It's finally time to step out of the toybox and touch some grass once again. We've covered all there is to do in Mario Party 3!

When it comes to presentation, I think this game really did a good job! The entire game is set inside of a toybox that seems to be redecorated to match each area. Every board has the same starry backdrop along its northern border, suggesting this is the "default" backdrop. But this cocnept of everything being a small stage inside a magic toybox is extended beyond the boards themselves. As you transition between areas, different decorations pop up to decorate the box.

In addition to the three Star Lifts that take you to the different modes, you can also select the castle to enter and change your settings. The interior of the castle is a cute downsized model of the castle's interior from Mario 64. It's of course very small scale as it's just a menu, but it's a lot more effort put into what could've just been a single options screen which I don't think anyone would question.

Inside the castle, you can enter a Sound Room run by a Goomba jamming out to loud music playing in speakers which you can switch between stereo and mono. And two boxes. One that reveals a cardboard verison of the parrot from Mario Party 1 who mimics voice clips of every character, and the other contains a cute cardboard toad band who plays your selected music.

At the top of the stairs lies the Data Room where you can find Koopas tracking your statistics on their computers. The Green Koopa tracks your board statistics while the Red Koopa tracks your minigame statistics. Your minigame statsitics can also be viewed on Toad's computer in the mini-game room. This is the only place in the entire game you can find a red koopa, and it's redundant.

Back outside of the castle, if you have a suspended game, a canon will appear from the grate which will allow you to resume the saved game.

While this game isn't quite as expansive to the greater Mario world in this way like the previous two games are, I still love this game's approach to stylistically recreating a familiar setting from the main series. And it does still work with greater worldbuilding, as this magic toybox is a mysterious and whimsical setting unlike anything we've seen in the series before.

Mechanics [4/5] --------‐--------

Mario Party 3 has a ton of fun ideas, though unlike Mario Party 2, I can't confidently say it improves on its predecessors overall. Many of Mario Party 3's ideas do improve on flaws I noted in Mario Party 2, though.

First of all, the ability to carry 3 items at once does wonders for the viability of items. You no longer have to choose between a Gold Mushroom or a Skeleton Key. You can have both at the same time! The Plunder Chest is no longer half as oppressive since the item it steals is randomly selected from among all the target's items, though it's still present enough to be powerful and frustrating.

A lot of the new items are really cool! The Reverse Mushroom commonly gets criticized for being too powerful, but I hope my analyses of the boards in this game may have swayed some opinions in that regard. A lot of the most powerful strategies involving Reverse Mushrooms require a significant amount luck to be able to pull off. Being able to visit Boo two or three times across two turns is still an insanely powerful move, but to accommodate, Boo is usually very out of the way compared to previous games. Chilly Waters was the only board I'd say Boo is too accessible in, and it almost seems by design that he's completely busted there. I think it's fair to call that a design flaw of Chilly Waters and not the Reverse Mushroom.

The Reverse Mushroom and Poison Mushroom seem to be the central gimmick of this game. They heavily influence the design of each board emabling powerful strategies under the right conditions. But it's Mario Party, so it naturally presents opportunities for exceptionally good luck and exceptionally bad luck alike.

In Mario Party 3, the extremes of luck are very high indeed. You can lose an entire game's worth of coins because you landed on Game Guy. Likewise, your poverty can turn into a life of luxury with a really lucky game guy. Chance Time enables a free gift of three stars in a single turn. which is absolutely wild to me. It's easily the most powerful it's ever been here.

This combined with MP3's board gimmicks give it the illusion of being a highly luck-based game. TheRunawayGuys have recently finished covering this game and Claire made it clear she hated this game because "the game hates the player," and I find myself wanting to defend it from such an accusation.

Mario Party 3 has extremely poweful luck factors. But it also gives you extreme control over your luck. By strategically using your items, you can avoid dangerous positions, force your opponents into dangerous positons, steal your opponents' items, block Boo pressuring players to steal from others. Chance Time is easier than ever before to guarantee your safety from danger, or at least that the prize is very low stakes. And even Game Guy tends to have very safe odds with the roulette being the only game that has winning odds below 50% on the safest bet.

A lot of Mario Party 3's biggest strategies require spending a lot of coins. To spend a lot of coins, you have to make a lot of coins. That's why I think Game Guy is an important part of this game. Previously, if a player is winning all the minigames, nothing short of Chance Time can turn the game around. Even if they lose all their coins, there's little you can do around the midway point to reclaim those bonus stars. Here? Game Guy could suddenly make somebody's wallet explode and put them back in the running.

