lose 10 coins. Losing coins is obviously a detrimental effect, but there may be niche opportunities where losing 10 coins might make someone else the target of coin stealing. You do have the option of spending 5 coins to use the Hammer Bro Capsule on yourself to throw away an additional 10 coins. But obviously, you're going to throw this on the ground with the hope someone else will land on it and lose their coins instead.

Right away, I'm going to say I really love the layer of strategy these capsules implement. To start with, you don't need coins to get them, so anyone can get a valuable capsule without excessive luck in getting an Item Minigame. And even if you can't use the capsule on yourself, you can still throw it on the ground with the hope of landing on it, the obvious downside being you typically only have a 10% chance of landing on it and anybody else could come along and benefit from it as well. This, coupled with balancing factors involving distribution percentages based on placement and turn count make these Capsules much more of a comeback mechanic than items used to be. Normally I'd take issue with such an idea, but again, it's a party game, not a competitive game. So I think it's good to give a helping hand to players who are falling behind.

And skillful use of capsules also rewards strategic thinking. There are lots of basic statistical properties to keep in mind when using capsules. You can't throw a capsule behind you or more than 10 spaces ahead of you, so there's usually a 10% chance of landing on it. But if you throw it onto a forked path, you can elect to take the oppsite path even if you roll the same number. This makes parallel spaces much more important to keep track of (spaces that are equal spaces away from a junction) as players who arrive at a junction may use the spaces they're going to land to decide which way they want to go. If they have to choose between a Red Space and a Hammer Bro in a vacuum, they'll definitely take the Red Space. You might even sweeten the deal by throwing a Coin Block capsule on the Red Space to encourage them further to go in that direction, which might be a longer road to the star.

If you don't have a fork ahead and need to throw a capsule down, you can't avoid that 10% chance of landing on it yourself. However, if you throw it closer to your current position, you'll be more likely to pass it, so you won't have to worry about a second 10% chance the following turn. On the other hand, if you want to land on it, you'll want to throw it as close to 10 spaces away as possible so thay you're more likely to undershoot it and get a second or even third 10% chance. And of course the traditional strategies surrounding Mushrooms, Super (Golden) Mushrooms, and Cursed (Poison) Mushrooms still remain. And throwing a capsule to cover uo a dangerous capsule event is also a very important strategy to keep in mind, even if it's just replacing a bad space with a lesser evil.

Over the course of the game, more and more capsules will be thrown around and it'll be harder and harder to keep track of what space has what effect. You'll need to try and remember as much as you can, and where you can't, try and factor in all the possible effects you know the icon on the space could represent, as well as potential strategic effects each could have. For example, a Mushroom Icon could represent a Mushroom, Super Mushroom, or Cursed Mushroom. Consider the best and worst possible cases when deciding whether or not it's worth it to override the space with another capsule or to go ahead and risk or even try to land on the space using a capsule like the Cursed Mushroom.

Now for the downsides... you may have already noticed the biggest issue. If you recall, the number one reason I've praised the item system as much as I have is because it gives you a level of control over your luck in the game. No matter how bad your luck is, you can reliably get some kind of useful item from a store that can help offset your bad luck, as long as you're consistently winning minigames. But in this case, your coins only give you the option to use the Capsules you already have reliably. The capsules you get are determined entirely by luck, and no amount of skill at minigames will affect your ability to get the actual capsules you want.

"You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit."

So even though the capsules themselves introduce a cool layer of strategy, this randomness in actually obtaining them means you're gonna be trudging through a lot of unwanted garbage. So the strategy in this game boils down to doing the best you can with the cards you're dealt, rather than using your skill to offset your luck.

And because this game leans so heavily into these Capsules, a lot of events that would traditionally be built into the maps themselves are now delegated to capsules. Which does mean the board will look different every time, but it also means the boards themselves are ultimately a lot more featureless than they have traditionally been. I think you'll find me struggling to describe the boards in this game as anything more than their central gimmicks. In general, a lot of the strategy of this game comes from understanding the depth of the Capsule mechanic, strategies of which apply universally on every board.

[Originally, I had a much longer section here about the individual capsules, but I was struggling to get the post to go through. Figuring it was about post length, I'll cut it out and try to post that section in the comments. I'll make references to this section further down, so if you're curious about what I have to say, check the comments]

Board Features

Boards in Mario Party 5 are generally pretty barren, consisting almost entirely of blue and red spaces (technically renamed "plus" and "minus" spaces but... come on) with occasional happening spaces. Most boards get their identity from board-specific events. Staple board features like Boo and Banks as well as special spaces like Warp Spaces instead have a Capsule counterpart. That's not to say there's nothing new, though. Let's start with the elephant in the room.

DK Spaces

So that's where he went! At the start of every game, a random blue space is selected to become a DK Space. Unfortunately there's no DK Capsule to create more of them.

From this point on for a good while, DK assumes the role of an Anti-Bowser. More directly than how Toad used to be used. Rather than taking resources away, DK is focused on handing resources out. Just be wary that, just like Bowser events can affect everyone, DK events can also affect everyone.

DK can host many different kinds of bonuses.

The most basic is the DK Bonus, where you'll roll a dice block and receive the number of coins you roll. It could be 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 coins. As Zoom Zike humorously pointed out in his Identifying Luck video, that means all this flare can ultimately result in you getting the same as, or even less than, if you had just landed on a noemal blue space.

Then, there are DK minigames which are 4-player bonus minigames where everyone scrambles to collect bananas which DK will buy from you. A roulette at the start of the minigame similar to a Lucky Minigame in 4 will determine whether the bananas are worth 1, 2, or 3 coins each. As you can imagine, you can make some serious bank off of these!

Finally, there's arguably the most valuable reward: DK Roulette. This event has DK hit a dice block, then you hit one. If you roll higher than DK, you'll be rewarded with a free star! You will not be rewarded if you roll the same or lower.

Bowser Space

While not new, the Bowser Space has some notable changes. First, just like the DK Space, it isn't in a static location. Every time you play a board, a random red space will be selected to he a Bowser Space for that game.

The space mostly works like it did in Mario Party 4, except the annoying Koopa Kid middle man is cut out, making Bowser Minigames feel much less like a Cryptid you only ever head about but never see.

Bowser Minigames are slightly reworked, they're now 4-Player survival challenges, and anyone who fails the challenge gets the punishment. Bowser will take Coins, Capsules, or even Stars (or so Zoom Zike says, I don't believe I've seen this one), so make sure you know what's at stake and regardless, just focus on survival.

Bowser Revolution and Bowser Shuffle return, naturally, and work the same as they always have.

And Bowser Bonus sees Bowser "gift" you with a Ztar, which subtracts a star from your total! Yikes!

Bowser is a lot more openly hostile in this game, but as I've mentioned before, the abundance of Chance Time might mean it's not a bad idea to lower your star count if you find yourself with too much of a lead. It's not an entirely bad idea to intentionally trigger Bowser in the hopes he takes a Star from you. Even Bowser Revolution really isn't all that bad when you factor in you might swap coins with someone anyway.

Of course, if you have no coins, Bowser will take pity on you and give you 10 coins.

Even rarer, though, sometimes DK will drop down and attack Bowser, causing him to gst frustrated and skip his usual routine, just taking 10-20 coins from you. This rare event is only even possible to occur under certain strict circumstances. So you're really not likely to see it.

Capsule Machines

One new feature of the boards, taking the place of shops, are Capsule Machines. I mentioned them when introducing the Capsule mechanic but I figured I should note them here. You pass a Capsule Machine and can optionally receive a random Capsule for free. The kinds of capsules as well as the chances of receiving rarer capsules depends on both your placement and the turn count, with more powerful capsules being more common for players in lower placements near the end of the game. Hence, you see Chance Time pop up a lot at the end of the game.

Mini-Games

Besides the aforementioned DK and Bowser Minigames, there's not too much to talk about in the minigame department. This game features the standard faire, 4-player, 2v2, 1v3, Battle, and Duel Minigames. With some additional categories related to other game modes.

Battle Minigames

Battle Minigames are back, but rather than being accessed by a space or capsule, they happen randomly in place of a standard minigame. Other than that, they work the same as they always have.

Duel Minigames

Duel Minigames are back! They're accessed by the Duel Capsule, and I've already described how they work there. But long story short, you can duel an opponent for coins or stars. If you're dueling for Stars, you even have the option of wagering 50 coins instead of a star yourself. If you ask me, that's not actually as good of a deal as it sounds because you can simply buy two stars for 50 coins. The ability to duel for stars is actually kind of wild.

Mini-game Sets

Ever since 3, you've been able to choose between only playing "Easy" Minigames, or "All" Minigames. While 4 allowed you additionally create your own custom set. Unfortunately, Mario Party 5 strips away the Custom Set mechanic and instead gives you three additional pre-made selections of minigames because Nintendo hates fun.

Now, you have "Easy" games, "Action" games, "Skill" games, and "Goofy" games. Each of these categories have some very strange choices of minigames, both games that seem like they should be included but aren't as well ss games that seem like they shouldn't but are. I'll probably talk about this more in the actual mini-game post. But the best thing to note about these minigame sets is that they can actually be useful for tracking down those last few minigames you're missing. You can find a full list of minigames available in each set in the Options menu.

Last 5 Turns Event

During the homestretch of the game in Party Mode, Bowser will interrupt the party to host the Last 5 turns event where the last-place player will stop a roulette to determine a chaotic new rule to spice things up for the final 5 turns. Needless to say, without a Lottery Shop, there is no Raffle for a free star during this event like in 4.

In addition to the event, just like in 2 and 3, Duels will be triggered if you land on the same space as an opponent during the last 5 turns.

The possible events include...

Red and Blue Spaces x3

Red and Blue Spacds will now take or give a whopping 9 coins! This makes their contributions a lot more noticeable and intense.

All Red Spaces become Bowser Spaces

As it says on the tin. This event returns from 4.

All Red and Blue Spaces become Capsule Spaces

This is by far the most chaotic rule and, surprisingly, one of my favorites. A random capsule is placed on every space on the board, overwriting all capsules that have previously been placed.

Even though I'd normally complain about chaotic events that undermine strategies you've been developing over the course of the game, and I do still think that's an unfortunate side-effect, seeing the entire board absolutely infested with terrifying capsule spaces ensuring absolutely nowhere is safe and having no idea what a single space holds adds a certain thrill to the game that I find fascinating... and you can still use your knowledge to try and game the odds in your favor, throwing capsules into the most dangerous looking spaces in front of you. You'll end up seeing all kinds of capsules you'd normally never see on the board. And it'll be very hard to clean up everything you don't want triggered.

It's just really fun to me that you won't know whether you're going to land on a Bullet Bill or a Piranha Plant, or if you're about to hit a Bubble or Wiggler.

5 Stars

5 star spaces become active at one time. I believe every board only has 5 star spaces in this game, so this means all the star spaces will be active at all times. This renders the Tweester Capsule useless but it does make it a lot easier to exchange your coins at the end of the games.

Coming up...

Going forward from here, we're going to be covering each individual board in Party Mode, followed by an exoloration of Story Mode, then Super Duel Mode, Bonus Mode, and finally Mini-Game Mode, and finally one last look through the game as a whole and my thoughts on it.

I hope you're looking forward to it, let's Dream Big! 🚂

I've played these games since they released and have NEVER gotten a Gen 3 Lucky Egg in my life outside of the one in XD. This was the very first Chansey I caught in this run.

If you've ever wondered why they never made a physical version of Mario Party, well the answer is they have! Sort of. Released only in North America, Mario Party-e isn't a board game like you might expect, but rather more of a resource gathering card game. Not exactly the format I was expecting, yet I found it surprisingly appropriate in capturing the chaotic energy of Mario Party.

It's surprising to learn this game only released in the west because typically e-reader content was made exclusive to the Japanese market. I suppose this must've been an attempt by Nintendo of America to market the failing e-reader in the west.

This is perhaps the strangest game I'll be covering in this series. To start with, I don't own an e-reader, nor do I own this game, so sadly this isn't a game I could play without dumping 100's of dollars into this series of reddit posts and, sorry to say, I'm not doing that.

However, I did read through the rules on Super Mario Wiki and the game's instruction manual which I found online, and watched a video of all the minigames which you can find easily enough on YT yourself. And I recommend doing so because there's something genuinely charming about this game's presentation I find incredibly hilarious, especially the failure states. Some games reuse graphics from other Mario games, but there are some completely original sprites I don't think I've seen anywhere else and they're actually quite pretty. Daisy Rodeo is especially funny to me because of how absolutely unhinged it looks to see Daisy with that expression riding on a mechanical Bowser with that expression like "what the hell are you doing?!"

Technically, the e-Reader isn't actually necessary to play this game, as there is a special rule to simply toss a coin to decide the outcome of the minigames if you can't play them. But that's like turning the minigames off in the main series, not happening.

Rules

The game is playable with 2-4 players. Depending on the number of players, cards might need to be removed from the deck for balancing. But with all 4 players, you will play with all 64 cards. Each player will draw 5 cards from the deck, then on their turn they will draw one card and play or discard a card from their hand. You should always end up 5 cards in your hand.

The objective of the game is to obtain and play the three item cards: Superstar's Hat, Clothes, and Shoes, and then play the Superstar card while all three items are in play on your side of the board.

Some cards are free to play, others require you to discard coin(s) you've previously played or stolen, and some cards can be played either with a coin cost or "Free Challenge" requiring the card to be scanned in an e-reader to play a minigame on the GameBoy Advance. If you take the Free Challenge, you can circumvent having to spend coins at risk of having to uselessly discard the card if you fail the minigame. Free Challenges can only be taken if you can't cover the cost to play the card.

