Collection essentials #414 & 415: Mario Party (N64) and Mario Party 2 (N64)

I think I’m gonna do combo posts like this more often. Sometimes there will be multiple games in a series, and I won’t have a whole lot to say about both the games individually, so I think it makes sense to do this.

The Nintendo 64 was a console with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer, and so it’s fitting that Nintendo came up with a brand new multiplayer-oriented series featuring their most recognizable character. The main gameplay of Mario Party is like a tabletop board game. The concept of an original “board game video game” not based on a real tabletop game wasn’t new when this game came out, but those types of games were more common in Japan and not many achieved much popularity in America. That was about to change!

A regular game of Mario Party involves four participants. The object of the game is to collect as many stars and coins within the specified number of turns. Whoever has the most stars at the end wins the game, and coins serve as a tiebreaker if two players have the same amount of stars. There is typically one star available on a board at a given time, and its placement is typically somewhat random. When a player reaches a star, they must have enough coins to buy it. Coins are earned in a variety of different ways. Most spaces on the board will increase or decrease the player’s coin total in some way, and the most common spaces by far are the ones that grant 3 coins to whoever lands on them.

There’s another very significant way to earn coins. Whenever each of the four players has taken a turn, the focus shifts away from the board and the contestants all compete in a “minigame” which is randomly selected. An explanation of each minigame is given so new players won’t be totally lost. Minigames can be a free-for-all with all four contestants competing against each other, but there are also minigames for a team of two against another team, and even some where three of the players team up against one (and they are designed so the three don’t have an advantage). The spaces you land on sometimes determine what type of minigame you’ll be playing, but certain spaces can result in the game randomly choosing. Whichever player(s) win(s) a minigame typically earn(s) 10 coins. (Gosh that’s a clumsy way to write a sentence.) Minigames can be all kinds of things, from racing, to Simon Says, to some kind of action platforming challenging, and a whole host of other things. Mini games can be unlocked so that players can enjoy them whenever they want, outside of the main board game.

There are various different boards in each Mario Party game that players can pick from. Each board has some kind of theme, a unique layout, and quirks to set it apart. And there are some spaces on the board that will always appear on each board. For example, there are “Bowser spaces” in which the evil Koopa king will likely do something unfortunate for whoever landed on it, and there are also “Chance Time spaces” in which whoever lands on it has to play what is basically a variant of slots to determine which of the four players has to give some quantity of something they have to a different player. As you might guess from Chance Time, randomness is always a factor in Mario Party at least to some extent. The quirks of each board sometimes have an element of randomness to them which players have no control over. But it’s not entirely a luck fest, as the mini games usually do reward skilled players and therefore they will have a big leg up. Randomness can be frustrating, but the fact that someone who’s behind can get back in the game with a bit of luck can also make games like this more exciting, much like how Mario Kart has this dynamic with its items.

Mario Party 2 has pretty much all the same basics of the first game, but adds some things and polishes up the experience in various ways. This game added two-player “Duel” minigames which occur under certain special conditions. A very nice addition is items, which players can buy from shops and earn in other ways too. A player can use an item at the start of their turn to do something special, such as increasing how far they can move or allowing the player to challenge another to a duel minigame with coins on the line. Something that doesn’t affect gameplay but is nonetheless a cool touch is that the characters will wear certain outfits depending on what board they play on, for example dressing up as cowboys for the “Western Land” board or pirates for the “Pirate Land” board. 

Mario Party 1 featured some mini games that required players to rapidly spin the joystick. In order to spin it as fast as they could, many players resorted to putting their entire palm over the controller and rotating that way. The Nintendo 64’s analog stick has a few ridges on top of it and weren’t meant to be used in this way, and unfortunately some players hurt their hands trying to do this. Although they weren’t sued, Nintendo received many complaints from players about this and came to a settlement with these people which involved giving them free gloves. 

I think most would agree that Mario Party 2 is clearly a better game than the original. It even brings back some of the mini games from the previous game and does not include any that require rotating the joystick in a potentially harmful way. 

I remember when I first heard about Mario Party when a friend of the family had it, and I got to try it out when visiting them. I was definitely interested in getting it for myself, though the first one I got was a sequel (stay tuned for that) and not the original. I wound up getting Mario Party 2 in the early 2000s thanks to my mom garage-saling, and it even had the box and manual! But the tragic part is…when I tried it out, I didn’t like it very much, and I don’t even remember exactly why. But without giving it much play time, I got rid of it! That’s one of my biggest gaming regrets. The copy shown in the photo I bought off someone I know in my young adult years. I tried it out again and found the game plenty enjoyable and I don’t know what was wrong with me.

Mario Party 2, if I’m not mistaken, is still considered one of the best Mario Party games to this day. It’s definitely a great four-player option if you’ve got people willing to sit down with it for roughly an hour or so. The first Mario Party is probably not worth revisiting unless you’re willing to put up with the spinning joystick stuff, and there are some third-party controllers with much smoother analog sticks that make it not so bad. It’s hard to see myself playing the first Mario Party much at all in the future, but it would still feel wrong not to have it. These games are clear choices as essentials in my Nintendo 64 collection.

But wait, you might say! Aren’t I forgetting one?? Well…stay tuned for next time!