Product description
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Includes Mario Party Game Cartridge with original box
and game manual. Other original pack-in items are NOT included.
Tensions for Mario and pals as each declares himself to be
the one true Super Star of Marioland. Face your friends and
family in a contest of strength, wits and agility as you explore
6 thriling Adventure Boards. Reveal new levels of gaming
excitement as you customize your boards with speed blocks, warp
blocks and other specialty items. Jam-packed with all the
electricity of an entire arcade, the action comes alive for up to
4 players. So grab your friends and get ready for a wild ride
because this party never ends!
Review
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Mario Party is the first of several Mario games planned
for this year that are being created by developers outside of
Nintendo. In this case, the developer is Hudson, a company best
known for the Bomberman series, while the others are HAL Systems,
the creator of the Kirby line (which is handling the Mario
fighting game, Smash Brothers), and Hot s Golf maker Camelot
(which is doing Mario Golf). Each of the games' focus plays to
what the developers know best, in this case, Hudson's knowledge
of good multiplayer game modes gleaned from producing countless
incarnations of Bomberman, the seminal party-game series.
How do they do that? By setting up Mario Party as a video game
take on a traditional board game. One to four players compete
against each other (and computer nents if there are fewer
than four humans present) for coins, stars, and bonus points.
Instead of going the route of Monopoly's little dog and top hat
assortment, Mario Party offers a handful of Mario characters for
use as "game pieces" such as Mario, Yoshi, Wario, Peach, Donkey
Kong, and Luigi. Each of the title's boards is based on the
series as well (Donkey Kong has a jungle stage, Yoshi an island,
and so on), and each differs in prominent ways. Once the
characters and board are chosen, you vie for the order you'll
proceed through the game by stopping a rotating number block,
which reappears at the beginning of each turn to decide how many
spaces you'll move. Plain spaces provide a number of coins, while
specially marked spaces will draw you into bonus minigames
(explained fully later) or introduce you to friendly or
unfriendly nonplayer characters such as Toad, Shy Guy, and Boo.
The one you least want to bump into is of course Bowser, who will
either steal coins from you outright or engage you in forced
minigames where you don't gain any coins if you win, and you lose
coins if you lose. The main goal is to have the largest total
number of stars at the end of a game, which can be bought along
the way from Toad or by paying off a Boo to steal one from one of
your nents (this costs more than twice the regular 20-coin
a but is much more fun).
The minigames are the Mario Party features that most take
advantage of the title not being set on a flat plate of
cardboard. You enter at the end of each round or by landing on
marked spaces on the board. The games come in various shapes and
sizes and in configurations of every player against the others,
two vs. two, or three against one. Of the 50 in all, the most
noteworthy examples are probably the Bobsled Run (which is
reminiscent of the snow race in Super Mario 64, but with two
characters sharing a sled), Face Lift (you try to drag around a
mushed face a la Super Mario 64's intro), Mario Bandstand (a
distant cousin of Parappa the Rapper), Lava Boardin' (you race
down a collapsing platform and jump over obstacles), and Cash
Bash (one player is dressed up as Bowser, and the others hit him
with hammers and steal his coins). Some are skill based, while
many require button mashing or joystick twirling. The winner or
winners gain coins, while the losers pay out or just leave with
what they came into the game with - nothing more, nothing less.
Playing with a group of friends makes this game shine. There are
enough random elements at work that enable huge upsets to happen
about once every other round (which continues straight up to the
end when bonus stars are given out that can nudge second- or
third-place players to the forefront), and going after the lead
player or teaming up against the computer is superfun -
especially when you're trying to garner stars for the collective
total (get enough and... things happen). On the negative side,
some of the minigames aren't very fun to play in the multiplayer
mode because of control or perspective problems, or because
they're just plain boring - but that's to be expected with the
sheer number of games. Meanwhile, the games that are enjoyable to
play in multiplayer are nowhere near as good in the single-player
mode. Really, it's that multiplayer 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. The single-player mode seems thrown in
the way multiplayer modes seem thrown in most other games. Mario
Party is intended to be played with a group of friends, and for
those people who can really take advantage of that, this game is
a must-buy. The less-social gamer might want to rent. --Joe
Fielder
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot
logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc. -- GameSpot Review
- Japan version.AUTHENTIC! This game is a Japanese version, but it is the same game as the US version.
- No box or manual. Game works great! Nintendo 64 game is Japanese standard, so there are cases where you need an adapter..
- This game has been tested & found to be in perfect working condition guaranteed to play without defect..
- Photo is a stock photo and is not an actual photo of this specific item..
- This game is in Japanese version!Ships directly from USA,desertcart!.