Mario Party (video game)

Mario Party is a party video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 game console. It was released in Japan in December 1998, and in the United States in February 1999. The game was targeted at a young audience. It is the first installment in the Mario Party series and was followed by Mario Party 2 in 1999 for the same system.

Gameplay
Mario Party is a party video game with six playable characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario, or Donkey Kong. In the game's storyline, Mario and his friends argue about which of them is the Super Star. To settle their dispute, they set out for adventure to determine which of them is best. Mario Party takes the form of a traditional board game, and includes six game board maps themed after each of the playable characters. Two additional board maps are unlocked later in the game. Mario Party includes multiplayer; each round on a board map consists of four players, including at least one human player and up to four. Any character who is not controlled by a human will instead be controlled by the game as a computer-controlled character. Upon starting a board, players each hit a dice block to determine turn order, with the highest number going first on each turn and the lowest number going last.

The player chooses how long each board map game will last: 20 turns, 35 turns, or 50 turns. A full turn is concluded after each of the four players have taken their own turn around the board map. A dice block determines how many spaces each player will advance on the board, ranging from one to ten spaces. Each board map has a variety of spaces. Blue spaces give three coins to any player who lands on them, and red spaces take away three coins (both increased to six coins during the last five turns). Mushroom spaces give players a chance to either take another turn right away or lose their subsequent turn. The green-colored "?" spaces result in an event occurring on the board map; each board features different events which can help or hinder certain players. The "!" spaces result in a Chance Time game, in which selected characters must give or exchange coins or stars; the player who landed on the space is given three blocks to hit, determining which characters and prize will be involved. Bowser also has his own spaces on the board map which hinder the players' progress.

Each player's goal is to collect the most stars. Purchasing stars requires coins, which can be earned through mini-games that are played once at the end of each turn. Each mini-game is chosen randomly. Mario Party features more than 50 mini-games, divided into several categories: The type of mini-game that is played is determined based on the color of space that each player landed on. Each player has a panel located in a corner of the screen, and each panel will become either red or blue to match the space that the player landed on at the end of their turn. Players who land on one of the green "?" spaces will have their panel randomly changed to either red or blue. If all the panels are the same color, a 4-player mini-game is played. Other color variations result in either a 1 vs. 3 or 2 vs. 2 mini-game. Single-player mini-games are only played when the character lands on a one-player mini-game space.
 * 4-player mini-game: each player competes against one another.
 * 1 vs. 3 mini-game: a team of three players competes against a lone competitor.
 * 2 vs. 2 mini-game: competing teams of two against two.
 * 1-player mini-game: a lone player works toward a goal to win the mini-game.

Several characters appear throughout each board map, and each character can have an effect on players who reach them. Stars can be purchased from Toad for 20 coins. Boo can steal coins or a star from another player on behalf of anyone who requests it; stealing coins is free, but stealing a star costs 50 coins. Koopa Troopa appears at the starting point on board maps and will give 10 coins to each player who passes him. Bowser tries to foil the efforts of any player who passes him by taking coins. Three bonus stars are awarded at the end of each board map: two are given to the player(s) who collected the most coins in mini-games and throughout the board map game, and the third is given to the player(s) who landed on the most "?" spaces.

The game includes the single-player Mini-Game Island mode, in which one human player must play through each mini-game. The player has three lives and progresses through a world map with the completion of each mini-game, while losing a mini-game results in the loss of a life. If the player loses all lives, the game ends, and the player must resume from the last save point. If the player completes all the mini-games in Mini-Game Island, a bonus mini-game is unlocked.

Another mode is Mini-Game Stadium, in which four players compete on a board map (different from the main party boards) for a set number of turns; the player with the most coins at the end is the winner. Coins earned from the main board maps or Mini-Game Stadium are deposited into a bank. The coins can be used to purchase the mini-games, allowing the player to play them whenever they choose.

Coins can also be used to buy items, which can be used on the board maps. The player can select which items to use on a board map, but cannot choose the time at which the items will have an effect. Instead, the game periodically chooses a random player as the recipient of the item and its effects. Such effects include special dice blocks with only high or low numbers. Other items remove Koopa Troopa or Boo from the board.

Reception
Mario Party received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Critics considered Mario Party much more enjoyable when playing with other people through the game's multiplayer option. Joe Fielder of GameSpot said, "The games that are enjoyable to play in multi-player are nowhere near as good in the single player mode. Really, it's that multi-player competitive spark of screaming at and/or cheering for your friends that injects life into these often-simple little games, and without it, they're just simple little games." Peer Schneider of IGN took a similar stance, saying that it was the interaction between players rather than the interaction with the game that made Mario Party fun. James Bottorff of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote, "Playing by yourself requires you to sit through the painfully slow moves of each of your computer opponents." Game Revolution wrote that playing alone "is terribly boring, and realistically scrounging up 4 people to play Mario Party is harder than it sounds."

Game Revolution wrote that the game had "great intentions, but unsatisfying delivery," calling it "a tedious and often frustrating experience". Reviewers for Game Informer wrote negatively about Mario Party and its mini-games. Scott Alan Marriott of AllGame was also dissatisfied with most of the mini-games, and criticized the random luck involved in the gameplay. He stated that Mario Party had a good concept but that the game was somewhat of a disappointment. Marriott concluded that most players would be unsatisfied with the short mini-games and the simple gameplay.

The music was praised, although the graphics received a mixed response. Critics believed the game would have appeal for young children. Electronic Gaming Monthly's authors gave the game individual scores of 8.5, 8.5, 8.5, and 9 each, totaling up to 8.625 out of 10. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of two eights, one seven, and one eight, for a total of 31 out of 40.

Within the first two months of its U.S. release, Mario Party was among the top-five most-rented video games. It was also the fourth best-selling video game of April 1999.

Sequels
The popularity of Mario Party has led to nine sequels: Mario Party 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 as well as Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo e-Reader versions. A Mario Party game for arcades, titled Super Mario Fushigi no Korokoro Party, was released in Japan only, making a total of twelve games in ten years, including at least one every year, with the exception of 2006, and 2008 through 2011. Mario Party: Star Rush was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2016, followed a year later by Mario Party: The Top 100. The latest game, Super Mario Party, was released on Nintendo Switch in October 2018. The frequency of the sequels has led to some criticism regarding the games being unoriginal, as many ideas from previous installments of Mario Party have been recycled throughout the series.

Controversy
In Mario Party, certain minigames required players to rotate the Nintendo 64 controller's analog stick as fast as they can. Some players reportedly got blisters, friction burns and lacerations from rotating the analog stick using the palms of their hands instead of using their thumb.

Although no lawsuits were filed, around 90 complaints were received by New York's attorney general's office and Nintendo of America eventually agreed to a settlement, which included providing gloves for anyone who had hurt their hand(s) while playing the game and paying the state's $75,000 legal fees. At the time, providing gloves for the estimated 1.2 million users of the game who might have been affected could have cost Nintendo up to $80 million.

The analog stick rotation has been used sparingly since Mario Party 2. Despite Nintendo's current analog sticks being better suited to play these games than the hard plastic of the N64 controller, Mario Party has not been re-released for the Virtual Console. For the Wii Virtual Console, Nintendo skipped it and instead re-released Mario Party 2, which was later also made available for the Wii U Virtual Console.