Mario Party 3 gives the player more control over their fate than ever before. So extremely huge lucky breakaways are important to balance that and give players who are less practiced a realistic chance at winning. In most genres, I think anybody but the best player being able to win isn't a good thing. But for a Party Game, I think it's a necessity and I'll continue to stress this for a long time to come. The best player should have an advantage, not assured victory. These powerful lucky breakaways allow powerful strategic moves in addition to the ability for weaker players to win. I think this is a fantastic way to design a Mario Party game, leaning strongly into its strengths and maintaining balance in its foundation.

But not everything is perfect, of course. I did give this game a 4/5 in this category for a reason. To start with, while most of the rare items are fine, I find the Wacky Watch a downright insulting item. You should not have so much power over the duration of the game mid-game. It can be seen as a kind of mercy option, but as I said before, this game is already well balanced to enable weaker players to get back on the board. This game isn't nearly as miserable when one player has a breakaway. But this item suddenly puts a hard time limit on their ability to recover. And on the flipside, extending a game 5 additional turns is ridiculous as well. This is something that should be available as an option in the menu, not an item in-game.

I also find it incredibly frustrating that Battle Games have a chance of rolling 0 coins and canceling themselves. A player desperate for coins might go out of their way for a Battle Game and don't get a chance to make so much as a 10 coin wager. It can save you if you're not confident you can win, but it's really annoying to prepare for a battle game only for it to fizzle right away.

The shop system is also very annoying. It's a cool idea that the items are split between Toad and Bowser items, but it's incredibly frustrating to get the Bowser store three times in a row when you're looking for Mushrooms. The Cellular Shopper is a Toad item, so you can't bypass the system with it unless you get Toad. It really feels like this should've been a neutral item, or there should've been different variants that call each shop directly.

But all in all, I think the fundamental idea of the game is great so long as you don't take wins or losses too seriously.

...which is why I absolutely hate the premise of Story Mode. Being forced to get first place specifically in Mario Party is demanding way too much of the player in a game with such a heavy emphasis on luck. Losing to a last-minute chance time or game guy is enough to sour anybody's mood. And it's a slap to the face if it's in the middle of story mode!

Duel Boards are incredibly frustrating as well. There is a lot of depth to the mode, and many interesting design elements of the boards. But the mode is so deeply luck-centric there's almost no point in going for any nuanced strategies at all. As I said before, I can't really count Duel Mode against the game as long as Battle Royales are fun, and Duel Mode is still quite a fun distraction. But it is worth noting the potential I saw there is so much more than it offers.

Boards [5/5]

The boards in Mario Party 3 are exquisite! I noted it a bit in the previous category, but I often see people criticize the boards in this game for being too "chaotic". And there's some truth to it, every board has some degree of RNG beyond the standard fare of dice rolls. Chilly Waters has the slippery lake. Deep Bloober Sea has the Sushi junction. Spiny Desert has the mirage star. Woody Woods has the monty mole junctions. Creepy Caverns has the minecart, and pretty much the whole board of Waluigi's Island is luck-dependent. It's no coincidence I've compared nearly every board in this game to Mystery Land. When you look at the boards from a broad perspective, they seem pretty awful.

But when you think about this game's Poison and Reverse Mushrooms, and the defensive items the lead player might be tempted to hold onto, you'll begin to realize these boards are, for the most part, really well designed around encouraging the use of these items to navigate the board's gimmicks while putting players lairing up their defenses or trying to control the board state at a disadvantage when it comes to positioning themselves where they want to be. The player in first with a Boo Repellent, Golden Mushroom, and Plunder Chest doesn't have room for a Reverse Mushroom to ensure they get to go the direction they want when an event goes wrong. Players falling behind can use up their item slots to use Mushrooms to increase their odds of getting where they want to go. All the while, the first place player doesn't feel cheated because they made the choice to prioritize their defense.

The Duel Board design is pretty awful for the most part. Without items, there's little to justify it. But since Battle Royale Mode has as many boards as Mario Party 2, I think it's fair to dismiss Duel Boards as "just a side mode" and not count them in the overall board ratings, same reason I wouldn't factor Mini-Game Stadium or Trial into MP1 and 2's respective ratings.

Minigames [5/5]

Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but I find Mario Party 3's minigames an utter delight. I used to play these minigames obsessively as a kid and there are very few minigames I genuinely dislike playing. Even some of the lower tier minigames I can still enjoy playing even if I acknowledge the flaws in their design. Very few minigames actually fall short. Though The Beat Goes On is an absurdly awful outlier that likes to rear its ugly head more often than anyone would like. I'm still notalgic even with it, but I do groan every time it comes up. I suppose every Mario Party has at least one game like that, doesn't it?

