Mario Party 3

Mario Party 3 is a party video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. The third installment in the Mario Party series, it was first released in Japan on December 7, 2000, in North America on May 7, 2001, in Australia on September 3, 2001, and in Europe on November 16, 2001. As with previous installments, the player chooses between eight playable characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario, and Donkey Kong from the first two games, alongside newcomers Princess Daisy and Waluigi (in his second appearance in the Mario series). The game features duel maps, where two players try to lower each other's stamina to zero using non-player characters such as Chain Chomps.

Mario Party 3 was the final Mario Party game for the Nintendo 64, and was followed by Mario Party 4 for the GameCube in 2002.

Gameplay
Mario Party 3 has 2 types of board modes: Battle Royale and Duel boards.

The game has a standard party mode where up to 4 players can play on the battle royale maps or the mini-game library, and up to 2 can play a duel map, and can control various settings in the game.

Battle mini-games, introduced in Mario Party 2, are featured in Mario Party 3 as well. These games are like the 4-player games, but generally more elaborate. When done on the board, battle games are usually tense because every player has to put a certain number of coins (10, 20, 30, 50 or sometimes 0, in which case the battle is cancelled) into a pot. First place gets 70% of the pot, second place gets 30%, and a random player gets any coins lost in rounding.

Duel games pit 2 players against each other. These are engaged through a Dueling Glove and in the last 5 turns in the game where if a player lands on the same space as another a duel is initiated. In Party Mode, 1 player initiates the duel and bet coins against another player. The winner of the duel wins all of the coins in the bet.

New (and exclusive) to this edition are Game Guy mini-games. When a character landed on a Game Guy space, he/she is forced to surrender all of his/her coins and play a chance-based mini-game. If the game is won, the coins of the character are multiplied, usually twofold, but in 2 of the games, it is possible to win up to 64-fold. However, if the game is lost, then the character will not receive his/her coins back. These games proved to be unpopular and were not continued in subsequent Mario Party games.

Mario Party 3 retained Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Wario, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong as playable players from the last 2 Mario Party games, with the addition of Princess Daisy and Waluigi. However, the two of them are only playable in Party Mode.

Battle Royale
The objective, as in the other games, is to take turns moving around the board by hitting a dice block, the game's equivalent of rolling a die, and collect coins and stars. The character moves the given number of spaces and may trigger special actions or events by passing or landing on certain spaces. After all four characters have moved, a mini-game begins. Mini-games can also be triggered by certain special event spaces, or various in game actions. The player with the most stars at the end of the game wins, but if 2 or more players have the same number of stars, the one with the most coins wins. If 2 or more players have the same number of stars and coins at the end, they each roll a die and the one with the higher number wins. Coins are found on many spaces on the board and also earned in mini-games. Stars are found on the board for purchase and can also be acquired through certain items or special events. All types of mini-games (except the 3 special ones) can be played on the battle royale boards.

Like in the previous Mario Party games, items can be collected and used. Characters can carry up to 3 items instead of just 1. They can be bought from either Toad or Baby Bowser at two locations in each map, or won from an item space that will either make the player play an item mini-game, or have the player answer a question from either Toad or Baby Bowser. The two characters can only provide the items they sell in their shops, depending on which answer is given, and the options of items the player can win from the mini game are either Toad's items or Baby Bowser's.

Duel
Mario Party 3 introduced the duel mode, in which only two players participate. The players have a health meter in the shape of a heart that goes to 5, and the objective is to reduce the opponent's health to zero by battling with partners. The players use minor Mario characters as a partner. The players each get one partner at the start of the game, and can have up to two partners, one in front of them as they move, the other behind. When they get back to start, they get another partner, and it can go to front or back, and replace the partner that is already there if there is one. The partners do the battling to reduce the opponents health, and defend the player from incoming attack. Each partner has its own health, and if it reaches zero, they disappear, and if the attacking partner deals more damage than the defending partner can take, the player takes damage equal to the difference. If no partner is between the attacking partner and the opponent, they take all the damage directly. The characters cannot attack their opponent directly. Some of the partners attacks cannot be protected against, and each partner costs a certain number of coins for the player to keep it, and if the player has 2 partners, their salary combines. If the player does not have enough coins to pay their partners, they disappear. Occasionally, if a partner is attacked by the opponents partner, the attack will miss. When the turn count expires, the winner is decided, and it is whoever has more health left. The game will end before the turn count expires if either player's health hits 0. If the turn count expires and both players have the same amount of health, whoever has the most coins wins. If both their health and coins numbers are the same, which is rare, the game ends in a draw. In party mode, the game settings can be set so that the turn count is infinite and the game goes until one player's health hits 0.

