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Once upon a time I completely believed that there was nothing better than a Mario Party game.
I thought I could play the franchise forever, and I looked forward to each new addition to the series with great excitement. But then something happened, (I think it was probably around Mario Party 4), Gasp! the Mario Party formula started getting a little stale for me.

Once More...With Feeling

Ya' know the Mario Party series has attempted to leave the living room before- with a game called "Mario Party Advance." It wasn't exactly a wonderful experience; in fact it was a dud! Thankfully with "Mario Party DS", Nintendo has finally given us a full party experience on a handheld. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In this game, Bowser is throwing a party with lots of food and he invites Mario and all his buddies over to join in on the fun as a way to apologize for "being such a jerk" all these years. Yeah, right! Mario and crew get a party invite from Bowser - and accept? I guess free eats can't be beat.

It's a trap of course! Mario and his friends find themselves shrunken down to shrinky-dink size by Bowser. Gullible fools!
You know, you'd think years of defeat would get to a guy, but Bowser just doesn't give up!

If you've played any of the Mario Party's in the past, on the N64, GameCube or Wii, then you should have a good idea of how the game plays. The DS game doesn't tinker with this formula at all, so if you have never liked any of the Mario Party games before, it is doubtful that "Mario Party DS" will change your mind. It really is a love or hate thing - hitting up dice, taking turns moving around a board, setting hexes to trip other players up, spending coins to purchase those all-important stars.

He likes to move it, move it

"Mario Party DS" has some of the best minigames around; (second to Warioware of course) they are simple, quirky, and fun. The sheer number of them by itself is very impressive. There are over 70 of them! From now on, if a DS party game has anything less than 70 mini-games, it's officially a rip-off to me!

Mario Party games has always been a huge time commitment.
The good news is, they've picked up pace of the game just a bit for the handheld version. This is definitely a good thing, I was able to play a full 10 turn game in just under 30 minutes.

In the end, it is still Mario Party and it does what it does. Again and again...and again.

What's in your Pocket? Why it's a-me Mario!

Updated: 01/01/08 11:58 AM Log in to comment! | Share this!

The People Have Spoken

13 Comments

Jan. 1, 2008 | 11:58 AM Keol says:

Why is Mario smiling seconds away from being crished with a giant plauying block of doom? Probably becaue...I dunno

Jan. 1, 2008 | 12:23 PM SaltshakerClock says:

it looks like the apoclypse.

Jan. 1, 2008 | 12:28 PM g0m says:

Hmmm... could be good and I do have a large gamestop voucher...

Jan. 1, 2008 | 12:37 PM mooguy says:

mario party is dead to me now...

Jan. 2, 2008 | 4:20 PM oxyjen responds:

Party Pooper!

Jan. 1, 2008 | 2:15 PM edit-undo says:

I always thought the Mario Party series was getting kind of old - theres only a limited amount of minigames that can be made using a standard control. But I might have to try this one out, hopefully they have a lot of new minigames for the touch screen and microphone.

Jan. 1, 2008 | 2:30 PM LilDwarf says:

I've been wanting to buy it as it seems more like the N64 versions, which were the only good ones.

Jan. 1, 2008 | 3:31 PM NegativeONE says:

I have a $20 gift card for EB and I've been contemplating picking this one up. Hmmm.

Jan. 2, 2008 | 4:20 PM oxyjen responds:

Yeah, definitely a game worth picking up.
You should also scoop up "The Legend of Zelda-Phantom Hourglass" for the DS while you're at EB.
Really cool game as well, check out my review on it coming soon.

Updated: Jan. 2, 2008, 7:00 PM

Jan. 1, 2008 | 7:57 PM Achromatic says:

I got that for Christmas. It is pretty fun. But, for some reason I can't get passed the first part on Story Mode. I kept losing, and once I finally got in the lead. It didn't last for long though, someone else got 3 starts in one turn, and it was the last turn :[ But, its still a very fun game. I remember playing it on the N64, that was always fun.

Jan. 1, 2008 | 10:38 PM ZekeySpaceyLizard says:

I wrote about this game somewhere as well.

It is by far, one of the best MP's Nintendo has made.

Jan. 1, 2008 | 11:59 PM Grammer says:

I liked Mario Party 1, and since then the only one I got was Mario Party 8, and I was very disappointed with it's mini games. Mario Party 1 was good cause not only did you have to collect 100 stars in adventure mode, but you had a quest-like mode (you probably know what I'm talking about), where you need to complete a mini game to advance across the board. That was awesome :o

A bunch of Mario Party 8 games are purely chance, with no strategic value whatsoever, and not many platforming mini games which I've come to familiarize with the Mario series.

Jan. 2, 2008 | 12:30 AM Dazmi says:

I still Love Mario Party (even the 8th)

I just don't like the Advance, or Ds one

Jan. 2, 2008 | 1:48 AM brassmonker1234 says:

mario is gonna smile before death while every one is like "oh sh**!!!".I have it its fun aiming to get all the badges

Jan. 2, 2008 | 8:01 AM MindChamber says:

The Minigames are definitely the sharpest ones in the series to date.

Also having a boss stage to earn boards is sweet.

Jan. 2, 2008 | 4:17 PM oxyjen responds:

I agree! Boss stages always make a game more exciting, don't they?

Thanks for mentioning them, btw.