There's a solid variety of minigames in each catgeory. Some are weighted more in different directions, but there's something in each category for players of any strength to hope for. I do think the duels could benefit from a bit more of a lean toward luck, but it's important that the majority are still skill based.

Atmosphere [5/5]

The game is almost entirely set within a magical toy chest the characters are teleported into through the Millenium Star's magic. Inside this toy box is a playset replica of the real world, with star lifts that take the characters to various other playsets within the toybox that all inhabit the same box-shaped area. I've already sung the praises of the game's presentation, but this creates a fun and very unique environment for Mario Party even to this day. The setting takes incredible advantage of the limitations of pre-rendered visuals on the N64. I absolutely love it what creative ideas like this are born from technical limitations. It's something I feel like you don't see nearly as much of today when games and consoles can be pretty much as large or powerful as you ever need them to be. This might be why modern Nintendo games tend to stick to a "safer" approach to visuals in their games.

The fact that each area of the game is set within the same space with so many different ways to go in and out of it makes the toy chest a fascinating world to explore. It's always fascinating to me when a world is expanded by zooming in on a specific area to see more detail rather than zooming out to see more areas. Though, compared to previous games, it is a tad disappointing to consider that the locations you explore on each board isn't actually a real place and consequently has no real story going on within it. They're more like themed playgrounds, I suppose. Perhaps they could've benefitted more from being tied to the narrative a bit better.

The soundtrack in Mario Party 3 is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not sure there's a single track in this game that doesn't stick with me after it stops playing. The songs range from the whimsical and relaxing flutes of the main menu to the fun-filled beats of the Battle Royale Boards to the high-energy scrambles of the mini-games. Instruments and pacing match the emotions associated with each area of the game really well.

Aesthetic [5/5]

There's not much more for me to say about the aesthetic of Mario Party 3. I've sung its praises throughout my coverage of it, and even throughout the other categories in this one post. Between the incredible use of colors and the way various objects literally pop out at you, there's just so much fun to it! It reminds me of Yoshi's Story and various real-world pop-up books which is an aesthetic I've always loved.

While I praised Mario Party 2 for its more diverse world, introducing various themes to the Mario world rather than altering those themes to fit with the already established Mario world, I'd praise Mario Party 3 for leaning heavily into the strengths of the Mario World and presenting them in a new light. Seeing the penguins harassing Mr. Blizzard on Chilly Waters or Klepto playing Tick-tack-toe in Spiny Desert adds so much personality to otherwise painfully one-note characters. They even brought back Woody and gave him his own board! I'm almost disappointed Steamer didn't get this treatment for Creepy Cavern or something. There's also no shortage of new ideas, too. Deep Bloober Sea is absolutely filled with sealife that is completely different to what you typically see in underwater scenes throughout the series.

It's a little disappointing the only named NPC characters this time around are the Millenium Star and Tumble, an even further step back from Mario Party 1 where each option from the menu led to a new strangely odd-model Toad NPC. But I do think these characters are interesting and funny enough to entice me.

Narrative [4/5]

I definitely have mixed feelings about the narrarive of Mario Party 3. This is undoubtedly the first Mario Party that puts a strong emphasis on its narrative. They dedicated an entire gamemode to it, after all.

By isolating the story entirely to a dedicated story mode, it's almost entirely divorced from the main game. As opposed to MP1 and 2 where the main gameplay loop of gathering up your friends and playing through each board is part of the story, the story here can only be properly enjoyed through a monotonous single player experience that forces you to play through every board, alone, with rules you don't get to decide.

It might seem strange I'd complain about having to play every board alone when I'm already doing that for these reviews, but I'd like to emphasize the part about the rules. I don't like short games as much because long-term strategies don't pay out nearly as well, and it makes win or loss feel more like a crapshoot. Especially when winning alone isn't enough. It just drains all the fun out pf the experience and makes the whole thing feel like a grind.

Not only that, but because the boards have to be divorced from the story, they feel completely tacked on in the story, and have little to no story significance in the game. We get even less of an insight into the world of each board than in MP2 which already downplayed it a bit from MP1. The star stamp qualities often have so little to do with the boards that it's clearly an afterthought. It's clear they decided on board themes and wrote the story separately, rather than writing the story to match each board.

But the narrative as it is is far from bad. There are many hilarious moments throughout, mostly surrounding Bowser's antics in trying to assert himself as the Superstar. The story is a little nonsensical, but it really doesn't need to be anything serious.