Duel mini-games and Game Guy mini-games are the only mini-games available to be played on a duel board. Unlike battle royale, they do not occur after every turn, but only if either player lands on mini-game space. There is also a part of each map that makes the players play a duel mini game for 20, 30 or 40 coins after it is passed 5 times. Game Guy mini games occur more often here than in battle royale. Items are not present in duel mode.

Story mode
This game introduces Story Mode to the series, in which 1 player starts a campaign through every board, challenging computer controlled opponents at a shortened version of party mode. The player's objective is to defeat the other characters and earn stamps from the Millennium Star. After all seven stamps are acquired the player is challenged to a final duel with the Millennium Star, in which the player must hit the Millennium Star 3 times (6 times on Normal difficulty and 9 on Hard difficulty) with stars in order to defeat story mode. Each time the player completes an objective, they are given a rank of S, A, B or C depending on how well they completed that objective. When all the objectives have been completed, a title representing the player's overall progress in the game is awarded. This is determined by the ranks they earned for each objective. If at least 8 "S" ranks are acquired, that character becomes a "Miracle Star" and the Game Guy Room in the Mini Game House is opened for use. Simply beating the Story Mode and not earning a high title will cause the character's face to be sculpted into the mountain. Unlike Party Mode, the original six playable characters from the first two Mario Party games are playable in this mode while Princess Daisy and Waluigi are unplayable in this mode, instead acting as non-player characters.

Development
Like most games in the Mario Party franchise, Mario Party 3 was developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo. It is the first Mario Party game to have multiple save slots and the first to have Princess Daisy and Waluigi as playable characters. It is the final Mario Party game specifically to be released on the Nintendo 64. The following game in the series was released on the GameCube.

On August 9, 2000, while Nintendo was about to release Mario Tennis in the United States, Nintendo Power Source updated its website with details on Mario Party 3 to be featured at the firm's Space World show, which happened on August 24 at a pre-event press briefing. Nintendo Power Source posted only one screenshot of the game on their site at the time. Later that month, Nintendo released 12 more screenshots of the game's adventure boards. The game was about 70% completed during the time being.

Reception
Mario Party 3 received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 31 out of 40. Some reviewers were critical of Mario Party 3 for largely using the same gameplay as the previous installments, with only minimal changes. Critics stated that the game was best when played with friends. N64 Magazine (later NGC Magazine) wrote, "Playing against the CPU is one of the most frustrating exercises known to man." Game Revolution wrote that playing with less than two other people "totally sucks," and complained about the inability to fast-forward through mini-games played solely by computer-controlled opponents.

Gavin Frankle of AllGame wrote that Mario Party 3 "provides enough to entice new fans and satisfy existing ones, but does little to further the genre or remedy the problems that have been around since the first game." Frankle called it "probably the most enjoyable title yet" in the series. Joe Fielder of GameSpot wrote that it "has some of the best minigames that have appeared in the series yet, although it does have a few stinkers." Game Revolution, which criticized the previous games, praised the duel mode and wrote that the mini-games make up for some of the game's faults. However, the website was critical of the same random luck involved in the game. Nintendo Power said that "the real life of the party is the batch of 71 new minigames." One negative comment among the staff review was that "it seems like many of the challenges are based on overcoming unresponsive controls."

Fielder considered the graphics similar to the previous games and wrote that they "look as good as they need to for this kind of game, but are certainly not going to win it any awards." Fran Mirabella III of IGN stated that the game "uses the same bright colors, low-resolution textures, and choppy animation that the rest have." Fielder considered the soundtrack to be a slight improvement over the previous games. Mirabella considered the music "just as outdated as the graphics," but also called it "very cute" and wrote that it "does the job of keeping your ears occupied in the cheesiest of ways."

In 2015, IGN listed the game at number one on its list of "Best Mario Party Games," writing, "The best Mario Party games know the balance between luck and skill, and Mario Party 3 best exemplifies this rule. Just about everything that made Mario Party 2 so great was pushed further as Mario Party 3 introduced even more strategic items, creative new boards, and some truly fun minigames."

Awards
The game won the Console Family Award from Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for 2002. The game sold over 1 million units worldwide.