When people think of Mario Party it tends to come with two reactions. The first is a more humble “No thanks.” This makes sense if you’re just not a fan of long board-games, minigames with a varying degree of quality, and/or Mario games. It also makes sense as to play Mario Party is to engage in a multiple hour endeavor where you actively scheme to rob your friends and push them off a cliff whenever able. This brings us to the other reaction of “Yes, I’d like to destroy friendships please.” While I personally have never broken a friendship over this series I definitely have been a part of some playful shouting and cursing because sometimes locked into 50 turns with someone means you have to be ruthless.
Mario’s party endures, however, with a new title just releasing in 2021 that celebrates the legacy of the entire series with a spotlight on the Nintendo 64 games. We will look upon on the entire series, but our focus lies on this original trilogy for it is here where a successful formula is established, improved upon, and destroyed. Mario Party 3 led the entire franchise astray and should be frowned upon for what it did.
That is a bit of a harsh statement, but lets step back and evaluate the series to that point. It would do us no good to discuss the move to the Star Car in Mario Party 9 and 10, and it wouldn’t really help to focus directly on Mario Party 4’s decision to base all of its boards on embiggening and emsmallening. Let us remember where it all began.
A Party for the Strong Willed
When Mario Party originally dropped as a friendly four-player game where you play mini-games to earn coins and use those coins to buy a star. Whoever has the most stars wins. What people tend to forget is this game was also brutal for many reasons including that players would genuinely become injured by playing some mini-games. If you lost mini-games then you would lose coins. If you accidentally got routed towards Bowser then you had to pay for a star that was fake. Sometimes you would get a die that just took your money away and you wouldn’t even get to move.
It was ruthless and exhilarating. The game even came with two unlockable boards for a grand total of eight to play on! However, were that there was not enough agency in how the player controlled their fate besides winning mini-games and hoping for good dice rolls. Besides this, the mini-games lacked flair and needed some improvement. The original Mario Party got the series off to a good start with lots of things to unlock and a neat single-player path of doing all the mini-games, but needed something more. Like costumes.
The Best Party Arrives
Lets not beat around the bush. Mario Party 2 is the best in the series. All of the boards are interesting (Mystery Land is objectively bad, but so is Wario’s Battle Canyon from the first game and every other board in the series that splits up the map into four islands), almost all of them give the player a cool costume to wear, the mini-games are a mix of new ones that are beloved or games from its predecessor that have been improved (only time in the series they do this), and the introduction of items.
The items of Mario Party 2 are basic, but substantial. You could duel someone for coins, steal another player’s item, use a bomb to turn the Koopa Kid on the board (a carry over of something to avoid on the map from Mario Party 1) into Bowser who then rolls and creates a NIGHTMARE scenario of stealing ALL of your stars if you cross his path, and more. Most importantly, you can only hold one item. This forces you to consider your choices. Strategy comes into play. You could buy the Magic Lamp that takes you right to the star for 30 coins, but maybe it would be more beneficial to have the Boo Bell or the Bowser Suit. It also ensured that you could only have one Magic Lamp at a time. The difficulty of the boards as well as how engaging they were are well balanced with the introduction of item play. Top that with great mini-games like Honeycomb Havoc, Bowser’s Big Blast, and the shell-tank minigame now titled Tread Carefully and you have a winning formula. The next thing to do is to add more, right? More is always better!
More Is Not Always Better
Mario Party 3 boasts two new characters (Daisy and Waluigi), 71 all new mini-games, a full-fledged story mode, a new duel mode, all kinds of new items and threats on the boards, more more more! I’ll be very honest with you and tell you that I set out to completely dunk on this game. However, the mini-games in Mario Party 3 are pretty cool! The items they add are engaging (especially the secret items that rarely show up). The Game Guy mini-games were always thrilling. The aesthetic that felt kinda like Paper Mario’s graphics was charming. Sure these seem like great things, but it leaves the balance shaken. You see, when you play Mario Party you’re signing up for chaos. It reigns supreme and those who attempt to use skill will not always prosper. I have won the mini-game bonus star 3 times when playing Mario Party Superstars with friends. I only won one the whole game one of those three times. It’s because Mario Party works best when all are equal. Everyone has a fair shot at being stepped on by Bowser or rolling a 1. That’s what keeps it engaging. Mario Party 3 lacks that balance among many other things.