Cards

The cards themselves are divided into a handful of categories based primarily on their range of effects.

The deck contains 64 cards total, but item cards will be removed if less than 4 players are playing, meaning the deck will have 61 cards for 3 players, and 58 cards for 2 players.

Coins

Essentially "Lands" if you're an MTG fan. Only difference being these coins are discarded when used to play cards. Since you can only play one card each turn, including coins, and each item card costs 2 coins to play, you'll need to value this resource appropriately.

There are 24 coin cards in the deck,

There is one special bonus card that counts as two coins instead of one. But bear in mind, the double coin can also be stolen as a 2-for-1, so be wary when playing this card. This card was distributed in an issue of GamePro Magazine and I suppose would either take the place of one of the normal Coin cards or slotted into the deck boosting the total number of cards to 65, with 25 coin cards.

Item Cards

There should be one of each item card per player for a total of 12 in the deck, 9 for 3 players, and 6 got 2 players. That does mean if you have a dulicate item card, somebody else isn't going to be able to win until they steal it from someone else or recover one from the discard pile. So think twice before discarding your duplicate item cards.

These cards are the biggest obstacle to your victory. In order to win, you'll need to play, steal, or recover all three different item cards. While there is no safe place to prevent cards from being stolen, it seems like it's harder to steal in-play cards than hand cards. So try to play these items as quickly as you can before they get swiped.

Superstar Cards

There are a total of 4 Superstar Cards in the game, note that these are not removed if there are fewer players meaning you'll naturally be finding them more often if you're playing with fewer players.

The Superstar card is the ultimate win condition, playing it while you have all three item cards in play wins you the game. But it's also a powerful wild card in its own right, allowing you to steal an in-play Item card from another player.

Just be wary that the Superstar is a free card, and consequently can be salvaged from the Discard Pile and quickly turned against you.

Blocker Cards

There are a total of 5 blocker cards in the deck. Mario, Super Mario, Luigi, Super Luigi, and Donkey Kong.

These cards are played not on your turn but another player's turn. When you're targeted by an effect that would steal your cards, you can play a blocker for the cost of one coin to prevent the attack. Blockers can be used against single-targeting effects like Shy Guy, but not against game-wide effects like Toad.

Mario protects both your hand and in-play cards, Luigi protects your in-play cards, and DK protects your hand cards.

Additionally, Super Mario, Super Luigi, and DK have a secondary effect where, for 1 extra coin, you can steal a card from them instead. Interestingly enough, Blocker Cards can also be played in response to these counter effects.

When a Blocker is played, you'll also draw a new card to replenish it and ensure you still have 5 cards.

Search Cards

There are a total of 4 search cards in the deck. These allow you to search the deck or recover cards from the discard pile with varying restrictions.

For 1 coin, Princess Peach allows you to recover 1 card from the discard pile and exchange it with a card from your hand. She also comes with a Free Challenge. If you can win Cast Away Mario! you can play this card even if you lack the coins. Daisy allows you to exchange 3 cards from your hand with the top 3 cards from the deck. You can place the hand cards on top of the deck in any order you like to really mess with your opponents' draws. Daisy can be played if you're lacking coins using her Free Challenge, Daisy Rodeo.

Graceful Princess Peach costs two coins, but additionally allows you to search the entire deck for any card you like, with a secondary effect of shuffling the deck to counter any strategies Daisy might have set up. Graceful Princess Peach also comes with a Free Challenge in Mario's Mallet, making it an incredibly powerful card if you're practiced.

Lakitu is a free card that comes with a Wonder Challenge. Without the e-Reader, it will simply default to the effect on the card, playing 3 coins from the discard pile to your in-play area, which seems like a powerful effect in its own right. But when the e-reader is being used, you'll ignore what the card says and instead take its Wonder Challenge to play Lakitu's Luck which is essentially an event roulette like you'd see on a Bowser space in the core series. The roulette will determine what you get to do, including recovering 3-5 coins from the discard pile to your in-play area, recovering 1-3 items from the discard pile to your in-play area, or discarding 1 item from your in-play area. Though it's unlikely there will be three different item cards in the discard pile, this card can theoretically set you up for victory instantly! Considering you can only play one card per turn, this card netting you as many as 5 resources in play in one move seems incredibly powerful. Yeah, you run the risk of rarely wasting the turn and discarding an item card but just one negative event compared to the major benefits this card can bring, I think Lakitu is definitely one of the most powerful cards in the game. Yet we've yet to get to the most powerful effects...

Chaos Cards

This is where we get into the real Mario Party shenanigans. There are 10 Chaos Cards in total and, as the name implies, these are your powerful gamestate upsetting effects that will break friendships and cause divorce.

Most of these cards are free to play.

Toad has every player take 1 hand card at random from the player on their left. Since everyone loses 1 and gains 1, everyone will still have 5 cards.

Bob-Omb has everyone shuffle their hands into one big pile and then deal 5 cards back out to each player.

Chain Chomp is a more personal variation of Bob-Omb, where you shuffle your hand cards with one other player's.

Shy Guy allows you to exchange 1 hand card with a target's hand card at random.

Goomba allows you to swap uands with one target player.

Koopa Troopa lets you steal 1 coin from every opponent's in-play coins and play it for yourself.

Boo lets you steal 1 coin from a target player and play it for yourself.

Two Boo lets you syeal 2 coins from a target player and play them for yourself.

Yoshi costs 2 coins and allows you to take 1 in-play item card an opponent has and play it for yourself. This card has a Free Challenge in the form of Fast Feed Yoshi, which looks to be a luck game as far as I can tell.

Bowser is another Wonder Challenge card. By default, he'll force everyone, including the turn player, to discard all of their in-play coins. An absolutely brutal response to a power move like Lakitu or Koopa. But with an e-Reader, you'll instead play Spinister Bowser, another roulette with all kinds of crazy effects. Aside from everyone discarding their in-play coins, he can also cause everyone to pass their entire hands left or right, all the cards in their in-play area to the left or right, or rarely take all items currently in-play and play them for yourself.

W H A T

That last effect is like Chance Time on crack, absolutely insane. That's like if there were an event than just stole everyone's stars in core Mario Party. Granted, it's about as common as discarding an item with Lakitu, but when you have nothing to lose none of the other effects are particularly detrimental either. This is an incredibly powerful card if you're in a bad game state or somebody's about to win anyway. Bowser is free to play, so you may as well throw him out and see what happens.

Duel Cards

There are 5 Duel Cards in the deck. These allow you to challenge an opponent to a minigame where you'll compete for the better score, winner getting to steal coins for free. Typically the defending player gets no benefit other than avoiding the card's effect if they win. Wario's cards are notably higher risk as the winner gets to take an item from the loser.

Big Boo has you play the Duel Challenge Bolt From Boo. If you win, you steal all the in-play coins from the target.

Waluigi has you play Time Bomb Ticks. If you win, you get to exchange 1 card between your hands.

Super Waluigi costs 1 coin and has you instead play Waluigi's Reign. If you win, you'll exchange as many hand cards as you want with your opponent.

Wario causes each player in the duel to choose an in-play item to ante up before playing Wario's Bluff. The winner keeps gets to play all the ante cards. The biggest weakness to this card is that each player selects their ante, so they can simply choose an item card that is identical to yours if avaliable.

Super Wario, on the other hand, costs a whopping 3 coins, the most expensive cost in the game. In exchange, you and your opponent will ante up all of your Item cards in a winner-takes-all game of Balloon Burst, which seems to be another luck-based game. I can only imagine the tension when this card hits the field. Just bear in mind that this card, as powerful and expensive as it is, is not immune to being blocked by a basic Mario or Luigi.

Minigames

The minigames exist in mainly three categories. The minigames are generally very simplistic and comparable to the kinds of games you might see in side modes in WarioWare. Not quite as simple as WarioWare microgames themselves, but those expanded multiplayer versions you'll unlock throughout the game.

Free Challenge

These games are analagous to Solo games and allow you the opportunity to play a Search or Chaos card you otherwise can't afford to play because you lack the coins. You can only take the Free Challenge if you cannot afford the cost. The instructions are unclear about if or how these Free Challenges work if you're not playing with an e-Reader, so I suppose you just ignore the Free Challenge option. But if you ask me, simply tossing a coin same as Duel Challenges should be acceptable.

Cast Away Mario! accessed by Princess Peach sees Mario and Peach in a fishing boat. Peach requests a specific fish and you'll need to time an A press to catch the appropriate fish while avoiding the others.

Mario's Mallet accessed by Graceful Princess Peach has Mario and Peach standing on oppsite sides of a pipe. Goombas will pop out of the pipe and you have to press A to squish them with a mallet before they pop out and get to Peach. But be careful! Every once in a while Luigi will pop his head out covered in dirt. If you hit him, you lose the game!

Daisy's Rodeo! accessed by Daisy has her riding on a Mechanical Bowser. As the machine bucks and turns, you'll need to press L, R, and A to maintain your balance and avoid being launched off.

Fast Feed Yoshi! Accessed by Yoshi sees him standing in front of a spinning wheel of Coins and Fly Guys. Your goal is to time A-presses to extend Yoshi's tongue and catch at least two coins within three tries. The wheel spins so fast that I can't imagine this game being anything but luck at the end of the day.

Wonder Challenge

These aren't so much minigames as they are the typical roulette wheels you'd see in the core series. These are used by Lakitu and Bowser to give their cards mors chaotic, randomly decided effects.

Lucky Lakitu accessed by Lakitu has you stop a roulette to decide what effect the Lakitu card will have. It might allow you to recover up to 3 or 5 coins from the discard pile, 1, 2, or 3 item cards from the discard pile, or discard an item from your hand.

Spinister Bowser accessed by Bowser has a similar Bowser-themed roulette wheel with more of a chance time-like effect. You'll either have everyone swap hands or in-play cards with the player to their left or right, have everyone discard all of their in-play coins, or have everyone surrender all of their in-play item cards to you.

Duel Challenge

These minigames exist for the Duel Cards. Obviously analogous to Duel Minigames, these games see you and your opponent taking turns playing a simple minigame for a higher score. The outcome of these games is what determine whether or not you get what you want out of the arrangement.

Bolt from Boo accessed by Big Boo has Mario in a ghost house running from Big Boo by mashing A and B. Big Boo moves faster than you while your back is turned, so you'll have to periodically stop to look back at him causing him to retreat. Scoring well requires precise timing and cutting it really close. I always love this kind of chicken game, they're really a test of confidence and boldness directly against another player's.

Time Bomb Ticks! accessed by Waluigi is a very interesting duel. You'll be met by a board labeled with numbers from 1 to 16 shuffled in a random order. Player 1 will play as Waluigi and punch all of the numbers in acending order while the counter on a bomb increments. Once the last button is pressed, the bomb will be engaged. Player 2, Mario, will step in and try to do the same thing to disarm the bomb while the timer counts down from what Waluigi's ended at. It Mario succeeds, he wins. If not, the bomb explodes and Waluigi wins. I love this concept because even though it's just a simple race to compete for the best time, the framing where Waluigi is setting the timer and Mario has to beat the timer adds an illusion of asymmetry which does a lot for the flavor of the game.

Waluigi's Reign accessed by Super Waluigi has two players take turns controlling Mario collecting coins that fall from overhead pipes while dodging hammers. Yellow coins are worth 1, red coins are worth 5. Your turn ends when you get hit by a hammer or the timer runs out. The player with the most coins at the end of both turns wins.

Wario's Bluff accessed by Wario has two players taking turn as Wario in his car playing a more literal game of chicken, holding a to accelerate and b to break with the goal of stopping as close to the edge of the cliff as possible. The player who stops closest to the ledge wins.

Balloon Burst! accessed by Super Wario has players taking turns pumping up a balloon by holding A. The player who causes the balloon to pop loses. This one is especially tense because of how much the card costs to play and how much is potentially at stake. And I can only assume there's variance in how big the balloon can get before bursting so that it's not just a knowledge check.

Conclusion

Mario Party-e is a fascinating game to me. The board map element of Mario Party seems so integral to the experience, but this game somehow manages to capture the same energy as the games without having to keep track of game pieces on spaces.

The use of the e-Reader is especially fascinating for the time. Had the e-Reader been successful, I can realistically see a timeline where we would've seen multiple expansions out of this with new decks or new sets that swap out some cards with others. New rules or mechanics, new minigames, the list goes on.

Having not been able to actually play the game myself, I can't say with much confidence that the game works well, but on a surface level it seems like it could simultaneously be a very furstrating but also memorable experience. And isn't that just what Mario Party is about?

The e-Reader itself was a sort of predecessor of Nintendo's current strategy with NFC. It's not impossible Nintendo could one day try and bring this product back using Amiibo cards, though support for Amiibo seems to be downplayed a lot more these days compared to when they were really pushing them. The biggest cause for its failure was likely just how expensive it was. The product itself is really cool, as it's essentially an early form of DLC. Had the tech caught on, we probably would've gone on not only to see more Mario Party-e content, but perhaps even additonal content in the core Mario Party games themselves! Sadly, that's just not the world we live in.

Even still, as it stands, this seems like a really fun game to play with friends at any age. While the e-Reader isn't outright required, it does add a whole layer to the experience. I feel like the game would seem empty without it. It adds so much charm and personality to the game and the minigames are well designed to capture that tension and excitement. I highly recommend playing this game if you have access to the materials. But investing hundreds of dollars into just this? I... think I'd have to pass. But it certainly makes me wish I was one of the lucky 10 kids who grew up with an e-Reader.

Well, I think that's all we have for Mario Party-e. Next time, we're finally moving on to one of the most controversial Mario Party games in the series. I hope you look forward to it! 💭

Credit to Bearman3600 on YouTube for the character-based minigames.

