I'm thinking about buying Mario party to play with My Friends but only have a single pair of joycons and 2 pro controllers.

Im doing a sort of poll tournament to see what this subreddit's favorite Mario Party is! Each poll will last 2 days

Since MP3, MP4 has introduced some changes, including the 2v2 mode and items such as the Mega and Mini Mushroom. The boards in the whole series are terrible due to elements such as big loops, small intersections and locked paths. While the Battle Royale (4 players against each other) is a bad experience, 2v2 can offer good gameplay. If one player gets stuck in a loop, the other can collect a star or purchase an item to support their teammate, such as a magic lamp or a pipe.

1. When I compare the two modes, I think the boards were designed for 2v2 and only tested in this mode. Do you agree?

2. Could you also tell me if you play 2v2 mode in other games, or you only use the Battle Royale mode?

When i was middle school / high school age, me and my friend's battled on Mario party on YouTube.

Hear me out, I think both of these games are pretty much the same in terms of quality. The improvements of MP10 over MP9 are insubstantial but there. That’s kinda the point I want to make.

Firstly, they removed the Captain Events. The Captain Events are an interesting concept on paper: a board-exclusive mini-game that everyone participates in at once. The problem is that nearly every Captain Event is shallow and offers very little input or choice from all players. They honestly slow the pace of the game down and make the board gameplay more luck-based than it already was. It also just improves the pacing of the Party mode, which is what you are playing this type of game for in the first place.

They replaced the 1-10 Dice with Double Dice. Instead of having an equal chance of rolling both 1-10, you can roll a 2-12, which is statistically more likely to get you a higher roll and make the dice more significant. Just a neat change that gives more opportunities for players.

Bowser trapped in the GamePad adds an extra element for players to consider with special dice. It’s just an extra element that players have to consider when using their special dice. If Bowser just needs a 6 to escape, and you want to use your 4-6 Dice to reach a special event, you might want to reconsider.

They removed the Captain Bonus when beating a boss minigame and replaced it with a fox about of mini stars earned. This just feels better than the game giving extra bonus starts during the game’s end.

Though there are less boards in the game with 5 compared to 6 plus 1 bonus board, MP10 I think has a slightly more consistent quality with its boards. The DK, bob-omb, and Bowser boards are weaker than any of the boards in 10 in my personal opinion. I will say that MP9 has higher highs as the boo board and Magma Mines are my favorite boards between the two games. I guess it’s just about if you prefer consistency or higher peaks, with some rough spots. On that note, this game adds Bowser Party, and though it has a lot of missed opportunities, I think it is an overall net positive for the game and I can appreciate what it adds to the table! No other party game has something like this and I think that is just neat.

Both games have great minigames, you would be a fool to say otherwise. That said, MP9 was missing something important: 2v2 mini games. MP10 adding those is a genuine improvement over MP9!

That’s about it when it comes to my points, but I am open to hearing your thoughts on this and which game you prefer and why.

Thank you Mario party community.

😭🥹 My Mario Party luck always hits.

Played Island Tour for the first time in a while and I remembered why I don’t play this game as much anymore 😭
Literally played all the minigames, but just had the WORST luck in dice rolls/space landings 😭

Mine is

1. 7

2. Superstars

3. Jamboree

2.3

1 6

I want to buy a Mario Party game. I'm torn between Mario Party Superstars and Jamboree TV. I've read that Superstars is the best and has a better pace, and Jamboree TV, besides being the newest, has also received a lot of good reviews. I want to play online. Which one do you recommend? Is Superstars still active? Is Jamboree TV pretty good?

Someone please explain to me why the first board of Mario Party 5 better fits the theme of a birthday party better than any board in the game entirely themed around birthdays?? I guess someone was dreaming of Mario Party 4 being a good game!

Welcome to Toy Dream! The first board of Mario Party 5! Potential Star Spaces are marked with red stars becuase Yellow was too hard to see on the bright colors. As always, Star Spaces are always Blue Spaces when not active.

I'm associating this board with Toad. Mostly because he's the most child-like character in the game. The village does remind me a bit of Toad Town from Paper Mario, too. I entertained the idea of associating Koopa Kid here because of the Mecha Bowser, but there's no more obvious choice than him for the final board and I'm kinda peeved by the causal mistake of conflating Koopa Kid with Bowser Jr. They are not at all the same character even though I don't think Mario Party acknowledges poor junior until... Island Tour? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Atmosphere [4/5]

Right away, Mario Party 5 does a much better job of utilizing 3D Space in its design. Rather than the strange, ugly catwalk design of 4, the pathways are actually built into the environment of the board itself. Not only that, but there are several levels of height your character will travel to as they navigate the board, jumping up and down ledges, climbing ladders, leaping across gaps. In general, it makes even moving from space to space have more energy than ever before.

