I have been going through the library and playing as many different Mario Party’s as i can. I have to say 3 and 6 are pretty awesome. I don’t like 7 or 10 that much at all since they changed so much about the game. What’s your favorite Mario Party games?
Me personally I would say Mario Party 2 and 6. My absolute favorite is 6 out of the two.
MP2 because of how different every single board felt (the costumes are a factor here for me too). Plus there’s a lot of mini-games that are still great to this day. MP3 definitely still has some favorites too, but I prefer the second one.
MP6 I think is the best entry on the GameCube. Great mini games. Takes all the features from 4&5 and fully fleshed them out, which can make the boards chaotic, which can be more fun IMO.
7 is where I feel the series started to lose its luster. It wasn’t what I would call bad, there’s still a good game there at its core. That said, it felt unnecessary to me as an entry. I barely remember 7 and greatly remember 6.
As an honorable mention, I think 8 started to move back in the right direction, even if I didn’t care for the laughing hat character. The mini games were fun and I remember having fun with my friends at the time. Still prefer 6 and 2 over it though.
To this day I still have no interest in playing 9 or 10 lol.
Yeah, 8 was the last one I remember enjoying. I think I tried one of the switch versions, but the boards were really boring. The fun things I liked in 8 was that the board events changed the map/pathways a fair amount.
I forgot about the different pathways in that game. Now that I’m thinking about it, I remember enjoying that quite a bit! Couldn’t tell you what boards were there. I think one had a hotel if I remember correctly, but that’s all I recall.
Yeah, the switch versions are…interesting. Super Mario Party I felt catered too much to what I would refer to as a “casual” crowd. Which is basically the group that wouldn’t be playing games in the first place. Mini-games were decent. Boards were ok, but not very memorable; I’d label them as basic. Definitely not a bad game but pretty far down on my list of what I would play from the series.
Mario Party Superstars in comparison was “better” but while playing it just felt hollow to me. Seeing the classic boards reimagined was cool, but for the MP2 boards, it felt like some of their charm didn’t make it over. Still fun, don’t get me wrong, just feels like something is missing.
Haven’t played any version of Jamboree and probably won’t any time soon.
As soon as i saw the Microphone options in 7, i was very skeptical.
I have played it on original hardware. Thankfully the only time I did, the group voted against the mic lol. The fact that it had to use an entire memory card slot to function (while a cool use of tech) just never sat right with me.
That said, when it was on store shelves I saw it and just remember thinking “ugh, why?” Just not my cup of tea I guess.
Mario Party 3 was my favourite.
I loved the Duel Mode and the “Game Guy” mini games.
I haven’t played too many, but out of the ones I have played I wanna say 2. Improves on 1 in meaningful ways, pure classic formula without any weird gimmicks, and I think it just had some of the best boards and minigames.
A related question: What is the least random Mario Party? We often end up playing this when friends come over since I guess I’m the only one who feels like it’s too random for anyone to meaningfully “win.”
Not to rain on anyone’s parade or anything, I’m glad you all and others have fun with it, I just would like to see if there’s a version that’s more like it’s a game of skill than chance.
Or maybe I just want WarioWare…
I love the random. Its the best part of it. I kick everyone’s ass every mini game then the game says “lol u loser” and someone else wins. They get their win so they want to play again, they get their chance to rub it in, but underneath it all, unspoken, is the fact that I definitely won.
I’ve seen that, so yeah, I get it. But I’ve also see the game award bonus stars or other random finger-on-the-scale benefits to the player in the lead, which can be even more demoralizing to those that lose. I don’t think it’s Mario Kart rubber band mechanics, unfortunately.
If you want it to be more skill based, turn off bonus stars and adjust the difficulty of the minigames to the harder ones. The bonus stars are notorious for ruining your run if you were playing great all game, but someone just got awarded 2 stars, and now you are in 2nd place. Mario Party 6 has these options, so that would be a good start.
Disabling bonus stars is a good point. For the difficulty, not sure if that would work well: The problem is some of the players are inevitably casuals, so increasing the difficulty just means the very narrow part of the game that isn’t as random - the mini-games - becomes not fun for them. And the Monopoly-style turn-based board play takes sooooo long, you can’t really strategize where to go.
I really do think a Mario Party game with only mini-games so everyone plays all the time would be incredible. But again, maybe I’m just describing Warioware…
I completely forgot about these options, that’s a great point.
From my understanding the least random one would probably be Mario Party 10. You move around as a group, which in my opinion, takes the fun out of the experience. That’s all I really know about it though, haven’t played it myself for that exact reason. It still has mini games from what I understand. Hoping someone else here can provide more feedback on this, as I wouldn’t mind more info on it.
Which version of Mario Party are you and your friends playing out of curiosity?
If we’re also including more recent games, the first Mario Party for the Switch might fit the bill a bit from how the joycons have to be used. That should be Super Mario Party if I remember right. There’s still a good amount of luck involved, but movement is key so that definitely includes skill.
We mostly play Super Mario Party and tried Jamboree as well on Switch. I haven’t really played other ones even though I lived through those prior generations. So maybe I’m just an irredeemable grumpy buzzkill.
Ah, so you’ve already played that one then? Hmm, the only other thing I could think of would be what one of the other comments said about turning off bonus stars and upping the difficulty for mini-games.
It could also be that you want to find a different type of party game like you mentioned. A few friends of mine have occasionally talked about a game called Donkapon Kingdom (think I spelled it right); I don’t know if that’s more luck or skill based though.
I haven’t really played other ones even though I lived through those prior generations.
I relate to this quite a bit. I dropped off Mario Party after the second game had come out because at the time, I’d had my fill of it. Didn’t play any of the GameCube games or MP3 until this past decade. I would recommend playing MP6 from the GC if you decide to try it. You can get trap based items to set on the board; some temporary, others permanent. Definitely becomes more strategic IMO. It’s why I like it so much honestly.