When I said every Mario Party, I meant every Mario Party. This game probably technically predates Mario Party 4's official release, but I figured it would be more appropriate to explore Mario Party 4 proper first and then discuss this flash counterpart.

This is a game that I genuinely didn't know existed until I started doing research for this project on the Super Mario Wiki. I was kind of excited to cover this as obscure knowledge, but somehow shortly after I'd discovered it myself, it seems to have had a sudden surge in popularity, and now it just seems like a trend. If I had to guess, somewhere between then and now was when the game was mostly salvaged and backed up on Flashpoint up until which point I wouldn't be shocked to find it was lost media. But today, this game is easily accessible on Flashpoint's database. If you care about preservation, I recommend downloading it yourself.

Anyway, this game was originally a browser-based game you would find on the Mario Party website once upon a time. It would later go away when the website was redesigned to market Mario Party 5.

This game itself is a very, very barebones representation of Mario Party 4. Exactly the kind of thing you would expect from a flash game made to promote an upcoming video game.

Gameplay

Before the game even begins, you choose your character. All 8 chatacters playable in Mario Party 4 exist here represnted by their official art posing with an item in glorious PNG format. On the original site, you would click on the character you wanted to boot into the game with that character. In Flashpoint, the game defaults to Mario, but you can switch the parameters to boot up with any of the others.

You'll then select one of the five available boards designed after respective boards from Mario Party 4, obviously excluding Bowser's Gnarly Party. On each board, you start on the bottom right corner. You roll the dice block by clicking it in the top right and your character will move along the path. There are some strange quirks with movement in this game compared to the main game. Junctions and facilities actually count as spaces you can land on, which might mess with your expectations of where you're gonna land.

The ultimate goal of this game is... to sell Mario Party 4, I guess. There really is no goal at all, the only objective you have to work toward is to earn as many coins as you can and visit the shop to buy all the Wallpapers and Screensavers the game has to offer. These are mostly lost to time, but I seem to recall SimpleFlips was able to find at least one screensaver that was actually found and archived. If you're really curious, I'm sure you could find it. But these downloads are exactly what you'd expect. Key art of various characters over colored, patterned backgrounds.

Since there isn't a given goal, I just kept playing each board until I bought all of its shop items and had passed over every space available. Surprisingly, when you switch boards your resources stay consistent. So if you have, say, 34 coins on Toad's Board, you'll still have those 34 coins if you switch over to Shy Guy's Board.

But ultimately, the game continues endlessly until you quit. Obstacles to the end of gathering coins are only annoying inconveniences at most.

Just like the source material, there are various spaces whose functionality are at least loosely derived from what they do in the main game. You gain coins on Blue Spaces, lose coins on Red Spaces.

Mushroom Spaces will give you a Mini or Mega Mushroom at random. These are basically just completely useless trophies, and for some reason only the Mini Mushroom has any functionality at all. You can't use these mushrooms to alter your roll or anything, and the Mini Mushroom is only used like a Skeleton Key to pass through a Mini Pipe that only exists on two boards and doesn't even really have any significant value because in both instances you're skipping a shop. You would think with these being the central gimmick of MP4 they would at least emphasize their effects on the dice and give you better control of your movement. It's not like it would be hard to render the PNG of your chatacter twice or half their size and change the parameters on the dice block to roll higher or lower. And it certainly seems like every board should have a mini pipe, no?

The Happening Spaces let you play one of five minigames themed after the five hosts of Mario Party 4, any of these games can be played on any board and as far as I can tell there's no special preference in which game you get based on the board or chatacter you play. These are all solo minigames obviously enough, you'll be reward with 10 coins if you can complete their objective and you get unlimited retries until you either win or manually back out of the minigame. Humorously, the minigames are entirely optional. The game will ask if you want to play a minigame and you can simply say "no."

The Fortune Spaces allow you to play one of five "Games of Fortune." These are luck-based games that are heavily weighted in your favor. They cost coins to try and you are able to lose more coins as you play. You're only allowed to play the game three times before you're kicked out and have to land on a Fortune space again to play more, but even if you risk losing coins, you are almost guaranteed to at least turn a profit, so take full advantage, it's just about the closest thing to a thrill you'll get in this game.

Besides spaces, there are also occasional random events that can be triggered. Bowser might show up and turn random blue spaces red, and you might land on a Bob-Omb and get blasted backwards.

Finally, aside from shops there are also info booths you can pass where you'll be shown tips about features you can find in Mario Party 4. Again, this game is a thinly veiled commercial.

Boards

At the end of the day, every board in this game presents you with more or less the same obstacle, just with different flavors. Since there's no time limit, these obstacles really only serve to be an annoyance more than anything.

Toad's Game Board: Themed after Toad's Midway Madness, this is the most basic board. The teacup ride in the center will randomly send you west or north. It does not follow the same logic it did in Mario Party 4, it's entirely chosen at random. There are shops to the east and west of the outer ring and info booths to the north and south. You can easily get to both item shops without ever touching the Teacups. They only exist as a shortcut to.......? The second info booth I guess? You're skipping the first shop when you come this way so it's frankly hard to imagine why you would even want to take the teacups unless you just really want to avoid that red space.

Shy Guy's Game Board: Themed after Shy Guy's Jungle Jam, this board feeds you straight into a cave that spits you out in one of three random directions... are you starting to see a trend here? All three paths converge onto a linear route that feeds back to the start. After the three routes converge, there is an info booth and shop so you'll always pass at least one of each. There is an additional info booth on each of the possible routes as well, and a shop right after the first two routes converge, so you'll only miss it if you get spat out northward.

Koopa Troopa's Game Board: derived from Koopa's Seaside Soirée, this one is an actual improvement! Not a very high bar, I know. Once again, you're fed right into a banana junction where you'll be sent either north or south at random. Before the junction, there is an info booth you'll always pass. After both routes converge, there is another info booth and shop you'll also always pass. Both the north and south routes additionally have yet another info booth. The north route is shorter while the south route features a second shop.

Goomba's Game Board: Derived from Goomba's Greedy Gala, stop me if you've heard this before. You're fed almost immediately into a roulette that determines randomly which direction you're going. There is an info booth before the roulette and a second info booth as well as an item shop after the paths converge. There is an additional item shop you can only reach if you head south from the roulette, which then leads to another info booth after it converges with the much shorter west route, both of which are skipped by the north route. The most interesting feature of this board is the Mini-Pipe in the northwest which can only be crossed using a Mini Mushroom obtained from a Mushroom Space. Only problem...there is nothing of significant value down here and you're skipping a shop by taking it. Alright, guys.

Boo's Game Board: Derived from Boo's Haunted Bash, this board is probably the most "fun" board since it has so many junctions that actually allow you to make some kind of decision. It's also the only board with a gimmick that isn't just a junction that just spits you out in a random direction. Instead, the red bridges appear and disappear on random turns. It still requires luck to go where you want to, but at least as long as the bridges are active you get to choose which way you want to go. Unless you really value those info booths, you're really just going to want to ignore the westernmost part of the board and just pass the always-available shop this way. If you do value those info booths, you can use a mini mushroom to pass through the minipipe. You'll forego the shop in exchange for an extra info booth. If you don't take the pipe, you'll still get a different info booth. Even if you don't have that Mini-Mushroom, you can take the red bridge to still get the second info booth instead of the shop. The northern part of the board features a closed loop where you'll get stuck until a red bridge offers an escape route. But this is a blessing in disguise because there is a shop on this loop along with both kinds of minigame spaces. You can just chill here and grind out coins without ever interacting with the rest of the board. Taking the exit to the east gives you yet another shop and a chance to head back to the loop or return to the start by heading back south. This one is a very strange board, to say the least.

Minigames

The main minigames come pre-packaged with all the jank you can expect from a flash game. Expect to be caught off guard by misleading hitboxes, unclear instructions, or just an incredible lack of depth.

Toad's game - Prickly Pear Drive: Carefully navigate a spiky... "pear"? car through a maze of balloons using the arrow keys. If you pop any balloons by running into them, you'll have to start the round over. Make sure to give the walls some grace and don't cut corners too tightly. You have plenty of time to clear all three rounds for your coins so take as much time as you need.

Shy Guy's Game - Lava Leak: By far the most difficult game in the collection. A volcano is erupting and you have to block the flow of lava by clicking and dragging the boulders from the village at the base of the volcano. Each boulder will explode after a set amount of time, so you'll have to stay on top of replacing them. The lava flows shockingly fast, so this game can actually be quite stressful. Especially when you learn that the hitboxes on the boulders are incredibly misleading and you can't pick them up again after they're placed meaning you're basically SoL if the lava phases through your jank-ass hitbox. You'll win the minigame if you can outlast the timer and keep the village safe from the lava.

Koopa's Game - Surf's Up: Rhythmically mash the left and right arrow keys to keep rowing and avoid getting toppled by the wave chasing you. If you mash too carelessly, your oars will get stuck and you'll slow down. Additionally, you'll fly by several rocks and have to dodge them by pressing the up or down arrow keys to switch "lanes". Survive to the end to win.

Goomba's Game - Card Commotion: A memory match game with a simple twist that surprisingly changes up the game a lot more than I expected. Simply flip tokens and remember the inage on the reverse side. Match all the tokens within the time limit to clear the round. On rounds 2 and 3, the tokens will begin to move which makes it a lot harder to keep track of which image is where.

Boo's Game - Irksome Instruments: The main theme of Mario Partu 4 will be played by one of the shown instruments and you'll need to try and listen for which insturment was playing. 2 instruments will play together on round 2, and 3 on round 3. You'll need to identify every instrument that was playing in each round to win. This is perhaps the most simple of the main minigames, but I think it's cool they challenge you to identify instruments in a song like this. This kind of thing makes me a lot more aware of all the different layers of a song that normally goes completely unnoticed by me.

Games of Fortune

The Games or Fortune are very basic gambling games heavily with minimal buy-in and fantastic returns on investment. You can lose coins but almost every time you'll come out with a profit.

Busta Balloon - Click on a balloon to throw a dart and see your prize.

Spin Station - Spin the Roulette to see what you win!

Coin Eaters - Click on a Cheep Cheep to get the coins... I guess from its belly. To my knowledge, the size of the Cheep Cheep is irrelevant.

Pinball Fever - Not Pinball, it's Pachinko, dammit! Launch Pachinko Balls into the table and try to sink it in the holes that earn you coins.

The Fortune Cookie Crumbles - Select a Fortune Cookie and crack it open to see your prize.

Conclusion

Aand that's about it! There's really not much to talk about in regards to the game itself. But I do just want to say that even though this is a total nothing burger of a game, I can already tell you that, had I known this game existed as a kid, I definitely would've been all over it! I used to love these silly little activities Nintendo would put all over their websites to promote their games. I remember the Mario Sunshine website having a feature where you would construct Fludd out of parts and then use it to wash graffiti off of the other pages on the website to reveal what was covered up underneath... man, I wish this level of creativity was still utilized today.

I can so easily see myself coming back to the website time and time again just to play this stupid game over and over. I probably would have non-ironically set my wallpaper and screensaver to these at least for a time, and I'll bet it probably would've made me want to play Mario Party 4 more as a kid, too. So while I've been clowning on this game a lot, I do think it's genuinely cool that it exists at all and I look forward to seeing what else I can find about future games. I know there's something similar for Mario Party 5, at least.

That's it for now, but up next still isn't Mario Party 5! Can you guess what's next? See you soon! 💳

Credit to Jobexi on YT for the Option Room image.

Now that we've finally covered everything there is to discuss in Mario Party 4, it's finally time to start covering my closing thoughts.

As per usual, we'll start with the presentation which, I have to admit, is really disappointing. Coming off if Mario Party 3 where the pop-up playset aesthetic was all over every facet of the game, it's disappointing that this game really lacks a distinctive aesthetic. I suspect this might be due to this being an early GameCube game, with the devs wanting to take full advantage of the graphical capabilities of the new hardware, so they designed the game with this hyper-realistic look that just... doesn't seem interesting to me.

I know people love the realistic look, and there are games like Luigi's Mansion that I think use it very well. But when Mario Party does it, it just doesn't mesh well to me. Spoiler alert: I'm still not gonna be a fan of this aesthetic when Mario Party 8 goes for it again further down the line. It just looks boring to me, it doesn't fuel my imagination the way Mario Party 1-3 did.

The entire game being set inside of a magic party cube should be the source of a lot of creativity, but it somehow translates to the most bland board themes the series had ever seen. It should be exciting being the first fully 3D Mario Party, revisiting board themes could be more interesting with that in mind, but the game also fails to utilize the newfound 3D space in any meaningful way. The biggest sin is every board taking place on these ugly metal rafters above all the action. 3D space is utilized for board events, but because the main focus of the board is a flat 2D plane, all you see from the new perspective is an awful skybox texture that would make a Geocities background scoff.

The main menu is a list of invitations to the modes set up by the various hosts. You select an invitation, the invitation gets sucked into the party cube and you follow after to arrive at the area that host designed.

The idea of the game being hosted by a group of friends rather than just Toad or a specific new character is an interesting idea. I liked that each host has their own distinct personality that even occasionally stands at odds with what you might expect from them, and that each one hosts their own section of the game in addition to their own board in Party Mode. I just wish these guys got more room to show off their personality. I think it's pretty telling that the Extra and Options rooms were the most the game ever tried to convince me this was an actual place I could theoretically explore within the game's world.

The Options room, hosted by Koopa, is designed like a secret garage with a few devices around for sound test, modifying settings, viewing records, and toggling vibration. There isn't too much to discuss as per usual, but it's one of the few menus in the game that don't just take place in front of the curtain which it very much could've like nearly everything else. I have to appreciate extra effort where it exists.