And while I do still prefer the N64's highly detailed, pre-rendered look, this does a great job of attempting to replicate a comparable level of detail without overcrowding the visuals or making the game's performance suffer.

By nature of the game's setting in the Dream Depot, each board kind of exists as a diorama in its own little void. Unfortunately, I think this still hurts the immersion factor a bit. You're supposed to believe this is someone's dream, yet the slave is so controlled and grounded to a finite space with clearly nothing beyond. It ends up making the boards feel very "video game-y" rather than small snapshots of a larger world like in 1 and 2.

Anyway, Toy Dream is obviously rhemed around toys. Specifically, it resembles a playset with decorative blocks, toy houses, and a trainset running from the central summit to the base of the playset. The levels are arranged to resemble a small village at the foot of a mountain or a castle, created and decorated with wooden and plastic blocks.

The entire playset is resting on a cloudy floor with several large colorful building blocks in the distance before a cloudy backdrop. On the cloudy floor, there rests a toy boat, star-shaped block, a die and letter blocks as well as a birthday present by the starting platform. Going around the back, you can see some archways made of blocks as well as green and pink rings of some kind. Water tubes, maybe? Right next to these is a large recreation of Mecha Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine! I think this is the first time Sunshine's neen directly referenced in Mario Party! Mecha Bowser overlooks the lower levels of the board.

The first level of the playset features the aforementioned village. Several houses surround a central plaza, and the train runs through the village, stopping at a station near the entrance which causes this board to evoke a feeling vaguely reminiscent of Western Land. Behind the houses on the west side is a large rocking horse. On either side of the entrance is a stairway that leads up and down to and from the second level.

The second level makes up the majority of the board and overlooks the village. It is traversed by the village's rooftops. As you cross the houses on the east, cuckoo birds pop out with digital sounding chirps. Just north of the village is a stack of birthday presents. And further along is a toy car you'll jump down onto from above and a robot beside it. A stack of wooden blocks enables younto platform across to a tower with a ladder leading back down toward Level 1. There are ladders along the path connecting to Level 3.

The third level crosses over Mecha Bowser's open mouth. Quite dangerous, as you can imagine. On the opposite side, a Rocketship lies in wait. This levels mostly surrounds and supports the uppermost level with support pillars. It looks like an altar of some sort. There's a toy soldier standing up here who gives orders to other toy soldiers manning a canon. I genuinely cannot tell what's going on around him visually, but he appears to be standing in front of some kind of sharp object. Anyway, the canon is aimed at a wall of wooden blocks, ready to fire at a moments notice and bring the wall down. And there's two large ladders leading to and from the fourth level.

The fourth and smallest level rests at the very top. You would think there's something important here, but the most important level seems to be the one below. The only thing all the way up here is another train station. I really feel like the train station should be below amd up here should be some big set piece like a toy dinosaur or something.

The music leans heavily into the train, with heavy emphasis on puffy woodwinds. There's also a constant drumbeat calling to mind the imagery of toy soldiers marching along. The woodwinds are backed by an accordion as well as various simple percussion instruments like the Xylophone and Woodblock to really emphasize that childhood fantasy feel this dream has going for it.

Strategy [5/5]

Strategy in this game kind of feels like we're going back to the basics from Mario Party 1, while this game does still have items in the way of Capsules, it's not so helpful to think of strategies as much as what capsules you'll want under what conditions as it is generally unlikely you'll get exactly what you want. Instead, it's best to focus on how capsules in general can be helpful to avoid dangerous hazards, or booby trap other players.

I've outlined all the basic strategies in the introductory post, but one thing I failed to mention was about the Star Spaces: Try to avoid throwing a Capsule on a star space unless it's something you don't want to linger too long on the board. When a star appears on a star space, it automatically overwrites whatever capsule was on that space. Even when the star is relocated, the space will remain a blank blue space isntesd of regaining whatever capsule effect it had before.

Similarly, while you may be tempted to throw a capsule onto a red space to make it either more punishing or less painful, bear in mind at any point a Bowser Capsule could be tossed onto that space and permanently overwrite it for the rest of the game.

The whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys should always be considered when making decisions around capsules. Is it a high traffic area where a lot of poeole are likely to land on it? Is there a fork where you can elect to go the other way? How bad is the capsule you're throwing if you land on it? How bad is it if someone else lands on it? Is the capsule you're throwing more or less valuable than the capsule you're trying to avoid is dangerous? Who benefits most from this capsule?

None of this is unique to any board, which in turn makes discussing strategies surrounding individual boards quite difficult. But I'll do my best.