The twist at the end, >!the millenium star being fake and the real millenium star being hidden inside Tumble all along!< was a genuine surprise! I wish clearing story mode had some kind of permanent effect on the rest of the game aside from just adding a character's face to Mt. Mariomore, but I suppose >!the fake Millenium Star does have a more interesting and expressive design than the real one. I still think a change in host after clearing story mode!< would be a really cool way to tie story mode back into Party mode.

Conclusion

Mario Party 3 will forever hold a special place in my heart, and I suppose I'll always have a bit of bias towards it since I used to love playing it so much as a child. But even as an adult taking the game far more seriously than any healthy near-30-year-old should, I genuinely don't think it's a stretch to call this easily the best of the N64 Mario Parties. That's of course a controversial claim, because it has quite a heated rivalry with MP2.

In my experience playing these three games back to back, despite MP3 having a reputation as a more "chaotic" Mario Party with frustrating board mechanics, I genuinely find Mario Party 2 to be a lot more luck-based and Mario Party 3 a lot more strategy based. In MP2, nearly every board had some stretch where you could just get stuck with no easy way out. The north stretch of Space Land, the northernmost bridge of Pirate Land, the Blooper Ride of Bowser Land... the entirety of Mystery Land. Even the beloved Horror Land has that day/night gimmick where no matter how much you plan ahead your plan could fall apart simply because somebody landed on a happening space and now Boo is gone or the Whomp can't move. In each of these areas, you're not likely to have an item to easily escape. Item shops are far away and you'll have to make an investment potentially several turns prior in order to escape these situations. And these can be thrown off by a simple Plunder Chest.

In Mario Party 3, boards can have some similarly oppressive gimmicks, but the items are powerful enough in tandem with them that the gimmicks hardly intrude on your ability to navigate the board. Since you don't have to hard commit to a single item, you can even load up on backup plans, or more complex strategies that involve combining different items' uses back to back. That's not to say that things like Chance Time, Game Guy, or some badly timed Merry-Go-Chomp can't completely screw you over at a bad time, but similar threats do exist in MP2 as well with fewer ways to avoid them. Likewise, there are also fewer ways to intentionally land on them in MP2, where in MP3 it's much easier to go out of your way to hit Game Guy or Chance Time if you're behind.

And I think that's the fundamental difference between these games people find when they complain this game feels more "chaotic." They notice things like Game Guy and Chance Time screwing them over more frequently and attribute it to bad luck when, in reality, they had options to reduce the odds of landing on that space or avoid it entirely, but instead went for a different strategy that may or may not have panned out. On the flipside, their opponents they're winning against are much more likely to use their items to try and shoot for Chance Time or Game Guy to turn the tables on you.

If you're not playing carefully while in 1st place in Mario Party 3, you're going to get screwed over by "luck." This designs keeps games in Mario Party 3 tense to the very last turn and that, to me, makes it by far my favorite. Even if I don't like every decision it makes.

Current Rankings:

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

This is the first time where my rankings do feel subjective. The stronger narrative ties and cohesive feel of MP1 and 2 are a strong argument for both of them over MP3 if that's your highest priority. And MP2 contains some truly classic minigames, and its boards are easily a lot more intersting visually and thematically than MP3's. But the actual gameplay and strategic depth of MP3 put it easily above 2, making up for its shortcomings when they're paired against each other. And while I have no shortage of criticisms for Duel Mode, it's still a whole category, it's still a cool and creative idea and makes for a fun distraction, even if it doesn't come close to matching the depth of Battle Royales.

That's all for now! Next time... I think it's someone's birthday? ...8 people's birthdays...? Yikes, we gotta make preparations! See you soon! 🎁

When I said every Mario Party, I meant every Mario Party. But there was one detail about Mario Party 2 I negelected to mention: A small shockwave game that was available on the official website at the time.

I had previous assumed this was lost to time, but evidently you can actually access it using the Flashpoint archive!

This game is... well, exactly what it looks like. We're not exactly breaking any grounds in terms of gameplay here. Nomiss is an adaptation of Simon featuring images of characters from Mario Party 2. Specifically, Donkey Kong the Wizard, Peach the Explorer, the Power Star, Toad in his Horror Land outfit, and... just Luigi. I guess Luigi of the Space Patrol? You can't really see his outfit since it's just his head.

First of all, really weird selection of characters, huh? Mario isn't even here! Why do Toad and the Star get a slot??

Anyway, as the game begins, you're challenged to survive for 5 rounds to win the "mushroom" and 10 rounds to win the "golden mushroom." For each round, a color will glow and you'll have to click it. The following round, a new color will be added to the sequence and you'll have to remember and repeat the sequence in order.