Mechanics [2/5]

After playing through this game, I can definitely see that this game had a vision. The main focus of the entire game is the use of Mini and Mega Mushrooms to influence your rolls and avoid unwanted events. But as I've mentioned on nearly every board, there are many situations where it feels like you should've been able to use mini and mega mushrooms to circumvent an event that simply cannot be skipped. And since these mushrooms are still intrinsically tied to rng, and the mini mushroom gives you even worse odds of actually landing on an exact space than the Poison Mushroom in Mario Party 3, they're incredibly furstrating to incorporate into working strategies.

Far too often you'll plan to take a mini mushroom shortcut only to land too far away on one turn to even possibly reach it, and then overshoot it the following turn because you rolled a 6 or higher. In order to reliaby pass through a Mini Pipe, you really need a Super Mini Mushroom or two Mini Mushrooms. And even then you can still mess it up by undershooting.

And the Mega Mushrooms take away all the usefulness of the Mushrooms from Mario Party 2 and 3 by stripping them of the ability to let you interact with shops and other facilities. I find it very difficult to even find a position where I'm comfortable even using a Super Mega Mushroom because I don't want to pass something nearby. And this game really expects me to try and use these to squeeze a few coins off of my opponents on a whim? There are some small loops where you may be able to stomp the same opponent multiple times in one turn which can be fun but requires far too many moving parts to fall in line.

I know some people have a fondness for these mushrooms, but I just do not share in it. I don't think the Golden Mushroom needed to be nerfed and I liked the Poison Mushroom as it was in Mario Party 3. If the goal was to emphasize other new items, it might've been fine, but...

The new items feel very uninspired and even pretty bad. And between the bad boards and bad items, items like the Warp Pipe and Magic Lamp become significantly more important than ever before... and if you're just resorting to Magic Lamps to get the stars all the time, what does that say about the board's design?

And that roulette for Warp Pipes and Warp Spaces? I've mentioned it upfront, but it's by far my least favorite change in Mario Party. I think it's far too powerful with far too little transparency. Most new players will think it's totally random and an experienced player will have an unfair advantage with the knowledge that it can be timed. It really should just be a menu where you choose a target manually instead of this weird knoeledge check that has no business being here.

The idea is there, I can see the vision, but the mechanics implemented to achieve that vision fall short and ultimately lead to a very frustrating experience that's even more RNG reliant than usual. Missing an opportunity usually doesn't feel like you got greedy trying to save up your resources or trigger happy using them, but rather it tends to feel like you never had a chance to use or even get said resources in the first place.

This game also features a Team game mode... very, very poorly thought out and especially agonizing when teaming up with an AI. The game already has a small selection of minigames, forcing that down to just 9 2v2s is a death sentence. Not only that, you and your teammate share an item pool and the AI absolutely will waste all of your best items. With knowledge of how the AI uses items, you can game the system a little better, but I'd rather they just keep their paws off!

Boards [1/5]

I went into this project knowing that the boards were generally pretty bad, but I was consistently surprised by just how bad they were. I was so unimpressed with the boards, I even changed the tiers in the tier list so the highest tier was just "good" instead or "excellent" like normal.

From the very beginning, I've stressed that the best way to make a Mario Party board feel more strategic is to add a lot of opportunities to make meaningful decisions. This game seems to go out of its way to avoid giving you opportunities to make decisions. Even items often mask their decision making element with roulettes. But the boards go a whole other level.

Nearly every junction in this game has your decision made for you. Instead of having to pay Whomp to go the other way, you just can't go the other way at all. You can use mushrooms to help your odds to go the way you want, but in the end other players also want to avoid going the wrong way, too. And there's no guarantee you can even get the mushroom you need before you reach the juntion.

Toad's teacups, Boo's red bridges, Bowser's crumbling bridges, it's all made to remove any and all agency over which direction you get to go. Being forced to go the wrong way at these junctions is an incredibly harsh punishment for what is often pure bad luck and nothing more.

And then there's Koopa's Seaside Soirée which is the most bafflingly awful Mario Party board I've ever seen, taking the worst part of Deep Bloober Sea, making it worse in every way, and removing every navigation option that enabled you to avoid it.

Nearly all of the boards in this game share similarities with some of the worst boards in the previous games.

I've tried my best to tie the themes of each board into an overarching theme and it kind of works, but it really feels like an afterthought since no elements of the board environments actually suggest any kind of party actively going on. It truly just feels like the devs chose some arbitrary level themes and called it a day. I'd say Toad's and Goomba's boards are the only ones that really stand out among the rest of the gaggle. But since the gimmicks of each board are very similar to the other boards, I can't say there's really a variety of options. It's all just the same core idea of delaying your approach to junctions at bad times and speeding your approach at good times. The only thing that changes from board to board is how frequently these junctions fluctuate between "good" and "bad" times.

Minigames [5/5]

If there is any reason you like Mario Party 4, I'm almost willing to bet my life the minigames are one of the things you'll praise about it.

The only serious complaint I have about this category is the low number of minigames. Extended play of Mario Party 4 means a LOT of repeat minigames, especially in smaller categories. Repeat minigames aren't so bad, they can actually be seen as a strength as new players will be more comfortable with minigames they've played before. But it definitely gets very old playing the same minigames over and over again.

Every Mario Party game has its stinkers, this one has them very few and far between. Really the only minigame I actively do not like is Cheep Cheep Sweep. It's unfortunate it's a 2v2 game which is a moderately small pool, but it's still just one minigame in an entire library of great ones.

And let's not forget about Beach Volley Folly. While it's a bit frustrating you don't unlock Free Play until clearing thd single player counterpart, this minigame is very in depth compared to anything we've seen before in Mario Party.

Atmosphere [2/5]

The majority of the atmosphere in this game can be boiled down to red curtains and menus. As I mentioned in the introduction of this post, it's pretty disappointing how little thought seems to be put into the game's atmosphere. In previous games, they weren't afraid to showcase the negative sides of each character. Every character was kind of full of themselves which was a great set up for all the sinister moves you get to pull on each other in the actual party mode.

This game, on the other hand, seems to paint everybody in a pleasant light which conseqiently makes it feel like everyone is missing a notable chunk of their personality from the previous games. I suppose there's an appeal to everyone just hanging out and having a good time, I've even noted that in the ending of Mario Party 2. But in my opinion, having everybody get along and just play Mario Party for fun rather than for any kind of egotistical stakes kinda cheapens the experience. It's not out of character that everyone can play nice, but it would've been great if there was a bit more interpersonal conflict. Maybe everyone is trying to compete over who can give the best birthday present at the party? Without such a conflict, the game is really lacking any kind of tension in its atmosphere.

With no narrarive tension, the game really needs something in its environment to sell an interesting atmosphere and, well... we all know my thoughts on that already. Compared to the pre-rendered maps of the N64 games, the boards in this game feel absolutely devoid of detail. That's not to say they are featureless, but they certainly aren't densely packed with details like before. There's very little thought that actually goes into the design of the boards themselves.

And the menu design itself doesn't really do any favors. The whole red curtain backdrop really is all there is for the majority of menus in this game. The Options and Present Rooms are the only menus with diagetic objects you interact with. It isn't nothing, but following three games that at least tried to sell you on the menus being actual places you physically walk into, this game does very little to even try.

Aesthetic [2/5]

The realistic look just doesn't sit well with me. I understand they wanted to explore the capabilities of the GameCube, but I would've much preferred highly detailed 3D environments over weirdly realistic ones that make the characters and game objects look like they were projected there with Augmented Reality software. Maybe for some people it better helps sell the idea that these are real places to explore, but to me it takes me out of the experience.

Narrarive [3/5]

As I mentioned in the atmosphere section, one thing that stood out to me, and not in a good way, was that there is very little interpersonal conflict in this game. Previous Mario Parties have had one consistent story beat in their intro: Everybody is fighting over who's the best, and they ultimatley conclude the only way to decide is Mario Party.

But in this game, there is no argument to settle. Everyone is gathered to celebrate the player character's birthday and Mario Party is being played recreationally as the main attraction.

The only real point of tension in the entire story is when Bowser shows up and tells you he stole all of the presents which is kind of a cool moment, but a major farcry from the final standoffs in the previous games. And in this case, he didn't even actually steal your presents when in he did steal all your stars in MP1, or kidnap Toad in MP2, and Waluigi stole the Wit Star Stamp and wrestled control of the whole event from the Miracle Star. But Bowser here just doesn't really do much besides offer one more board and his own present.

I will say, I think it's cute this game emphasizes Bowser's soft side. It was a rare quality at the time and that's part of what made me think of Peach as being the "canon" player charcater this time around.

Anyway, I do wish there was more conflict in the central story mode. Maybe make it a humorous story point that everybody's birthday actually is on the same day and so everybody's competing over who the party is actually for and who gets to keep the presents.

Anyway, the story is... fine? But it certainly isn't pushing any boundaries and I'm kind of baffled a game with a dedicated story mode doesn't have a more interesting narrative than either of the games that lack a main story mode.

The only bit of worldbuilding this game provides is a bit of charcaterization on the hosts here, though they do just kind of come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. I mentioned before they're representative of the various board NPCs from past games: Toad who hosted Mario Party 1-2 as well as Item games and the shop in 3, Goomba who hosted Battle and Duel Games, Shy Guy who hosted Gambling games, and Koopa who ran the bank. But there's no elaboration on whether or not these are supposed to actually be the same characters. I think it's safe to assume Toad is, but the others are a bit more of a stretch.

The Party Cube is a somewhat interesting mystery, but... it also just shows up and disappears without an explanation, so it's kind of difficult to get attached to it as anything more than a plot device to host the party.

Conclusion

Coming into Mario Party 4, I knew I probably wouldn't enjoy it. And judging by my overall tone, you probably think I hated it. In truth, I can't say I had a terrible time. There are certainly a lot of areas the game disappointed in, but I was just as much intrigued by how strange of a game this is. It's very close to being just like the N64 games, but it also has so many features that I usually associate with Mario Party 5. It's surreal hearing the sound effects I normally associate with 5 being paired with voice clips and game mechanics associated with Mario Party 3.

Having not grown up with this game, discovering it is like finding the Missing Link between the N64 and GameCube eras.

And while I didn't exactly love the majority of my time with this game, I can applaud the courage in trying to make the game stand out more by trying to rebalance the items. I have a strong suspicion this game was rushed, and that's likely why it feels so lackluster. Maybe they had more ambitious ideas for board designs but had to hobble the boards together real quick before the deadline. It's the only reason I can possibly imagine why the oddities of Extra Mode and the lack of Duel Minigames would even be a thing at all.

During my playthrough, I didn't fully complete the game. But I made sure to experience as much of the content as I could without making things too redundant. I played through Story Mode, I did a 50 turn game on every board. I did a quick 20 turn team game, I played all the Extra Room games and unlocked Free Play in Beach Volley Folly. I played all the minigame modes.

By far the most demanding task in all of that... was unlocking every minigame.

Most of it was pretty standard fare. I'd already unlocked the vast majority of minigames during my initial playthrough of Story Mode.

...but the Bowser and Mega Minigames really tested the boundaries of my sanity. Comparatively, the Mega Minigames weren't so big of a deal. But it took to near the end of a 50-turn game to even get Panels of Doom. I kept undershooting or not having a Mega Mushroom by the time I get to Bowser. And whenever I would, it was always Bowser Wrestling!

The real kicker was Fruits of Doom. I've alluded to this story a few times, but this one minigame hijacked an entire afternoon I spent just stepping through frames, reloading saves, and manipulating RNG until I got Bowser to appear, and get Fruits of Doom to appear.

To be clear on how much the stars have to align: You first have to land on a Bowser space which is already fairly rare in this game. Reminder that even a Mini Mushroom still only leaves you with a 20% chance of landing on any specific space. Then, you need Bowser to appear. Bowser can either appear instead of Koopa Kid, or immediately after Koopa Kid. At which point, he can choose among Bowser Revolution, a Bowser Suit Giveaway, or a Bowser Minigame. If a Bowser Minigame is decided, Bowser will decide himself which of the 3 Bowser Minigames to play.

I was standing three spaces away from a Bowser Space. I assigned the pause, next frame, save state, and load state hot keys to my arrow keys. I used a Mini Mushroom, saved, then stepped through the frames until the number on the block changed (confirming RNG was pulled at least once) before saving the state again and pressing A to hit the block. If it's not a 3, reload and step through until the number on the block shifts, save, repeat. If it is a 3, land on the Bowser space. If I get Koopa Kid, play out the scene. If Bowser doesn't show up after, reload and repeat. If Bowser shows up, wait until he declares his event. If it's Revolution or Bowser Suit, reload and repeat. If it's a Bowser Minigame, continue until I the minigame is reveales. If it's Darts or Balloon of Doom, reload and repeat. I'm only done with this routine once I finally get Fruits of Doom.

In the process of doing all of this, I got Darts of Doom 7 times. Balloon of Doom 3 times. And I even got 4 Bowser Suits which are counted among the rarest items in the entire series. This took several hours of reloading and led to me questioning multiple times over if there was some systematic error that was rendering it impossible for me to get Fruits of Doom. I genuinely felt like I was going insane. And no, this entire process was definitely not worth it in the slightest.

But hey, that's just life.

I genuinely cannot recommend anyone try to 100% this game, certainly not without savestates or reloads. I can only imagine how agonizing this process would've been playing board after board and only being able to get the occasional Bowser space.

Mario Party 4 is a fascinating experiment of a game. It makes some bold decisions and introduces some interesting ideas, but ultimately struggles to make up for the things it removes. I find it far too easy to hoard wealth even when you're actively trying to spend it because of how little control you have over your movement. Low rolls are as agonizing as they always are, but your options to minimize their impact are also reduced. Mega and Mini Mushrooms are simply not satisfying items to use and their use as the game's gimmick leads to boards that all feel very same-y.