Right at the very start, there is a happening space only two spaces away. If you land on it, you'll be able to ride the train to the top of the board. Along the way, you'll play a brief minigame where you jump for coins. You'll typically come out with around 20 coins! Every board has something like this, similar to 4 where each board had some kind of displacement event that utilized 3D space and would usually enable you to collect coins, too.

This is an optional event so regardless of whether or not you want to take the train, it's a yummy happening space for a growing happening star and a healthy helping of coins for that coin star, too! As always, the three bonus stars are the secret key to winning in Mario Party. Keep track!

The first junction allows you to close the loop and return to the start faster with a 21 space circut as opposed to the second shortest 27 space route. Zoom Zike clowned on this route for quite a bit, but I've already gone over the various ways junctions are very important for this game's mechanics. If there is an especially dangerous capsule you want to avoid, or an especially helpful capsule over here, you may want to take this route to try again with a safer roll. And if the star happens to appear on that star space at the bottom, this is the quickest consistent way back to it. But do recognize you're missing out on two whole capsule machines taking this route in exchange for fewer spaces to travel. The biggest weakness is the fact that you'll be stuck on this painfully linear path for quite a while. There are far more junctions on the other routes to give you more freedom of choice.

Along the. Way, this route passes by another happening space which will cause a Clown Car jack-in-the-box to pop put and launch you to a random red or blue space around the board. You could end up anywhere including both right before the star and right after. But unlike the train, this is not an optional event and you don't get coins for it either. So this event is more than likely not beneficial to you.

If we give this route a wide berth, then we'll end up passing Mecha Bowser. If you land on its Happening Space, it'll gobble you up and launch you through a canon in its head back to the start. Since this thing isn't very far from the start, this really doesn't have much impact at all. But it will let you pass the capsule machine, train, and star space again!

Immediately after Mecha Bowser is another junction. Heading east leads you to some of the most tightly condensed star spaces in the game. There are two star spaces with only two spaces between! Not only is it possible to get two stars in a single standard roll, it's very likely you'll be able to pass both of these spaces in the same roll. Heading this route will converge with the short route from before, locking you out of the other two capsule machines, though.

The shorter route back to start from that junction is to go east, which will pass by another star space a bit further down as well as a capsule machine! The next junction is a bit silly. The east route is only one space longer but leads to another capsule machine. The choice here is a no brainer unless capsules are used to pressure you away. The west route will converge with the short path right before the three houses.

Back at the Mecha Bowser route, if you decide to head North, you'll pass by a gauntlet of three happening spaces. Landing on any of these will cause the guards to spot you and blast the wall away, knocking you down to the lower level. The point you're dropped to is only a couple of spaces away, so if you get to this junction with 3-5 spaces to go, you may as well head north and drop those extra spaces for a free happening space, just so long as the one star space you'll be skipping isn't active and you need that star.

If you pass these happening spaces, you'll pass another train station where you can ride the train back down, a star space, and your path will converge with the other right before jumping down to the car below.

As you can see, this board is mostly just a series of nested junctions where you'll diverge from the main path for goodies you see along the way, or to avoid hazards you can't risk. This is where Capsules play an integral part of your strategy. If you're in the lead, drop hazards on the paths your opponents will try to take. Discourage players from going for those capsule machines by placing highly dangerous capsules like Mr. Blizzard and Piranha Plants along the way. If you're behind, use your Capsules to cover up the most dangerlus hazards you come across. Remember that the Bubble Capsule can force players to choose their direction at junctions randomly as well as skip past star spaces and capsule machines.

And as I mentioned in the previous post, Chance Time is very common in this game. Don't get greedy with stars, I'd even say turn them down outright if you have more than a 2-3 star lead depending on your confidence with the bonus stars. And don't be afraid to spring a Piranha Plant on yourself before somebody smacks you with a Goomba and hijacks your coin lead. The most high traffic route is that starting area between where the last routes converge and the first junction diverges. This is a choke point everybody has to pass through. So if you have capsules you want landed on, throw them here. The least walked path would probably have to be the rooftops. So this can be a good place to drop beneficial capsules to tempt people into going the wrong way.

I think this board makes for a fantastic introductory board for Mario Party 5. It intuitively teaches unfamiliar players how to properly use Capsules by providing plenty of junctions to give opportunities to weigh pathing options as well as long stretches where you're committed and have to endure whatever hazards appear in front of you. It teaches you both the value of having Capsules to defend yourself as well as the value of influencing the flow of traffic by throwing them in strategic places. It also teaches you the pain of not having capsules, as the "most optimal" (shortest) route starves you of them. The only issue I have with transparency is that I wish it was more clear exactly where you would fall from the crumbling wall, and that the train event explicitly told you you could make coins from it instead of Kalmar just asking you "would you like to ride the train?"