The truth is that if you’re just better than other people at the minigames then you’ll probably win a game of Mario Party 3. It’s very easy to amass coins and then hold three Magic Lamps. It’s also easy to know your opponents and buy multiple Boo Repellants and a Cellular Shopper so you can acquire almost any item you want whenever you need it. You can use Reverse Mushrooms to basically choose wherever you want to go as you can backup into any direction. You can become God as needed in Mario Party 3. What’s worse is that the boards are not anything to write home about. They mostly contain an element of skill (press A to get coins or avoid being displaced on the board kind of stuff), are extremely busy, and leave you frustrated so you speedup the heatdeath of all Mario Party games wherein you try to have 3 Magic Lamps at all times. Obviously, the Magic Lamp is the best item, but the board mechanics should feel fun enough that it’s exciting to go through it. In this game you’re doing your best to avoid that.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Following Mario Party 3 the team over at Hudson Soft began making Mario Party 4 to continue the themes from before: lots of items, lots of gated pathways that require an item, busy / cluttered maps, etc. It was deemed derivative as was Mario Party 3 honestly. While I find the minigame slection in Mario Party 4 to be pretty good (gave us Booksquirm and Bowser minigames like FRUITS OF DOOM), lackluster boards which an emphasis on chugging items did them in again here. It has become the norm for the series. Even attempts to reboot or renew the series hang onto this staple. Both Super Mario Party and Mario Party Superstars have items that take you right to the star and lets you hold multiple of them. Granted, with the newer titles it isn’t as common to do this, but it’s possible. The damage is done. Mario Party 5 would do away with traditional items and introduce the capsule system where you basically booby-trap, but it still kept this DNA of multiple items. The boards.
The rest is a simple history of reinventing the party (each board having its own rules, candy items instead, wait lets all get in the car, etc) that led us back to excitement for a return to the classics. Mario Party Superstars celebrates that N64 era’s board selections where the series was at its best. Two boards from the first two games and one board from the 5th that is in the conversation for being the worst board of the bunch (I kinda like Woody Woods tbh). There is a reason that Mario Party 3 was snubbed by only getting one board. Lets get scientific.
Let’s Study the Data
I took it upon myself to gather not only my own personal ranking of every N64-era Mario Party minigame / board / item, but I also got the Favorites data from Superstars itself for the favorite mini-games and boards. First lets look at my definitely unbiased data.
To begin with, I’m going to make clear that I do not like any Mario Party map that is composed of four islands. Three islands is also no good. Don’t make me run a tiny loop. The only exception is Waluigi Land which gets a point for being incredibly spiteful to the player. At a certain point it goes from frustrating to amazing. Mario Party 1, for example, actively tries to harm the player and I respect it for that hustle. Most of Mario Party 3’s boards, however, punish those who cannot do timed button presses and have frustrating randomness tied to too many things. Mario Party 2 is nearly perfect(Mystery Land is a horrible bore) and scores way above the other games, but even Mario Party 1 outperforms Mario Party 3. Shoutouts to Koopa’s Seaside Soiree. Koopa is a criminal.
Lets discuss items really quick since there is no official equivalent to compare my notes to. On paper it’s easy to see why Mario Party 3 is appealing for the item selection. There are items to defend yourself, items to attack others, and even an item that makes it so no matter what was happening before it was used the game only has 5 turns left now (absolutely wild). It’s important, however, to remember that this led to a massive lack of balance in the game and while really cool items feel really cool to use it mostly alienated players who didn’t have all the data memorized. Also, Mario Party 1 didn’t even have items but I wanted to include those blocks that you LITERALLY HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THEY JUST APPEAR AND YOU HAVE TO USE IT. What a harsh game.
To some people, justifiably, the mini-games are what matters. The board game is merely a vessel to creature reasons to play the mini-games after all. The game of Mario Party works best when there is weight to why you want to win the mini-game. So when Mario Party 3 brags about having over 70 mini-games (MP1 has 51, MP2 has 66) you could reasonably assume this is a better thing. However, when you start to pick apart the mini-games you realize that most of them are unfulfilling. There are so many minigames that you would be okay playing just one time and never again. There are also a lot of games that are simply solvable. Mario’s Puzzle Party is one that people adore. Then you show them that there’s no strategy and you can just mindlessly drop blocks to win. Yes, I’ve won, but I lack satisfaction. MPIQ seems like a fun thing to do: quiz players on what has happened in the game. Then you realize you can just mash the A button and guess before anyone else. Sure, it makes you unable to answer for the next question, but when all 4 players are doing this it is one of the most agonizing experiences. You might ask why would all four players do this, but when you’re winning and know the answers your opponents can just do this to remove the power of knowledge from your hands and make it entirely a chance game.