The minigames are the biggest saving grace and, while there aren't a lot of them, there are so many good minigames that it's hard to really complain.

Current Rankings:

1. Mario Party 3
2. Mario Party 2
3. Mario Party
4. Mario Party 4

Yes, I am ranking Mario Party 4 below the original Mario Party. And while I know that might be disappointing for any Mario Party 4 fans out there, I just can't argue in good faith that I enjoy this game more. Mario Party 4 does beat 1 out in certain areas, mainly in the gameplay department. Mario Party 4's boards from a purely gameplay perspective are generally more engaging than Mario Party 1's boards if only because it has items to influence your roll, and 4's minigames clear 1's any day. Even if 1 introduced the basis for some of the most iconic minigames in the series, it's consistently the lamer version of minigames that were reworked in Mario Party 2.

But Mario Party 4 definitely lacks in the narrative and worldbuilding department compared to 1. I understand these factors don't mean much of anything to most normal people, but it's always captivated me. I love that Mario Party 1 tries to sell the idea that all the minigames take place in the same general location and Mario Party 4 naturally doesn't try for anything like that.

For a game that doesn't have items, Mario Party 1 does a fantastic job of leaning heavily into its chaotic RNG-heavy gameplay. It's not very engaging for a strategic player, but I almost think it's better than 4's alternative where it presents you with technically strategic options but still ultimately leaves the fate of the game heavily up to chance anyway. It's incredibly frustrating to make all the "right" choices only to get screwed over by bad luck anyway. Removing the powerful items that rewarded skilled players with excess wealth to be able to gain control over their luck is simply not a good approach.

That's it for now. Next time, we're gonna take a breif detour. Even though we're done with Mario Party 4, we're not quite done with Mario Party 4... you'll see what I mean soon enought. See you soon! 🧭

It's finally time to begin discussing the mini-games in Mario Party 4, and I already know those of you who are fans of Mario Party 4 have been waiting with baited breath for me to talk about these because they're such a huge part of the game. And indeed, if there is anything to praise Mario Party 4 for, it's the minigames!

Full disclosure, these minigame posts have been some of the most infamously long posts I've had to make, so I'm gonna try a slightly different approach that I hope works out better in the end.

Also, unfortunately I had just spent a few hours making sizable progress on this post only to accidentally close the fucking app and having to start over from scratch. So I apologize if any of this post seems a little rushed.

Mini-games

Mario Party 4 features a total of 60 minigames, the first time in the series a new game has had fewer minigames than its predecessor. Of these, there are...

16 4-Player,

9 1v3,

9 2v2,

6 Battle,

3 Bowser,

5 Story,

3 "etc.",

and 9 Extra Minigames.

I've already covered the etc. Minigames between Story Mode and Bowser's Gnarly Party as they're not relevant to the rest of the game, and I've covered the Extra games in more detail in the Extra Room posts. I'll still be grouping them in.

In addition, though they're definitely more in line with board events than actual minigames, an argument can be made that the Mini-Minigames on each board could count as minigames too. Each of the 5 boards features a coin and item mini-minigame which technically boosts this game up to having 70 minigames if you include them. Still technically less than MP3 and the Story, Etc., and Extra Minigames are doing a lot of heavy lifting. I will not be including the Mini-minigames among the minigames.

Before we get into the minigames, though, I want to acknowledge that this is the first Mario Party game on a new console, and as a result, there are new control mechanisms in place that weren't possible, or at least reasonable, on the N64. Most significantly, the GameCube's L and R triggers receive analogue inputs. Button mashers involving L and R are consequently a bit more involved than usual button mashers. They might require you to press the full button from a neutral position, or they might only care about the "click". This can and will affect your pace and timing for Button Mashing and Rhythm games, and could potentially be used to influence Precision games, too.

Likewise, Rumble is also a new feature of the GameCube controller. Technically the N64 had a Rumble Pak accessory, but it was an external peripheral and would get in the way of the convenience of playing the game with a group of friends. Rumble tends to be used for Reaction games, where now instead of watching for a visual cue, you're waiting for a signal felt in your hands. Rumble is also commonly used for Precision games where the controller might rumble more as you approach something, or Memory games where you might havw to remember a certain pattern of rumbling to match it to other patterns. Rumble can be turned off in the settings, in which case a visual cue will be displayed instead, but this is more of an accessibility option for players who genuinely cannot feel the rumble and erases a layer of these games. I genuinely recommend playing with rumble on wherever you can to get the most authentic experience.

The GameCube controller has a C-Stick instead of C Buttons, but much like how past games didn't use the C-Buttons in their minigames, this game doesn't really use the C-Stick. Though future GameCube Mario Partu games will use the C-Stick often to control a second moving part complimentary to the control stick for Precision, Reaction, and Precision games. However, this doesn't affect much here since the C-Stick isn't used.

Finally, the new controller layout allows for all games easy access to two extra face buttons, Y and X, as well as the Z and L buttons both being accessible together. Many games utilize these new possibilities for reaction, rhythm, and button mashing games, as well as more complex controls for action and strategy games.

4-Player Minigames

25% Luck: 4/16

19% Memory: 3/16

31% Button Mashing: 5/16

31% Rhythm: 5/16

44% Reaction: 7/16

56% Precision: 9/16

38% Action: 6/16

44% Strategy: 7/16

0% Coordination: 0/16

Manta Rings: Button Mashing, Precision, Action

Slime Time: Button Mashing,

Booksquirm: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Action, Strategy

Mario Medley: Rhythm, Strategy

Avalanche!: Button Mashing, Precision, Action

Domination: Button Mashing

Paratrooper Plunge: Precision, Action

Toad's Quick Draw: Luck, Memory, Reaction, Precision, Strategy

Three Throw: Rhythm, Reaction, Precision, Strategy

Photo Finish: Memory, Reaction, Precision

Mr. Blizzard's Brigade: Reaction, Action

Bob-omb Breakers: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Action, Strategy

Long Claw of the Law: Luck, Memory, Reaction, Strategy

Stamp Out: Rhythm, Precision, Strategy

Mario Speedwagons: Rhythm

Take a Breather: Button Mashing, Rhythm

Due to my odd experience of unlocking the present tied to Take a Breather with a fluke and never being able to come close to matching it, I'm not certain if I should count it as a Button Masher or Rhythm game. I have no idea which strategy is more optimal, so I'm counting it as both.

There is a very healthy mix of minigames here, though you'll likely notice the majority of Button Mashers are all in this one category, and it's a little baffling because Slime Time and Domination are basically functionally identical minigames. I really feel like one of these should've been a Battle minigame.

Anyway, my favorite 4P minigame is definitely Booksquirm. It's even a solid contender for my favorite Mario Party minigame of all time! The game shares many of my favorite qualities of Hot Rope Jump. When you're playing against somebody who matches your skill level, it gets incredibly tense as the pages start to flip so fast you struggle to keep up. The game ifself is incredibly intuitive, yet there are many layers of depth to optimizing your gameplay. Of course, you can look at the holes in the next page to get a head start on the next safe spot. But you can also look through said holes to determine whether or not there's another hole behind them, and use that knowledge to quickly identify the next hole. You can also start running into the edge of a hole as soon as it reaches the point you can no longer run under it and get squished, a high risk strategy that is outright required as the pages turn faster and faster. And the luck component is just significant enough to where bitter rivalries will form over this one game. It's no wonder Booksquirm is commonly cited as a favorite among the community.

I want to give an honorable mention to Mr. Blizzard's Brigade, too. This is just such a fun, chaotic mess of a game with a lot of risky strategies that can exchange a little luck for an advantage in better chances at evading. Obviously, you get more time to react if you're on the opposite side of the lake to the Blizzard that's about to throw a snowball, but going too far to the opposite edge means you're in a bad spot to dodge the Blizzards closer to you if they get ready to throw. Nowhere on the lake feels safe, making this game delightfully intense.

As for the worst 4P minigame, I genuinely don't think there are any bad ones at all here. My leats favorite I'd have to say is Bob-Omb Breakers. I just personally really suck at Puzzle games and it's so frustrating to set up a big combo only for some asshole to get the piece you needed to set it off first and steal all of your points. It's just a skill issue at the end of the day, though. The fact that you can steal your opponent's combos rather than just jamming them is a very interesting twist on a puzzle game.

1v3 Minigames

22% Luck: 2/9

0% Memory: 0/9

0% Button Mashing: 0/9

11% Rhythm: 1/9

44% Reaction: 4/9

44% Precision: 4/9

33% Action: 3/9

67% Strategy: 6/9

78% Coordination: 7/9

Candlelight Fright: Action, Coordination

Makin' Waves: Reaction, Precision, Strategy, Coordination

Hide and Go BOOM!: Luck, Strategy, Coordination

Tree Stomp: Action, Strategy, Coordination

Fish n' Drips: Reaction, Coordination

Hop or Pop: Rhythm, Action

Money Belts: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Strategy, Coordination

GOOOOOOOAL!!: Reaction, Precision, Strategy, Coordination

Blame it on the Crane: Precision, Strategy

It might be a bit of a surprise to hear, but it's actually impressive how many 1v3 minigames are actually coordination games. But to qualify as a coordination game, an individual player typically cannot hard carry their entire team. The most skilled player on the team will have to slow down to the level of their teammates and support in any way they can. Many of these games are almost impossible for the team to win without coordinating their efforts. It's very difficult to coordinate on the spot, especially when it's often in someone's best interest to throw the game so their teammates don't win any coins. When somebody is actively sabotaging, these Coordination games can become next to impossible for the team fo win. Depending on who you ask, that might be a good thing or a bad thing. If you ask me, throwing a minigame is just as valid a strategy as trying to win them.

This creates an interesting balancing factor for 1v3s where it becomes really hard for the Solo player to win if the team is in synch. But the team is typically only as skilled as its weakest link. But it's not always bad to be the solo player. Games like Fish n' Drips and Money Belts are heavily weighted toward the solo player. It takes an exceptionallu skilled team, or an exceptionally weak solo player for the team to come out on top in these games. If you ask me, this is the best way to handle a 1v3 game. It's almost impossible to make a well balanced asymmetrical game. Leaning into that advantage and requiring the team to work together to achieve an easy win. Is the best way to go about it.

That said, I can't say I'm the biggest fan of this game's 1v3's. Not to say that they're bad, but none of them really stood out to me.

My favorite 1v3 game would probably have to be Tree Stomp. The mechs are so huge that you have to rely on some degree of trickery to catch the solo player off guard. It can be difficult to coordinate with your teammates, especially if they're just blindly closing in on them. But getting into the solo player's head to try and figure out where they're gonna try to escape to is the best way to manage it.

My least favorite 1v3 is probably Money Belts. Don't get me wrong, this game is a blast if you're the solo player. It's just like Coin Flower Shower! You get it all and the team gets the crumbs. So you can imagine how this 30 seconds of nothing feels on the team's side.

2v2 Minigames

22% Luck: 2/9

33% Memory: 3/9

22% Button Mashing: 2/9

33% Rhythm: 3/9

33% Reaction: 3/9

56% Precision: 5/9

11% Action: 1/9

33% Strategy: 3/9

100% Coordination: 9/9

The Great Deflate: Rhythm, Coordination

Revers-a-bomb: Rhythm, Reaction, Action, Strategy, Coordination

Right Oar Left?: Button Mashing, Precision, Coordination

Cliffhangers: Reaction, Precision, Coordination

Team Treasure Trek: Memory, Precision, Coordination

Pair-a-Sailing: Reaction, Coordination

Order Up: Memory, Coordination

Dungeon Duos: Luck, Memory, Button Mashing, Rhythm, Precision, Strategy, Coordination

Cheep Cheep Sweep: Luck, Precision, Strategy, Coordination

It's pretty typical that every 2v2 game. It's much easier to sabotage when you only have one teammate to mess with. Dungeon Duos in paericular has many different components due to being a gauntlet of various challenges. Button mashing to open doors and rotate platforms, precision to jump across said platforms, luck and memory in trying to find the correct warp pipe to advance through the pipe maze, and rhythm to pump up the air balloon.

Dungeon Duos is my favorite 2v2 game and it's probably not exactly a hot take. It tests so many different skills that even exceptionally skilled players probably have one or two sections they're not playing perfectly, adding in the luck component in the pipe maze and there's a very realistic chance a less skilled player can win at this game.

Revers-a-bomb is a solid honorable mention though. If you can get in sync with your teammate, your opponents won't stand a chance.

My least favorite 2v2 is easily, EASILY Cheep Cheep Sweep. This minite-long slog of a minigame just kept coming up every other 2v2 I swear. And this game just SUCKS. You have to move very slowly to avoid scaring the cheep cheeps away, or work with your teammate to scare a cheep cheep right into their net. Of course, you could just as easily scare them into your opponents' net, too. On paper, this sounds like a really interesting chicken game where you have to move slow enough so as not to scare the cheep cheeps, but faster than your opppnents so as to catch more than them. But in practice, you move so slowly and the minute long timer feels like so much time dedicated to a single minigame in which so little is happening. This one just feels like it never ends.

Battle Minigames

50% Luck: 3/6

0% Memory: 0/6

0% Button Mashing: 0/6

0% Rhythm: 0/6

33% Reaction: 2/6

67% Precision: 4/6

0% Action: 0/6

17% Strategy: 1/6

0% Coordination: 0/6

Trace Race: Precision

Chain Chomp Fever: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Strategy

Paths of Peril: Luck, Precision

Bowser's Bigger Blast: Luck

Butterfly Blitz: Precision

Rumble Fishing: Reaction

The most important thing to note about Battle Games in this game: They aren't even close to random. The player who lands on the Battle Space gets to choose from two presented options, theoretically giving them an edge in the game as they'll naturally choose whichever option they think gives them the better chances. This changes the significance of Bowser's Big Blast from random chaos everyone is subjected to to being a strategic option that only comes up when someone just wants to make sure the most skilled player doesn't win.