As far as I'm aware, this means absolutely nothing unless it created some sort of visual trophy on the site itself. But the game does forcibly end the first time you reach the 5 and 10 round marks. To go more than 10 rounds, you'll need to win the golden mushroom first then start over again. But it's not like there's any high score, so it's all bragging rights. But I'm sure you'll be the star of the party when you tell everyone you got 25 in a row in Mario Party 2 Nomiss.

I wanted to note this because it's just so... strange. The character choice is strange for one, but just look at the atmosphere here! Nothing in Mario Party 2 comes even close to looking like these weird disc things or that strange otherworldly purple background that looks like it could be a Mario 64 skybox. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to Bowser in the Sky, though I don't think it's quite the same.

But more than that, it's surprising somebody took the time to design this strange game. It was probably something a passionate employee threw together one day and pitched for the website, maybe with greater ambitions for web development down the road. I think there was a Mario 64 flash game around the same time, so I'll bet these were probably made by the same people, or at least the person who made this took inspiration from that one. Though the Mario 64 one is more explicitly Mario 64.

I suppose the alternative is that some executive saw praise being given for the Mario 64 game and made a push for some kind of Shockwave game to be included for Mario Party.

This game is definitely a product of its time. I don't think you'd ever see something quite like this today.

Anyway, this was just a brief detour I wanted to take. Take this as a hint toward a likely unexpected tangent I'm planning to take with upcoming titles! See you soon!

It's finally time to begin discussing Mario Party 3's minigames!

In Mario Party 3, any minigames you've unlocked can be played in Toad's Mini-Game Room, accessed by the yellow Star Lift. Minigames are organized as books on bookshelves forming a small library.

As a departure from previous games, you don't have to buy minigames with coins to unlock them in free-play mode. Instead, this is the first Mario Party where minigames are unlocked simply by playing them.

You might notice during your first few games, nearly every minigame on the roulette has its name blocked out with "????". These are new games you've never played before. Once the roulette lands on one, its name is revealed and it's permanently unlocked on that save file. As you can imagine, seeing a hidden game on the roulette is an exciting experience, but it can be equally disappointing when you just end up playing The Beat Goes on for the third time this game instead of that new one.

There's something really satisfying to me about slowly unlocking the minigames as you play each board, and watching the wheel fill out and hidden games get rarer and rarer, and it adds a layer of excitement to minigame selection that was missing previously. But at the same time, it can be really frustrating to reach the end of the playthrough and you're still missing a single Battle Minigame in spite of how many repeats you've had throughout the game. But bearing in mind you also had to play the games first in party mode to even be able to buy them from Woody, I'd say I prefer this much more, as it cuts out the middle man of potentially having to grind out coins.

The other thing I like about the Mini-game room is that the bookshelves clearly display just how many minigames there are, providing a visual representation of both the distribution of minigames and how many are in each category.

There are, however, a couple of secret rare 1P minigames that have to be unlocked. I've touched on them before, but to put them all in one place:

Stardust Battle is the final boss minigame and is unlocked by clearing Story Mode for the first time. I'm unsure if the minigame is unlocked upon playing it for the first time like a normal minigame, or if you actually have to see the ending to unlock it. But either way, you can freely play it here and this is the only way Waluigi and Daisy are able to play this minigame.

Dizzy Dinghies is unlocked upon unlocking all 64 standard minigames stored on the shelves. This is a single-player time trial using the control scheme of Whater Whirled, more in line with MP1's Bumper Ball Maze and MP2's Driver's Ed. In this case, there are three choices of boat with different balances of handling and speed, as well as three different courses of increasing complexity.

And finally, there is Mario's Puzzle Party Pro. This is the game unlocked through the Game Guy Room, which requires the Miracle Star Rating from Story Mode, making it by far the most exclusive game. It's a single-player score attack version if Mario's Puzzle Party, in which you must get the highest score you can within the time limit.

Mini-Games

Mario Party 3 features 71 minigames. Unlike Mario Party 2, these minigames are completely new. While there are a few that share some DNA with previous games' minigames, none of them are explicit as what you would see in Mario Party 2 which reworked many minigames from Mario Party 1, sometimes even sharing the same name.

Among these 71 minigames, there are...

*20 4-Player Games

*10 1v3 Games

*10 2v2 Games

*8 Battle Games

*10 Duel Games

*6 Item Games

*3 Rare Games (labeled ??? Games in-game)

*4 Gamble Games

Of the 4-Player Games...