Mario Party 3 emphasizes the quantity of games, but it lacks the quality. I decided to look closer at my data and to see just how many games I gave a 3 out of 3 to. The results are bleak for Mario Party 3. Picture Imperfect is mostly there because you can make shitpost images with the cookie-cutter assets you’re trying to use to make a regular Mario.Frigid Bridges is among peoples’ least favorite games that I actually like a lot. Stardust Battle is literally just the final boss fight which seems unfair to count, but I felt bad for the game.
Meanwhile, Mario Party 2 took some of the best minigames (and other less good ones, to be fair) from the original game and also added a lot of new good games. Tread Carefully (formerly known as Shell Shocked because PTSD isn’t a good subject matter for a catchy name and Nintendo acknowledged this and renamed it for Mario Party Superstars) is one of the mini-games you can literally play for hours AND has map variations. Bowser’s Big Blast is a LEGENDARY game of being extremely tense and dramatic. The introduction of duel games are almost all fascinating. Mario Party 2 really was the best of the series.
But Ghoumy, Aren’t You Biased?
First of all, how dare you. Second of all, you’re right, BUT lets assume my data above is invalid and you don’t care for my tone. Allow me, then, to show you this data from Mario Party Superstars. The game collections the favorites from the Player Cards you can make to show your favorite game in the series (Mario Party 1 through 10 only) and four favorite mini-games. The results are definitely interesting.
Mario Party 1 & 2 dominate the top 10 favorite mini-games with 7 of them having over 3% of players liking those games the most (the third most popular mini-game is Booksquirm from Mario Party 4). The last two of those top 10 are Snowball Summit and Eatsa Pizza from Mario Party 3 (which I’ll admit are pretty fun). If we’re going with anything over 1% then the results get even bleaker. Out of 30 mini-games only 3 of them are from Mario Party 3. Mario Party 2 has 14 (all of these original Mario Party mini-games were also in Mario Party 2). Heck, even Mario Party 4 and 5 each have more and Mario Party 7 also has three.
As for the games themselves, most people cling to the N64 nostalgia when selecting a favorite game. According to the Favorite Game list in Mario Party SuperStars a large amount of people prefer 2, then 1, and then 3. The GameCube games suffer in this list likely due to the oversaturation of parties in that game. The poor Wii U only got one game in the series while the GameCube has 4. We’ve gotten off track, though. Lets get back to the point.
Wrapping Up
Mario Party 3 is hailed as some sort of amazing game, but I see (and love it for) the flaws. When you have only like 5 to 10 mini-games out of 71 that I’m genuinely excited to play then it’s a problem in a game about mini-games. The boards you are on to get you to the mini-games feel like a chore to go through. The items you use on those boards are so busted that you’re unintentionally making it into a hyper competitive experience of balancing Boo Repellants, Reverse Mushrooms, and Magic Lamps. They added a Story Mode that requires you to play over 10 games against CPUs to unlock another board and Super Hard difficulty for CPUs. It is a lot. That’s the theme of Mario Party 3. It tried to have it both ways, but really they just made a massive Mario Party game while not sticking the landing on a lot of the little details.
It’s possible I’m over evaluating this. At the end of the day it’s still one of the better games in the series and had a lot of great ideas, but to go from Mario Party 2 and learn almost ALL the wrong lessons (more items, no costumes, don’t carry over past mini-games, make it very easy to amass wealth and thus destroy all balance in the game, etc) makes the game a tragedy. Mario Party 4 was given the wrong blueprint to work from and led to an era of middling titles that are forgettable. Mario Party as a franchise never really recovered until now (Super Mario Party is very good except for the boards, tragically).
Mario Party Superstars, while it has a lot of DNA of Mario Party 2, has a lot of the details of Mario Party 3 and its successors. We can never go back to just holding onto one item, wearing cowboy costumes, and clutching onto our 16 coins for our lives. That’s not necessarily a problem, but I cannot help but imagine what the true Mario Party 3 could have been.