This choice system is such a good idea, but when there's so little variance in the kinds of skills these games test... it kind of comes off as an illusion of choice, doesn't it? Why aren't there any button mashers or memory games? No Action games where you're actively trying to battle other players? No games with more explicit Strategy involved? So many games in other categories could've benefitted from being Battle games but just aren't.

My favorite Battle Minigame is Bowser's Bigger Blast. I'm consistently leaving reminders that I'm a defender of luck games, but this is the probably the most interesting implementation of one for the reasons I've noted above. That said, I certainly avoid this game like the plague. But that's all the more reason to love it!

My least favorite Battle Game is Butterfly Blitz. There aren't any particularly bad Battle games, and I have no problem winning at this game, at least against the AI, but it's just a pretty frustrating experience. I don't know what it is, but something about the perspective makes it really difficult to catch the butterflies. I swear my net passes right through them half the time.

Bowser Minigames

100% Luck: 3/3

33% Memory: 1/3

0% Button Mashing: 0/3

0% Rhythm: 0/3

33% Reaction: 1/3

0% Precision: 0/3

0% Action: 0/3

33% Strategy: 1/3

0% Coordination: 0/3

Darts of Doom: Luck, Reaction

Fruits of Doom: Luck, Memory, Strategy

Balloon of Doom: Luck

Bowser Games are a brand new category introduced in this game. You could have absolutely nothing at stake or your entire gamestate depending on what the cards have in store for you. These games are designed to be highly stressful, but sometimes the risk isn't even present. These games are also incredibly rare. Bowser has to appear either instead of or following up after Koopa Kid, and then he has to decide to do a Bowser Mini-Game instead of a Bowser Suit Giveaway or Bowser Revolution. And to get a specific game after this, it's yet another random chance after that. After a 50 turn game on every board, and story mode's 15 turn games on every board, I'd only naturally played Darts of Doom and Balloon of Doom. It took a long afternoon of brute forcing the RNG using save states and proceeding frame by frame to finally get Fruits of Doom. I wanna tell this story, but it'll probably have to wait for my final post as I discuss the experience of completing the game.

All Bowser games have a Luck component, to varying degrees. Fruits of Doom is definitely the least so, but the list of fruits scrolls so fast you'll obviously run out of fruit you're confident in remembering after a few rounds. Leaving it up to blind chance is a recipe for disaster, but you can still use some logic to figure out what's most likely to be safe.

Consequently, Fruits of Doom is my favorite Bowser Minigame. The mind games and mental gymnastics you'll find yourself doing once you've exhausted your list of safe choices give this game so much unique tension. Coupled with Bowser's fake-outs that leave you biting your nails when you pick a fruit you're not certain of makes it especially memorable.

Darts of Doom is my least favorite. It is more skill based than Balloon of Doom, but something about that kind of makes this game worse in my opinion. The reticles dart around so quickly as to give you an illusion of strategy or timing, but I find they move around far too quickly to actually make educated decisions on. It's much more important to make sure all three darts don't hit the bull's eye resulting in an instant loss. If that's the only thing you're focusing on, though, you're leaving it entirely up to chance whether or not you end up with the lowest score. But focusing too much on your score will cause you to focus too much on a single reticle's position and increasing your chances of either missing the board or hitting the bull's eye. If you fuck up trying to do somwthing, in my opinion, it feels so much worse than just losing to pure RNG. This game feels specifically engineered to troll you and make you feel like you just suck at a skill based game.

"etc." Minigames

33% Luck: 1/3

0% Memory: 0/3

0% Button Mashing: 0/3

33% Rhythm: 1/3

0% Reaction: 0/3

33% Precision: 1/3

33% Action: 1/3

33% Strategy: 1/3

0% Coordination: 0/3

Bowser Wrestling: Rhythm, Strategy

Panels of Doom: Luck

The Final Battle!: Precision, Action

I've already covered these games in their respective posts, so there's no need to goninto too much detail.

The only reason I'm going by the official designation "etc." instead of my proposed name "Mega Minigames" is because of how these minigames are sorted in-game. But I highly disagree with putting The Final Battle! here. It should definitely be grouped with the Story Minigames or in its own category.

Anyway, the first two games in this category are duels against Bowser on Bowser's Gnarly Party, achieved by passing him using a Mega Mushroom for a chance to bypass his penalty.

These aren't really a category of minigames so much as a collection of miscellaneous ones... separate from the Extra Minigames. But I suppose my favorite of these has to be the Final Battle while my least favorite is Panels of Doom.

Story Minigames

60% Luck: 3/5

0% Memory: 0/5

0% Button Mashing: 0/5

0% Rhythm: 0/5

40% Reaction: 2/5

40% Precision: 2/5

0% Action: 0/5

40% Strategy: 2/5

0% Coordination: 0/5

Bowser Bop: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Strategy

Archaeologuess: Reaction

Goomba's Chip Flip: Luck

Mystic Match 'Em: Luck, Strategy

Kareening Koopas: Precision

Once again, I've already covered these games in the Story Mode post so check that out if you want more.

Since these minigames only appear in Story Mode as arbitrary roadblocks with no penalty for failure besides having to try again, there's really no tension with these minigames at all. Goomba's Chip Flip gives the illusion that it's a memory game, but I'm not certain you can actually follow the tokens as they're shuffled. If you can, it's incredibly difficult to follow more than one, maybe two. As far as I'm aware, this game is just luck. Mystic Match 'Em is also more or less just luck with a slight hint of strategy since you have to decide whether or not it's worth keeping the cards in your hand.

It's a bit disappointing there isn't a wider variety of minigames here, but I suppose something like a Button Mashing game here might be a recipe for disaster.

My favorite story minigame would probably have to be Kareening Koopas. None of these games are exceptionally great or anything, but sliding the Koopas into the holes can be pretty satisfying to do as fast as possible.

My least favorite is Mystic Match 'Em. It was the only game here that took me more than one attempt to win. But the reasoning is little more than the heavy reliance on luck. You can minimize the luck by strategizing which cards to go for and guessing what cards your opponent is collecting, but there's not mucu to go on with that sort of thing.

Extra Minigames

56% Luck: 5/9

22% Memory: 2/9

0% Button Mashing: 0/9

0% Rhythm: 0/9

67% Reaction: 6/9

56% Precision: 5/9

33% Action: 3/9

44% Strategy: 4/9

11% Coordination: 1/9

Challenge Booksquirm: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Action, Strategy

Panel Panic: Luck

Jigsaw Jitters: Memory, Reaction, Precision

Barrel Baron: Luck, Reaction, Strategy

Mushroom Medic: Memory

Doors of Doom: Luck

Bob-omb X-ing: Reaction, Precision, Strategy

Goomba Stomp: Luck, Reaction, Precision, Action

Beach Volley Folly: Reaction, Precision, Action, Strategy, Coordination

I already covered the Extra Minigames in their own posts, just like the others, check out the Extra Room posts for more information.

There's really not much I can say about this mode.

Beach Volley Folly is an obvious standout to the point where it's kind of unfair to call it my favorite of these. It's the obvious choice due to just how much depth there is, it's basically its own entire game mode.

If I had to choose a favorite ignoring Beach Volley Folly, well... it's still not a fair competition. I just said Booksquirm is arguably my favorite minigame in the whole series and you're gonna give me an endless version of it? Where do I sign??

As for my least favorite, it's plain as day. I'm sorry, but as much as I try to defend anything and everything, Doors of Doom is just plain stupid. It got even worse after a commenter pointed out that the result is predetermined regardless of the door you choose, not that it matters because it's just a 50/50 chance either way anyway. There never was any strategy to such a choice in the first place. Getting the highest ranking is literally just bashing your head against it until you fluke through. It's disgusting.

Cut Content

It's been a little bit since I've covered some cut content. But this game actually has some remnants of unfinished minigames in its data. We don't get even close to as much info on these as the cut minigames from Mario Party 1 or 2, but they still exist. You can get more info on them on The Cutting Room Floor.

Some of these minigames are just the kinds of debut items you might expect to see. I don't find much interesting there. Two minigame files in particular, though, appear to have been actual scrapped minigames.

The first of these is a strange stand housing a dollhouse-like model of a tree. The stand says "4-Player Game" on it, suggesting this may have been a major minigame with multiple options to choose from, but it looks like only the 4-player variant was unlocked. There is also a forest scene which looks like it would've been the stage for the minigame. It's hard to envision what this game would've been with so little to go on. Maybe you'd have to jump around to stomp on Goombas roaming the forest? Collect Mushrooms? Your guess is as good as mine.

The other minigame is much more interesting to talk about, though. It looks like a minigame where you would've stood on a round platform balancing on top of a globe while a monitor overhead warns you of incoming hazards. The leftover graphics for this monitor suggest to me that Tweester likely would've been ramming into the platform from various directions, causing the platform to tilt.

The more interesting thing about this game is that it would've been the first appearance of Tweester in Mario Party, predating his appearance in Mario Party 5. It seems like there are some Paper Mario fans among the Mario Party team!

Conclusion

It's all too clear why people commonly say this game has the best selection of minigames. Though it unfortunately also features one of the smallest. 60 minigames already isn't a lot, and 20 of those are hidden away in side modes or incredibly niche circumstances. In regular party mode, you're really only looking at a total of 40 minigames you're interacting with on the regular. Even the largest selection, 4-Player minigames, there are only 16. Even Mario Party 1 had 24. It's a shame this game couldn't have simply lifted some more long-time favorites like Platform Peril and Hot Rope Jump to pad out the minigame list a bit more. But again, it's obvious this game had to have been rushed.

But even though I did find myself running into a lot of repeats, this game could certainly be worse for it. With the boards being so consistently rough, the minigames need to do a lot of carrying and, well, I think they do. There are some stinkers, as there are in any Mario Party game, but very few minigames do I actively dislike. And of those, I can't really say anything bad about their design. They're just games I have personal skill issues with. I think I can honestly say Cheep Cheep Sweep is the only game you'll come across regularly enough to get frustrated with that I genuinely just don't like. And that's saying a lot because even my favorite games I've covered so far have had some really low lows and nothing in this game comes close to comparing to The Beat Goes On. While I wish there was more variety, I don't think I can turn my nose up at a selection of games so consistently good that repeats hardly matter.

Well, I think that about wraps up my thoughts on Mario Party 4's minigames. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on the presentation of the minigames here. I think this approach is a lot pess redundant and is easier to work with. But I have a few more ideas that might convey more information about each minigame.

Next time should be my final update in Mario Party 4 itself where we'll go over the overall aesthetic and presentation of the game. See you soon! 🎁

(Credit to Yoshi Party on YouTube for the screenshot of Battle Mode and Jobexi for the screenshot of the other menus except for the Custom List screenshot which I got from another post on here by u/LuxerWrap and the screenshot of the Play submenu listing the gameplay modes which came from Super Mario Wiki)

Mini-game Modes in Mario Party have always been pretty cut and dry. The main draw is usually the Free Play mode where you come to practice both your favorite minigames so you never suffer the humiliation of losing at them, as well as the games you suck at so you can... stop suffering the humiliation of losing at them. Mario Party w themed its Minigames as their own park in the greater theme park setting, with each mode being a different attraction within the park. Mario Party 3 depicted it as a small library with side modes tucked away behind doors.

This game divides the side modes into two separate modes. The Extra Room covers all the weird side minigames themselves, while Goomba hosts the Minigame Mode, which is where you'll find a more traditional Minigame centric experience. There's not much in the way of theatrics here like in the Extra Room unfortunately. Frankly, I'm not sure why these two modes couldn't have been combined to give it a bit more personality. As it stands, the Minigame Room is unapologetically just a series of menus that are very similar to the setup screens in other modes. It's a bit disappointing, but let's not pretend this mode really needs to be anything more. What it lacks in presentation, it definitely makes up for with some interesting ideas... though sadly it seems Mini-Game Island-esque modes are a thing of the past at this point.

When you first enter Minigame Mode, you can choose between a selection of options. Besides Play, you can view your records and a list of all the minigames and see how many you're missing and whether they belong to the Easy Set or... a Custom Set.

Custom

I've mentioned the Custom Set before as an option you can use to give yourself an advantage in Story Mode. This mode allows you to go down the very same list of all Minigames you've played before and select the ones you want. There are minimum requirements to ensure the game's mechanics all work. For example, you need at least three Battle Games. All Bowser and etc. minigames are also automatically included. And obviously all Mini-Minigames are also baked into the boards themselves rather than on the minigame list, so you won't be choosing between those. But as long as you follow the guidelines, you can include as many or as few minigames as you like.

You might use this to turn off all the luck games, or all the button mashers. Or, maybe you want to play exclusively those types of games. Maybe you wanna turn off the games you hate to see or include only the games you consistently win at if you're a coward. Whatever you want to use it for, thr Custom List gives you a shocking amount of freedom for how you want to play.

Once you have your Custom List just the way you want it, simply save it and the Custom List will be added to the Minigame Category options when you go to set up your next game where only the games you selected for the Custom List will have a chance to appear. And the game doesn't even shy away from letting you use it in Story Mode which really surprised me! You might want to use this to your advantage to unlock Expert Difficulty.

