3.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Mario Party.

Platform: Nintendo Wii (via Not64 emulator) Time Played: ~25 hours Status: Beaten I decided a while ago that I wanted to play through each and every game in the Mario Party series with my friends, and after a long while I've finally finished what will definitely be the longest in the journey, and it's the one to start it all, Mario Party for the Nintendo 64. For the first game in the series, I would say Hudson Soft did a pretty good job. Sure there are a lot of things that were improved over the course of the series, and some boards are worse than others, but otherwise a fun experience, of course more so with a full group of friends. Firstly, the main event, the boards. This game holds a total of eight, the most an entry in the series has ever received. While some are super memorable such as Yoshi's Tropical Island or Wario's Battle Canyon, some are just boring like Luigi's Engine Room. I'll go through them one by one. Starting off, DK's Jungle Adventure is the first board, and it is fairly average and bare bones. It's a large board with rarely any gimmicks except for Thwomps that block off paths unless they're paid. Just your run of the mill board. Peach's Birthday Cake is literally just a circle around a cake. It is the shortest board to complete, with a lot of the board being covered up by happening spaces that do nothing for majority of the game, and right before the stationary star is a lottery that can send you back to the start after seeing Bowser. Not the best board and I'm not sure why they brought it back for Superstars. Yoshi's Tropical Island is a pretty good board, and probably the best board in the game. The track for this board is absolutely slamming. The main gimmick is that Bowser and Toad stay in one spot, but can be swapped if a player lands on the happening space. You can rack up a lot of stars if you get stuck on the side with Toad and get a lot of coins, but you can also get easily screwed over if you get stuck on Bowser's side. Classic Mario Party madness. Wario's Battle Canyon is pretty okay. Most aspects of it feel pretty original, utilizing cannons to blast you to one of the four islands, with happening spaces swapping the cannon's trajectory. It can be really difficult to get stars in this game as it takes a lot of skill in order to perfectly time your cannon shots to where you want to land. The worst aspect of this board is when the star lands on Bowser's island, as it is incredibly difficult to land before the star to get it, basically locking the star count for the players once Toad is spawned there. Luigi's Engine Room is the the worst board in my opinion. The board looks very dark and gloomy, and the swapping walls that block your path can be incredibly annoying, even when you're able to swap them by paying with coins at a certain spot on the board. Players can get stuck in small circles on the board for multiple turns due to the moving walls, and it can be extremely annoying. Mario's Rainbow Castle is probably the second best board from the game, and it's pretty straight forward. Players have to go in a straight line to get to Toad or Bowser at the end, with the two being swapped if a player interacts with them or lands on a happening space. Otherwise it's pretty straight forward, so not much you can go wrong with. Bowser's Magma Mountain (unlocked after completing the first six) is another pretty straight forward one. It's essentially a zig-zagged line that circles back around, with the main gimmick being the ability to try and get shortcuts by paying ten coins and having to time a jump to get the shortcut. Otherwise, players must do the same timed hit to avoid seeing Bowser at the end of the map. Overall a good board. Lastly we have the final board, Eternal Star, which can only be unlocked after collecting 100 stars and playing Bowser's Magma Mountain. (Collecting the 100 stars required took me a good 8 hours of playing against CPUs, but if playing casually with friends over time like the developers definitely intended, and would definitely give Eternal Star more of a finale feel). The game acts as the end of the "story" with Bowser stealing the player's 100 stars, with the board being a contest to beat Bowser and Koopa Kid for good and get back all of your stars, with the ending cutscene and credits even rolling at the end. The board consists of multiple islands with warp points that seemingly take you to unknown areas, but players can figure out where each warp points takes you if analyzed over multiple rounds. Once interacting with Bowser, the warp points change up to one of two other presets. The happening spaces warp all players back to the start, which got really annoying overtime. The board starts off with eight Koopa Kids placed throughout the board, which act as the only stars the player can receive. Once getting to Koopa Kid, you have to pay the normal 20 coins to get the star, but not until you have to out-roll Koopa Kid with the dice. Overall, Eternal Star is a pretty confusing board and not the best, but still pretty fun and tense to figure out. Now that all of the boards out of the way, it's time to move onto the minigames. I must say, majority of the 50 minigames Mario Party 1 has to offer. A lot of them are either really fun to play, are intense, or are fun to compete against your friends. I personally really enjoyed the tense button mashing ones like Skateboard Scamper or Handcar Havoc. Now what I do hate are the minigames that require you to rotate the control stick to insane degrees. I literally got blisters on my hands from some of these. Cast Aways, Paddle Battle, Pedal Power and Tug o' War; the worst of which in my opinion is Cast Aways as it is the longest and it requires you to rotate so often for so long. Otherwise, some of my favorite highlights being Face Lift, Balloon Burst, Skateboard Scamper, Platform Peril, and Bobsled Run. Moving onto the side modes, Mini-Game Stadium is a pretty good and short board if you just want to blast through some minigames with your friends. Mini-Game Island, which is a single player mode, is pretty tough to be honest. It's just a large world map that looks like a traditional Mario world map, with each level being a minigame, if you run out of lives, you go back to your last save, you gain lives by either getting 100 coins or beating a minigame. What makes it tough is that some of the hardest minigames feel even more difficult here, with ones such as Bumper Balls (the worst minigame), Shy Guy Says, Slot Car Derby, Pipe Maze, Crane Game (one of the hardest), and Cast Aways (the longest to beat). Forgot to mention up until now that the CPUs/COMs, no matter what difficulty are absolute monster pro players in comparison to any human player, and will almost certainly win at practically every minigame, unless they just suddenly decide to be vegetable levels of stupid and not even move at all in said minigame. Highlight Moment: One of my highlight moments from playing the game was during Eternal Star where the Easy CPU Luigi got three stars within two turns, and no one else had any. Eventually one of my friends pulled a Chance Time and managed to transfer all of Luigi’s stars onto myself. We then proceeded to absolutely destroy Luigi by taking all of his coins. I even hung up a wanted poster of Luigi on my wall to commemorate the “Easy” CPU’s villainy. To conclude, the first Mario Party is a pretty good game overall. The soundtrack for this game is great, and is fondly remembered for good reason. There is a lot to be improved, such as too many boards, losing coins after losing minigames, and difficult minigames. But it's clear that over the course of multiple more entries in the series that these issues will be ironed out. Try this game out if you're feeling nostalgic or you want to have a good time with your friends (although there are better entries in the series to do so with)!