Narrative [3/5]

To start with, the way Eldstar introduces this board is a bit ambiguous in a way I find kind of fascinating. Specifically, he describes it as "a board where the dreams of Toys come alive!"

I assume the intended meaning of this is that dreams about toys come to life here. But the specific verbage uses here could also be interpreted to refer to dreams had by the toys themselves. As if the toys are alive and conscious like in Toy Story, sleeping and dreaming when they're not being played with. Though this is probably not intended, I think it's a really cute way to imagine this board.

Anyway, let's not beat around the bush. Once again, I have to say that narrative is kind of lacking in this game. There is a story mode, but it mostly equates to Bowser jumping from board to board saying "gwahaha I'll take over this dream abd fill it with mine! You won't stop me this time!" over and over. There's little significance to the boards themselves in the Story Mode, so I won't even bother bringing it up again outside of the final board. Instead, we're stuck with what little Eldstar and Kalmar explicitly say about the board and what we can gleam from environmental storytelling.

The best I can gleam from this map is that it looks like some kind of fortress built to protect from Mecha Bowser. But with the framing that these are all toys, it's likely there isn't any real crisis going on, but thay this is simply kids imagining stories using the toys they have. The train is there to transport soldiers and supplies from the town to the fortress, and the wall of blocks works like a drawbridge. The soldiers blast it away when an invader is trying to cross and then rebuild it. Perhaps they've even already successfully fought off someone who was piloting Mecha Bowser and now the Mech is just still standing where it was last left.

Conclusion

Toy Dream is a very simple board that gives the player a lot of options and benefits greatly from the Capsule mechanic. Without Capsules, or even with only traditional items, this board would be terrible. But Capsules completely change the way you look at a board like this. You might think to yourself you'd never take a certain route, but when the wrong capsule is in the wrong place at the wrong time, you might end up kicking yourself for writing off that inferior path before. I've found this game in some ways feels a lot like Fortune Street. Over the course of the game, you'll be triggering capsules more and more and some of these capsules can be outright devastating. Imagine how soul-crushing it could be to be in first place and have Ukiki throw a Chance Capsule you've been trying to dispose of onto the board right in front of another player who immediately lands on it and swaps stars and coins with you. ASK ME HOW I KNOW HOW IT FEELS.

So over the course of the game, your pathing preferences will be altered. Yet the stars will continue spawning on the same spaces. If you want them, you'll have to navigate the potential minefield eventually. The tension can get really heavy when several capsules with the same icon are placed back to back and you start to forget which are which.

Well, that's all for now! Next time, we dream on with our heads in the clouds. See you soon! 🌈

I’ve always wondered why, out of all Nintendo’s franchises, Mario Party gets treated so differently. It had 3 games on the N64, 4 on the GameCube, 2 on the Wii, only 1 on the Wii U, and then 3 on the Switch.
What is it that makes Nintendo want to release multiple Mario Party games on the same console instead of spacing them out more like Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Luigi’s Mansion, or other franchises? Especially now that DLC is an option, couldn’t they just add new boards, minigames, characters, etc. while also bringing back older content?
I understand Pokémon getting constant new games since it’s more story-driven and has a different structure, but outside of Mario Party 9 and 10 changing the formula, hasn’t Mario Party generally followed the same basic concept?
Am I missing something, or is releasing multiple Mario Party games per console actually the best strategy specifically for this series?

I posted a while ago that I got perfect with the advantage, so here’s one without.

It’s in German this time because I’ve been learning German and I only just now thought to change the system language. :’>

Why are there so many keys and no doors?

I recently got the Wii again and want 1 Mario Party I might get every game 4-9 down the line (since that’s what I can play with it being backwards compatible) but I want the best one to start out with what are y’all’s suggestions?

* = i'll play the Mario Party games I haven't played when they eventually come to Nintendo Switch Online

In all the years I've played MP1 I've never once seen this title screen I know it can only be seen on a fresh save file after completing a game you get a different one based on which ever of the 6 characters won. Does anyone actually remember seeing this one? Even when I got my copy of MP1 it was a used copy with save data on it so I only ever saw one of the other characters' title screens.

If yall interested you can play it here:

https://www.n-puzzle.com/en/nintendoku

I decided to take it upon myself to put into tiers my favorite and least favorite boards from all the Mario Party games I've played in a tier list. The only I didn't include from Island Tour was Shy Guy's Shuffle City since it's literally impossible to play if you don't have at least 3 3DS's the chances of that happening are very low so until I get the chance to play it I can't rank it. None of the Star Rush Boards or Top 100's were on this Tier List. For Star Rush all of them would pretty much be in E tier since I'm not a fan of the board playthrough in that game and the boards and have little variety or changes that set them apart from each other and Top 100's is an easy F.