Personally though, while I love the idea of the Custom List, I don't like to use it in practice. Mario Party games tend to have a problem with redundant minigames you just keep seeing over and over, and removing minigames from the list only accentuates that problem even more. Before you know it, you'll grow tired of the very minigames you said you wanted, and that'll end up souring your experience across the board.

Play

Obviously, the main bulk of your attention in Minigame Mode is to, well, play Minigames. There isn't too much new in this department. The first option is Free Play where you can play any minigame you want. The second minigame is... Team Play where you can play any... 2v2 minigame you want... Huh? Okay, technically this game splits the players up into teams just like Team Mode in Party Mode, but there's literally no reason you can't just do this manually in Free Play Mode, which gives you the freedom to play any game rather than just 2v2. This game mode doesn't even keep track of score or anything. I'm starting to think the devs just added "different" modes in bad faith just to make it look like there's more content here than there actually is.

No, besides Free Play there are really just two alternate game modes to choose from.

Battle Mode

It's been called the Minigame Arena. It's been Called the Battle Room. Now, it's Battle Mode. Yes, this is the same old same old "first to x wins" game mode we've had since Mario Party 1. Choose a Minigame category: 4P, 1v3, 2v2, or Battle; the number of wins: 3, 5, or 7; and then play random minigames nonstop until someone runs away with the prize.

It's nothing special, but it's tried and true. If you just want to get some minigame action and don't wanna worry about all that pesky dice rolling, hop right in over here to test your skills with your friends. But if you ask me, it's just not Mario Party if you're not occasionally getting screwed over by bad rolls.

Tic-Tac-Toe Mode

Besides the Custom Set, this is really the only original idea this game offers. And to be fair, I think it's a cute creative idea that adds more tension to winning individual minigames.

You can probably go ahead and guess what Tic-Tac-Toe mode is just by the name. Players are divided into teams of 2 and must compete to win a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. But Tic-Tac-Toe is an infamously solved game that always ends in a tie. The solution here is minigames, of course. At the start of each round, both teams select a space to place their tile on. Then, you play a 2v2 minigame. The winnee gets to claim their chosen space. Rinse and repeat until somebody gets 3 in a row or the game ends in a draw.

It's a cute idea for a mode, but it comes with the drawback that it only uses 2v2 minigames. I feel like this mode could've been a lot more interesting with a little more thought. Maybe have all four players play at once in a free for all. If one player is about to claim 3 in a row, it's a 1v3 against all other players. Maybe occasional Battle Games can allow stealing spaces. Maybe the game isn't won by getting 3-in-a-row but by a certain number of rounds and you get points based on how many lines you have on the final turn. Just an idea.

Conclusion

Minigame Mode is admittedly pretty disappointing here. Each game in the past has had something unique and interesting to poke around in their Minigame Modes. But this one is both lacking in presentation and content. Tic-Tac-Toe mode is a cute novelty, but it's still nothing more visually than a 2D non-diagenic graphic and doesn't hold a candle to Game Guy's Room. This mode also suffers from being upstaged quite a lot by the Extra Room. Had the Extra Room been added as a sub menu here, I think it would've added a lot more personality and made this Minigame Mode a lot more memorable.

The Custom List is easily the most exciting feature here. And while I personally lack excitement over using it, I can definitely acknowledge it's a really cool feature that really feels like it should be in every Mario Party... which makes me wonder why it's not. I suppose the devs thought it was too overpowered to let the player exclude any minigame(s) they wanted and that it messed with game balance too much, but... I don't know... let people play how they want? Is it really a problem that Little Timmy just wants to play coin games where everyone wins? That's another tangent, I suppose. More relevant when we get to this topic in Mario Party 5. But the most unfortunate thing about Mario Party 4 being the only game with a Custom List is... this is probably the Mario Party game that needs it the least. I've shat on this game quite a lot during my coverage of it, but I genuinely think Mario Party 4 has the most consistently good lineup of minigames of all the games so far.

We'll have to see if that claim holds up to scrutiny, but I definitely recall only a small handful of minigames actually getting on my nerves. But next time, we'll start taking a look at the Minigames themselves which is definitely where the peak of my praise for this game will he coming from. Look forward to it! I'll see you soon! 🎊

Throughout my coverage of Story Mode and the Extra Room, I've alluded to the Present Room a few times. There really isn't much to say about this mode and I was debating with myself whether it's even worth its own post or if I should just lump it in with the final runthrough. However, I thought this area is a bit more interesting than just a typical menu, so I figured it was worth a brief spotlight.

The Present Room is hosted by Shy Guy, and it's basically an achievement room. By accomplishing various feats throughout the game, you'll unceremoniously unlock new presents throughout the game! Similar to Mt. Mariomore in Mario Party 3, this is meant to be an incentive to keep you coming back to this game long-term. In practice, though... who wants to play Mario Party over and over against AI as all the characters they don't like?

Naturally, just like Mario Party 3, I refrained from grinding out Story Mode with every single character just to technically have a proper 100% complete save file.

Anyway, inside the present room is a set of 9 dollhouses. 8 of which are themed after the playable characters and 1 which is generically star-shaped. As you earn presents, they'll automatically be placed in the appropriate dollhouse. There is also a pedestal promising a large trophy for total completion. In this case, a literal one if you have the patience to unlock all the presents. Additionally, the roof is a window leading into a beautiful field of stars. The constellation earned from clearing Story Mode can he viewed above their respective dollhouses.

I've already touched on the majority of presents you can get. But to summarize:

You'll get most presents by clearing each stage in Story Mode as each character. This includes the 8 constellations and completes the 8 character dollhouses.

I've also mentioned a few additional presemts that can be earned from Extra Mode by clearing each puzzle in Jigsaw Jitters within a target time: 20 piece in 1 minute, 30 piece in 2 minutes, and 40 piece in 3 minutes.

I may have failed to mention this, but you can also earn a Goomba Plate by reaching a record of 15 pages or more in Challenge Booksquirm in Thwomp's Backroom Ball.

And of course, clearing Battle Mode in Beach Volley Folly will unlock the Birthday Cake, which really looks more like a giant wedding cake.

But even after accomplishing these feats, you may still be missing some prizes. These last presents are unlocked by accomplishing specific feats in minigames. Note: The PAL version of the game has some oddities with framerate and the game's timers, so target times my vary between regions.

Clearing Dungeon Duos in 1:30 or faster will unlock a Shy Guy Plate.

Staying Underwater for 7 seconds or more in Tale a Breather will unlock the Boo Plate.

Clearing Right Oar Left in 45 seconds or faster will unlock the Koopa Plate.

Reaching the goal in 1:00 or faster will unlock the Bowser Plate.

A record of 100 whomps in Domination will earn you Goomba's Clock.

A record of 10 seconds or faster in Mario Speedwagons nets you Boo's Picture Frame.

Each of these are mostly just accomplished by practice. They don't reallly require perfect runs and can be reached pretty easily for the most part. I can't provide any advice Zoom Zike hasn't already in his Identifying Luck video on this game, but I will note that you'll need to practice your Button Mashing for Domination and I still genuinely don't know how I got my record of 11 seconds in Take a Breather because I've never been able to come close since. There is definitely some kind of hidden knowledge on the specific way that game wants you to mash L and R. I can't wrap my head around whether you want to hold the triggers down and "click" them really fast or fully release the first trigger before starting to press the other. And likewise, if you need to "click" the triggers at all or if partial presses are enough. Or if it's straight mashing or rhythmic mashing, and if there's some visual cue you supposed to watch for (I've tried matching my character's movements to abysmal results). It also doesn't leave my mind I might run into a similar problem as with Mecha Marathon where, in this case, some of my inputs might be missed by accidentally pressing both triggers together instead of alternatively.

Once you've managed to obtain all of the other presents in the Present Room, your final prize will be the Party Star Trophy on that pedestal you see taunting you the moment you step into the room.

And... well, I suppose that's it! Like I said, there really isn't much to talk about here. But I hope you can see why I felt it was significant enough to cover on its own right as opposed to the final post. Anyway, our time with Mario Party 4 is starting to come to a close. But that doesn't mean we're ready to close up shop just yet! Next time, we'll be talking about Mini-Game Mode! See you soon! 🏆

Credit to CountBleck2009 on YouTube for the screenshots of the menus, credit to Howler on YouTube for the screenshot of the roster from Free Play mode.

This singular post is going to elaborate on perhaps some of the more confusing lines I've dropped in some of my posts about this game. If you recall, I said this game technically is the playable debut of a number of characters that don't "really count" (or something along those lines). Throughout my coverage of the Extra Room, I've also kept coy about a "secret third host hiding in plain sight."

If you grew up with Mario Party 4, I'm sure you were well aware of exactly what I've been referring to in both of these kinds of comments.

Upon unlocking all of the games in Thwomp's Backroom Ball and Whomp's Basement Brouhaha, you become able to select the Ztar, who hosts a special and quite in-depth bonus game mode really unlike anything the Mario Party series has ever seen, though I wouldn't exactly call it uncharted territory for video games in general.

I was genuinely surprised by this. Of course, I'd noticed the Ztar (even though it's supposed to be pronounced very similarly to "star" but with a Z sound perhaps as a kind of troll to cause you to easily mistake the two, I like to pronounce it " 'Z'-tar" to clearly differentiate them audibly.)

The whole time playing the game, I just assumed the Ztar was a decoration to demonstrate the juxtaposition between the "normal" party modes and this very different Extra mode. Most of the other modes are hosted by a single host, it already stood out the Extra Room had two hosts with Thwomp and Whomp, but it worked thematically since they're two characters that pair almost as well as Bowser and Koopa Kids. But, much like the Power Star is a character in its own right, Ztar is revealed to be a conscious entity here as well!

Ztar hosts Beach Volley Folly! A fully functional volleyball simulator! First of all... what?? This is such a bizarre thing for Ztar to host. Where I was anticipating some kind of cruel game mode where you'd fight each other or something, we're instead leaving this grungy basement for a pleasant day on a beautiful beach!

Interestingly, there is a leftover graphic to suggest Ztar was supposed to have his own board called 「ズターのずたずたパーティ」or "Ztar's Rugged Party". Presumably comparable to Thwomp's boards. Maybe it would've been focused on stealing stars or using items to avoid passing a Ztar space? A cute detail about this name is that 「ずたずた」uses the same sounds as Ztar's name 「ズター」. So the first part of the name would be directly romanized as "Zutaa no zutazuta" making it a pun on the name Ztar. As a result I would imagine it would be localized in a way to reflect the pun in some way.

Anyway, that's mostly an unrelated tangent, I just wanted to acknowledge that it appears perhaps Ztar would've had something different waiting for you and Beach Volley Folly would've been a Whomp minigame instead.

Beach Volley Folly

Let's start by focusing on the minigame itself. It's volleyball, so you already know the rules. You play alongside a single teammate in a 2v2 round against another team. Keep the ball in the air and spike it into the enemy's field. First to 5 points wins. The game is simple enough to understand, but clearly much more in depth than your typical Mario Party minigame. A single game can last for quite a while.

Battle Mode

Upon entering this mode for the first time, you'll be forced to play Battle Mode until you can clear it. And it is no joke when I say this is genuinely the most insanely difficult task the entirety of Mario Party 4 demands of you. I used save states on an emulator and was still ripping my hair out over this, it was that insanely difficult.

To start off, you can play Battle Mode with a human or AI partner. I highly recommend a human partner wherever possible because probably about half of my frustrations came from my partner not being able to pick a goddamn lane. Anytime I'd trust him to stay back and play defense, he'd rush to the net alongside me. Anytime I'd rely on him to play aggressive, he'd wander around to the back like a moron. You can set the AI to any difficulty, and I chose Hard. I assume if you unlock Expert difficulty, you have that option, too.

Anyway, you'll choose your characters from the usual chatacter selection and proceed to participate in a series of games. You'll have to win six games in a row against increasingly difficult AI opponents. And once you run out of standard characters to beat, you'll start seeing the board hosts! Toad, Koopa, Shy Guy, Boo, even a final round against Koopa Kid and Bowser himself!

And I know just winning alone doesn't sound that bad, just git gud after all, but the AI is almkst impossible to get around. I'm pretty sure Bowser and Koopa Kid at the very least are on Expert Difficulty even if you don't have it unlocked. And this duo is actually insane. I'm not sure if Bowser's size gives him an advantage or if he still has the usual hitbox, but he feels genuinely impossible to hit around on such a tiny court. You basically have to target whatever corner is opposite Bowser and pray Koopa Kid isn't there to block you. And the only way to accomplish that is to play hyper-aggressively and jump at the net to block the ball constantly. If you try to spike it off a volley with your partner, you're giving them way too much time to block it and it's practically guaranteed they'll catch it.

But if you know Volley Ball, you know playing too aggressively is high risk. If you miss the ball even once, there's just about no chance of recovering the point. And by the time you get to Bowser and Koopa Kid, the last thing you want to do is play dangerous because... well, can you guess the punchline?

THERE ARE NO CHECKPOINTS.

Every time you lose to Bowser and Koopa Kid, or any other team for that matter, you have to play through the ENTIRE mode again from the very beginning to get another shot. And this game mode is just jank enough where you're probably going to struggle to even get to that final round a lot of the time. I struggled to even clear the first few rounds.

I confessed to using Save States to get through this. If I'm being honest, I was kind of just looking forward to moving on to Mario Party 5 and wasn't anticipating this to be as much of an undertaking as it was. I don't know if choosing a Hard partner had anything to do with it. Maybe your opponents are easier if you choose an easier AI, but considering you have the option of a human partner, I have my doubts that's relevant.

If you manage to suffer through Battle Mode and clear it, you'll be rewarded with a Birthday Cake in the Present Room. But more importantly...

Free Mode

Upon clearing Battle Mode, you'll unlock Free Mode where up to four players and play against each other.