Treadmill Grill, Ice Rink Risk, Parasol Plummet, M.P.I.Q., Toadstool Titan, Bounce 'n' Trounce, and Mario's Puzzle Party (7/20 or 35%) have Luck Components,

Messy Memory, M.P.I.Q., Curtain Call, and The Beat Goes On (4/20 or 20%) have Memory Components,

Cheep Cheep Chase, and Snowball Summit (2/20 or 10%) have Button Mashing components,

Parasol Plummet, Picture Imperfect, Bounce 'n' Trounce, and Rockin' Raceway (4/20 or 20%) have Rhythm Components

M.P.I.Q., Cheep Cheep Chase, Toadstool Titan, Mario's Puzzle Party, and Pipe Cleaners (5/20 or 25%) have Reaction components,

Chip Shot Challenge, Water Whirled, Frigid Bridges, and Awful Tower (4/20 or 20%) have Precision components,

Treadmill Grill, Ice Rink Risk, Parasol Plummet, Snowball Summit, Toadstool Titan, Aces High, and Bounce 'n' Trounce (7/20 or 35%) have Action components

Treadmill Grill, Ice Rink Risk, Parasol Plummet, Messy Memory, M.P.I.Q., Curtain Call, Snowball Summit, Toadstool Titan, Aces High, and Bounce 'n' Trounce (10/20 or 50%) have Strategy Components

M.P.I.Q., and The Beat Goes On (2/20 or 10%) have some degree of coordination component.

You can definitely notice a significant uptick in Memory components in this game. You're definitely going to want to train your brain. There are also much fewer button mashers here, which I greatly approve of because that category holds some of my least favorite minigames. Of the button mashers, the only "real" button masher is Cheep Cheep Sweep, which is functionally more or less a rework of Skateboard Scamper.

My favorite 4P game would have to be Water Whirled, as I love steadily improving my time in this game. It has a deceptively high skill ceiling in spite of the simple track. You have to practice a lot to round the corners as fast as possible without losing too much time.

My least favorite is definitely no surprise. The Beat Goes On is probably the worst Mario Party minigame... ever. Granted, I'm approaching my 30's and it seems like my memory is already starting to betray me. But when I was younger, this minigame always continued all the way to the end and always ended in a draw. As long as more than one player has reached the skill floor of this minigame, it is absolutely nothing but several minutes of waisted time with no tension at all. I would rather the game be 3 minutes of straight stick spinning and have a guaranteed winner. And though it's a skill issue, the fact that my memory has gotten bad enough that I can't consistently make it to the end only makes me dislike this game even more.

Of the 1v3 Minigames...

Crazy Cogs, Hide and Sneak, and River Raiders (3/10 or 30%) have luck components,

None (0/10 or 0%) have a significant memory components,

Ridiculous Relay (1/10 or 10%) has a button mashing component,

Tidal Toss and Thwomp Pull (2/10 or 20%) have Rhythm Components,

Thwomp Pull (1/10 or 30%) has a Reaction component,

Coconut Conk, Spotlight Swim, Boulder Ball, River Raiders, Tidal Toss, Hand, Line, and Sinker, and Rodiculous Relay have Precision components (7/10 or 70%)

Coconut Conk, Spotlight Swim, Boulder Ball, Crazy Cogs, and Tidal Toss, have Action components (5/10 or 50%)

Coconut Conk, Boulder Ball, Crazy Cogs, Hide and Sneak, River Raiders, Tidal Toss, and Hand, Line, and Sinker (7/10 or 70%) have Strategy components,

Coconut Conk, Spotlight Swim, Boulder Ball, Hide and Sneak, River Raiders, and Thwomp Pull (6/10 or 60%) have coordination components.

Mario Party 3's 1v3 games seem to have a stronger lean toward teamwork than MP2. But there's still a healthy mix of minigames a skilled player can carry their team on.

Of the 1v3's, my favorite is Thwomp Pull. It's a very basic game, but sometimes less is more. It's easy to understand, though there's a bit of a knowledge check with how the button order works for the team. The solo player definitely has an advantage, but it's far from impossible for the team to win.

My least favorite is Hide and Sneak where the game is either entirely luck against an AI opponent or its impossible for the team to lose since they just have to spread out.

Of the 2v2 Minigames...

Puddle Paddle (1/10 or 10%) has a luck component,

None (0/10 or 0%) have any memory components,

Eatsa Pizza, Baby Bowser Broadside, and Puddle Paddle (3/10 or 30%) have Button Mashing components,

Pump, Pump, and Away, Hyper Hydrants, Picking Panic, and Slot Synch (4/10 or 40%) have Rhythm components,

Baby Bowser Broadside, Cosmic Coaster, and Log Jam (3/10 or 30%) have reaction components

Eatsa Pizza, Baby Bowser Broadside, Puddle Paddle, Hyper Hydrants, and Etch 'n' Catch (5/10 or 50%) have Precision components,

None (0/10 or 0%) have action components,

Eatsa Pizza, Puddle Paddle, Hyper Hydrants, and Etch 'n' Catch, (4/10 or 40%) have strategy components

Eatsa Pizza, Cosmic Coaster, Puddle Paddle, Log Jam, Hyper Hydrants, Picking Panic, Etch 'n' Catch, and Slot Synch (8/10 or 80%) have coordination components.