But remember in my introductory post when I mentioned this game technically includes the first playable appearance of certain chatacters? This is what I was referring to. In Free Mode, in addition to the main cast, you can also select Toad, Shy Guy, Boo, Koopa, Koopa Kid, and Bowser. Some of these characters will go on to join the main roster soon, and some won't join for so long I can hardly even consider it possibly intentional. Sadly, you can't play as Goomba because, as you can see, he's the ref!

Conclusion

It's really cute to see the hosts shed their costumes and just being themselves, chilling with the rest of the crew. It really makes this minigame in particular feel like a proper birthday celebration as likely the last thing you're going to do before putting the game down for good.

But the biggest headscratcher of all here is... why in the world do you have to jump through so many hoops to unlock this? The game itself is hidden and has to be unlocked by meeting arbitrary requirements you're never explicity told about, then once you unlock the mode, you have to discover you can select Ztar in the Extra Room, and then you still have to unlock this secondary side mode of a secondary side mode of a secondary side mode by clearing Battle Mode which is genuinely the most difficult task in the entire game. All for the cance to play a minigame that, while cool, is mostly just a novelty that will wear off pretty quick and definitely won't feel worth all the grinding for.

I don't know, maybe if I grew up with this game and had nostalgic memories of grinding Battle Mode with my brother, maybe I'd find unlocking Free Mode to be a much more rewarding experience. I can't understate how cool it is that you get to play as Shy Guy or Boo or even Bowser in this mode. But I feel like I've felt more fulfilled unlocking substantially less content as completion rewards in other Mario Parties. And it doesn't help that grinding out Battle Mode made me sick to death of all the janky shenanigans you can run into with this game. This mode just doesn't feel like it should be hidden away like this. It feels like it should've been advertised as part of the game itself. A direct reward for clearing Story Mode.

It's a cool novelty to share with your friends once it's unlocked, but by the time you lock in and actually get it, the last thing I imagine you're gonna want to do is play more Volleyball.

Anyway, that's it for Beach Volley Folly. Next time, I'm honestly not sure what to focus on. I might go ahead and start talking about the Mini-game modes, or I might take a look at the Present Room. I'm really not sure. But you'll need to stick around to find out! See you soon! 🎁

Today we're going to be discussing perhaps the weirdest part of Mario Party 4: Whomp's Basement Brouhaha. At the start of a new file, this is the other half of Extra Mode. It focuses primarily on single-player experiences where you'll compete either with yourself or indirectly with other players to see who can maintain the record.

Worth noting, every Mario Party up to this point has had some form of single-player minigame built into the core party mode. 1 had Solo minigames where you would complete an objective to earn coins. 2 and 3 had item minigames where you would perform a task to decide your reward or lack thereof. 3 also had Gamble minigames where you would bet all of your coins for a chance to multiply them, usually double or nothing at minimum.

This game... kind of does. It has the Mega Minigames where you duel against Bowser, and the Story minigames where you duel against the hosts of each board. But these games aren't programmed as solo minigames, aside from the final boss battle. As mentioned previously, they can all be played in mini-game mode as 2-player games like duel minigames. It seems like the developers designed a handful of solo minigames but either ran out of time to add enough or simply couldn't find a way to meaningfully incorporate them into party mode. And so, rather than scrapping all of these minigames, I suppose they tossed them into this side mode for players to enjoy as miscellaneous content.

Upon finishing a game, your score will be recorded and Whomp will assign you a title based on your performance. The titles mean next to nothing, but there are presents to be earned by reaching certain scores in certain games.

On a brand new file, there are only four games available for play: Barrel Baron, Mushroom Medic, Doors of Doom, and Bob-omb X-ing (presumably pronounced "crossing" but running into character limits). But upon playing the minigames Photo Finish and Tree Stomp, single-player counterparts of these minigames also get unlocked here in the form of Jigsaw Jitters and Goomba Stomp become unlocked.

Barrel Baron

This is a simple game where you walk around a field in search of oil. When your controller vibrates, you must strike the ground three times to reveal the oil hiding beneath. Depending on how much the controller vibrates, a small, medium, or large amount of oil will spring out worth 1, 10, or 100 points respectively. As far as I can tell, this game is almost entirely luck. You just have to hope you stumble across a lot of 100's within the time limit. I suppose the winning strategy is to ignore smaller springs and only look for larger ones. If you want to optimize your run, you may want to try various strategies to see if it's optimal to focus exclusively on large springs, or to settle for medium springs when you can find them.

This minigame I actually suspect may have originally been designed as a duel minigame before they were scrapped, and was repurposed as a score attack solo game here instead. I can see two players racing agaisnt the clock to score more points than each other, and it would add some much needed tension and strategy.

Mushroom Medic

Somebody swallowed a poisonous mushroom! Listen to the heartbeats of each patient by feeling the vibration of the controller. Whoever's heartbeat is different than the rest ate the poison and needs medicine. Give the medicine to the right patient to save them! Give it to the wrong patient or take too long and the poisoned patient fucking dies. The game continues indefinitely, with steadily decreasing time limits, until you fail.

The lowest rating you can get is "unlicensed internist," you're definitely getting a malpractice lawsuit.

This has got to be the most darkly hilarious minigame in Mario Party history.

You're scored by the number of patients you save.

Doors of Doom

This is a really, really dumb one. It's just Game Guy's Magic Boxes. You enter a Bowser themed dungeon and are presented with two doors. Bowser is hiding behind one and you'll have to try and guess which one he's not behind. As far as I can tell, there is no hint whatsoever, so this is just a series of blind coin tosses.

If you guess correctly, you proceed onto....another pair of two doors. The game continues endlessly until you lose. There's really nothing to say here.

Naturally, you're scored by the number of doors you pass through.

Bob-omb X-ing

Another minigame that feels like it might've been a duel minigame. In fact, Mario Party 5 even has a Battle Minigame similar to this one.

You're in the center of a 4-way crosswalk resembling Shibuya crossing. The game is self-explanatory. You have to navigate the crowded area as Bob-ombs pour into the crossing. Over time, the bob-ombs will explode and you have to avoid getting caught in said explosions. Surprisingly, there's no penalty for stepping into a bob-omb, just make sure to steer clear when they're flashing red.

You're scored by how much time you survive.

The optimal strategy is simply kiting the bob-ombs around the map and making sure to get away from bob-ombs that are about to explode. Try to avoid walking back the way you came and try to stay in areas with as few bob-ombs as possible.

Goomba Stomp

Unlocked alongside Tree Stomp in Mini-game mode, this game puts you in a walker from Tree Stomp and tasks you with walking around a field crowded with Goombas. You have 30 seconds to stomp as many Goombas as you can.

You're scored based on how many Goombas you stomp.

For optimal scoring, try to optimize your movement to avoid as much dead pathing as possible. Focus on walking only where there are Goombas, especially large clumps of them, and bear in mind you can walk backwards to easily step on Goombas behind you faster.

Jigsaw Jitters

Unlocked alongside Photo Finish, this is a single-player jigsaw puzzle. It's by far the most in-depth game in Whomp's Basement Brouhaha as it comes with three different difficulty levels each with more pieces than the last.

Don't underestimate the difficulty of these jigsaw puzzles. The pieces can be so small and oddly shaped that it can be pretty hard to identify what's on them, and you're forced to place each puzzle piece in the order they're given rather than focusing on individual pieces you can actually identify. I found the 30-piece puzzle in particular pretty difficult because it wasn't clear at first half the cast was upside-down.

You're scored based on how long it takes you to complete the puzzle. And additionally, you'll earn you'll earn Toad's Teacups for clearing a 20-piece puzzle in 1 minute, Toad's Teapot for clearing a 30-piece puzzle in 2 minutes, and Toad's Plate for clearing a 40-piece puzzle in 3 minutes.

These thresholds are easy enough to get. A few attempts and you should be able to identify where the majority of pieces go on sight.

Conclusion ----‐---------

Yeah, that's really it. Whomp's Basement Brouhaha is a strange little area of Mario Party 4. If I had this game as a lonely 4 year-old child sick of my older brother winning all the time, I could see myself turning to this mode for a much more relaxed experience and consequently having a lot of nostalgic memories of it, just like Duel Mode in Mario Party 3. But that doesn't make it any less bizarre that it exists. This truly reads to me like a collection of minigame ideas that simply weren't fully thought out.

Anyway, that's it for now. But we're still not done as there is one last host here in the Extra Room hiding in plain sight. See you soon for the real reason you come to the Extra Room! 🏐

I really loved this mode a lot more than I thought I would. I always dreaded dying on the N64 version because starting a level with single lasers always felt like such a slog. But this mode in particular lets you practice the levels so much that you quickly become knowledgeable on where all of the secrets are which in turn puts you on tbe fast track to actually mastering these levels for your inevitable Expert Mode runs in campaign mode.

Some levels' challenges were frustrating, but I'd say all except Aquas were ultimately very satisfying to complete. No level took more than an hour or two to grind out, though I'm also a veteran who grew up with the original. I imagine this mode will be a lot harder for new players, but I highly recommend it regardless because it'll teach you a lot about these levels and how to get higher scores.

I've gone back amd forth on what levels are the most challenging. Surprisingly, I think Corneria is easily one of the hardest. I found myself most nervous on the All Range Mode levels because it's so easy for random shit to just crash into you and break your wings. Just staying low never seemed to be enough.

Bolse was by far the most frustrating because of the game constantly cutting away for cutscenes. You'll be lined up for a perfect shot at a group of enemies when Star Wolf shows up. You'll be tailing two Wolfens at once when the core appears. And when those cutscenes end, the enemies you were about to shoot down are now far from you. I've gone back and forth, but I think it's fair to say Bolse is the hardest level for Challenge Mode.

Venom 1 was also incredibly frustrating mainly just because Falco's dumbass exclusively takes the worst possible lines and gets in your way constantly. But none of the missions are particularly bad, the challenge just comes from surviving expert mode Venom which I found surprisingly challenging. But it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be because I quickly learned thst you're actually able to "restart from checkpoint" after entering Andorss's lair. Challenge Mode typically removes checkpoints, so I didn't think they'd be so generous. But since this checkpoint is automatic instead of requiring a checkpoint ring, you can retry all of the missions involving Andross himself as many times as you need. This was a godsend for Venom 2 where I was dreading having to fight Star Wolf again every time. Venom 2 also doesn't end as soon as you kill Andross, so you can focus on one mission at a time and not have to redo the level from the beginning.

Other than that, most of the challenges that gave me trouble were ultimately just knowledge checks. Especially the "destroy all X" challenges. And I swear Macbeth's challenges were specifically designed to troll you as there are several targets you have to go super out of your way to even see. Bombs are your friend.

Some further points that helped me on missions I struggled with: In Area 6, you can get laser upgrades by destroying the swarms of enemies. I use a bomb to destroy the first swarm when it crosses in front of the first satellite. I believe the drops these swarms provide are static, but they may change based on your condition. Other than that, break a lot and mash like your life depends on it. And make sure not to break your wings because it's impossible to destroy those last few without hyper lasers.

On Solar, you can occasionally get bombs from neutralizing the solar flares with your bombs. You have to collect 6 bombs, not have six bombs. So use them liberally. Find the static laser upgrades and keep your health up so ROB gives you bombs instead of lasers or health. I'm not certain if this level has as heavy RNG as most people imply, as I was consistently reaching the end with only 5 bombs until I started using bombs on the flares at different areas. I'm unsure if the flares have RNG with their drops or if only specific flares drop bombs. But once I started bombing the flares, I got to the end collecting 7 bombs in only 2 more attempts.

Aquas is just a miserable level in general and somehow sucked even more than I expected. I can't say any of the missions were especially challenging, but playing the entire level without shooting was just dumb, and it took me forever to find the Spindles I was missing at the end of the level. Iirc, they're just straight ahead but it wasn't until after I found them and cleared the mission that I was able to see them clearly on subsequent runs. You should be able to find them easily enough if you just go straight. I guess I psyched myself out and was trying too hard to search the corners.

Also, if you're using a Switch 2 pro controller, map GR and GL. I mapped GL to D-Up for easy somersaults and GR to break, which helps tremendously with a lot of the crab claw issues this game has. On DPS intensive levels like Area 6 and Aquas, it's also beneficial to swap GL for bombs so you can just focus on mashing A with your thumb. But bear in mind certain enemies are immune to explosions. Namely the Wolfen II and Golemech. The latter of which is especially criminal because one of the guides I looked up for help told me to use bombs to soften it up and made the quick kill challege take far more attempts than it should've.

I think my favorite detail about Challenge Mode is that the final expert challenge on Venom 2 is to clear the escape sequence without taking damage. If you're doing all the levels in order, this is a wonderful payoff to finish off your grind, as it's a nice and easy challenge that lets you take a breather.

Just a small detail I noticed after clearing Bolse's expert missions and reading this bio... the holoviewer section on the Bolse Core describes the weak points as "yellow panels." Obviously, these panels have indeed traditionally been bright yellow lights. But in this game in particular, they've been recolored to instead glow a bright red. And this change is visible in the holoviewer model as well.

This is interesting to me because it suggests these Holoviewer articles were either written early in development before the models were finalized, or a decision was made late in development to change the colors of the panels for some reason.

I just thought this was a funny error that provides a peak into what the development of the game might've looked like. Realistically, I imagine the writer of these archives was probably simply writing them based on the original game and not necessarily the updated content and simply assumed the panels would remain yellow as they've always been.

I accidentally put Poipole in Sinnoh Fighting because I wasn't paying attention. I finished off the game anyway and got Shiny Mega Staraptor in the last box but it doesn't count toward the pokedex because the game already ended I HATE IT HERE