The 2v2 games are naturally a lot more coordination centric.

My favorite 2v2 is Eatsa Pizza. It's another ceceptively simple game, but having to size up the skillsets of your opppnents as well as your teammate ans speculate on how best to divide it up adds a very interesting layer to a minigame that otherwise can mostly be carried by the most skilled player. A close second is Log Jam. I love the simple pressure of knowing your partner is trusting you to go as quick as you can might lead you to make stupid mistakes by stepping out of your comfort zone. It's a game that deceptively rewards patience over haste.

My least favorite is Baby Bowser Broadside. Something about this game just didn't click with me, even against Normal AI I would get destroyed every time. It's something about the perspective, I just can never seem to get the right angle to hit the Koopa Kid while shooting around the parapets. And on top of that, the AI seems to mash like a god on this game.

Of the Battle Games...

Stacked Deck, Merry Go Chomp, and Locked Out (3/8 or 38%) have a luck component,

Three Door Monty (1/8 or 13%) has a memory component,

None (0/8 or 0%) have any button mashing components,

None (0/8 or 0%) have any rhythm components,

Slap Down (1/8 or 13%) has a Reaction component,

Locked Out, All Fired Up, Storm Chasers, and Eye Sore (4/8 or 50%) have precision components

Locked Out (1/8 or 13%) has an action component,

Locked Out, Storm Chasers, and All Fired Up (3/8 or 38%) have a strategy component,

Locked Out, Storm Chasers, and All Fired Up (3/8 or 38%) have a coordination component.

Battle Games this time around seem to hevily favor precison and luck. The Luck games are especially deadly for skillful players and powerful for weaker players. Merry-Go-Chomp and Stacked Deck are both incredibly unapologetic in their use of luck being dictated entirely by it. But the majority of Battle Games still favor skillful play, so be sure to practice up!

My favorite Battle game has to be Eye Sore, as it has a lot of room for error and heavily encourages you to flirt with the hitboxes as much as you can get away with. Failure here almost always feels like your own fault because you either played it too safe or took too much of a risk and ran into Mr. I or a podoboo.

My least favorite Battle Game probably has to be All Fired Up. This game is just far too stressful for me to enjoy, especially with how high stakes these battle games can be. I'm not gonna make an argument for Merry-Go-Chomp or Stacked Deck here, though, because I always try to stress the importance of luck-based games in Mario Party. There should be some in every category, even high stakes ones. Though to be fair, 2 in 8 is a little bit much.

Of the Duel Games...

End of the Line (1/10 or 10%) has a Luck Component,

End of the Line (1/10 or 10%) has a Memory Component,

Popgun Pick-Off, Silly Screws, and Bowser Toss (3/10 or 30%) have Button Masher components,

Vine With Me and Tick Tock Hop (2/10 or 20%) have rhythm components,

Popgun Pick-Off, and Crowd Cover (2/10 or 20%) have reaction components,

Baby Bowser Bonkers, Silly Screws, Bowser Toss, Motor Rooter, and Fowl Play (5/10 or 50%) have Precision components,

Baby Bowser Bonkers, Motor Rooter, and Fowl Play (3/10 or 30%) have Action components,

Vine With Me, Popgun Pick-Off, End of the Line, Baby Bowser Bonkers, and Fowl Play (5/10 or 50%) have stratety components,

And, perhaps obviously enough, none (0/10 or 0%) have any coordination components.

There is a good variety of components across the board in the duel category, and rightly so since this is the only minigame category that can be played in Duel mode.

My favorite is Vine With Me. Another deceptively simple game that has a lot of depth. As you gain confidence playing this game, you'll start skipping vines and gliding across the course with enough grace to put Tarzan to shame. A close second is End of the Line. This minigame on a surface level looks shamelessly luck-based. And don't get me wrong, it is. But if you have the foresight to watch your opponent's screen as well as your own, you can gain an upper hand. And when both players are privy to that strategy, the real mind-games begin as you try to fake each other out about which direction you're going to go and whether you'll switch directions at the last moment.

My least favorite is easily Bowser Toss. Fuck this game. I've gotten a single good through in my entire playthrough of the game where I demolished a Hard AI's record only for that same record to be beaten by another Hard AI the very next time I play. To this day, I genuinely don't know how to play this game well. Button mashing while angling the Bowser is unweildy enough as is. I have no idea what angle you want to release Bowser at, it seems completely unintuitive. They AI throws at an angle that looks much too high to me and when I try to mimic it, I end up throwing the Bowser basically straight in the air and get next to no distance. But if I try to angle it any lower, it seems to drop like a rock. It's probably just a skill issue, but I'm convinced this game just doesn't work as intended.

Of the Item Games...

None (0/6 or 0%) have any luck components,

Swing 'n' Swipe (1/6 or 17%) has a memory component,

None (0/6 or 0%) have any Button Masher components,

Winner's Wheel, Hey, Batter, Batter!, Bobbing Bow-loons, Dorrie Dip, and Swinging with Sharks (5/6 or 83%) have Rhythm components,

None (0/6 or 0%) have any reaction components,

Swing 'n' Swipe (1/6 or 17%) has a precision component,

None (0/6 or 0%) have any action components,

None (0/6 or 0%) have any strategy components,

None (0/6 or 0%) have any coordination components, quite obviously considering you play these games alone.

Nearly every Item Game is timing-based, and I find that incredibly problematic considering the timing to get the item you want is often a fairly steep learning curve. And since item games are chosen by roulette this time around, there's no guarantee you'll even see the same item game twice, much less as many times as you need to actually get the item you want consistently every time. If you're serious about winning, I highly recommend practicing each of these games and mastering the timing to get every item!

My favorite Item Game is Swing 'n' Swipe. It's the only item game that isn't a knowledge check, though it almost couldn't be freer. Tney may as well just let you choose the item you want from a menu. This isn't so much praise for this minigame as it is a cricism of every single other item game being a timing-based knowledge check.

My least favorite has to he Hey, Batter! Batter! I already suck at those missions in Mario Baseball to hit the ball in specific areas of the field, much less in fake pretend Mario Party Baseball that doesn't even try to get the physics right. I swear hitting the items in left and right field is one of the most impossible challenges I've ever attempted to do.

Of the Gamble Minigames...

Do I really need to categorize them for you? They're luck, they're all luck! I've outlined both the safe bet strategies practical for party mode and the higher risk long-term bet strategies more practical for Game Guy's Room in the previous post covering Game Guy's Room.

But to summarize, Game Guy's Magic Boxes is the most cut and dry luck game. Game Guy's Sweet Surprise, Roulette, and Lucky 7 all have varying degrees of strategy to them, but at the end of the day their results are all heavily dictated by luck by design.

Of the Rare Games...

Stardust Battle is all about precision.

Dizzy Dinghies is... also all about precision.

And Mario's Puzzle Party Pro is all about reaction, strategy, and luck.

Conclusion

Mario Party 3 is the first Mario Party Sequel to feature a completely original set of minigames. Though several of these games do reuse similar ideas to past games, they're all much more heavily modified from their predecessors. Cheep Cheep Sweep is much more heavily disguised from Skateboard Scamper than Skarsboard Scamper is to... well, Skatsboard Scamper.

Not all of these new games are winners, and I think there are some notable design flaws, but so many of the minigames in this game are so creative and fun I can't help but love eben the games I'd really rather not play. It makes me really sad Mario Party 3 doesn't feature a counterpart to Mini-Game Island as I would've loved to explore the world inside this toybox. But I suppose the dev time that normally would've gone into Mini-Game Island and Mini-Game Stadium insteD went toward Duel Mode. I can't be too bitter about that, I suppose. But let's not get sidetracked already.

One of the biggest things that surprised me was the lack of luck-based duel games. I figured part of the reason to get rid of board-themed duel games was to introduce the possibility of getting a luck-based game to keep you from just safely betting all of your coins for an easy win over weaker opponents. But instead, even the only duel game that actually has a luck component still has a promoment strategy component that will lead to a skilled player winning just about every time anyway. It's clear to me the roulette for duel games was primarily made for Duel Mode rather than balancing the Dueling Glove. And in retrospect, they did a very good job of ensuring a variety of games for that category. There's still only 10 of them, so they still get really old when they're all you play. But at least they're diverse enough that Duel Mode isn't skewed too heavily toward a single skill.

This game puts a much larger emphasis on Memory and luck while maintaining the usual emphasis on precision and action. All the while, Button Mashers are almost entirely nonexistent! They're not completely gone, but compared to Mario Party 2, you're far safer here if you can't mash very well.

I definitely think Mario Party 2 wins out in minigames overall, but this game has some fantastic ones.

I suppose that's all there is to talk about with the minigames. Next time, I do believe the only thing left is to close out Mario Party 3. See you soon! 📦