Don't tell Nintendo, but as a kid I got a Nintendo 64 emulator running on the (at the time) newly upgraded family computer, and for some reason this was one of the games I played the most. My mom didn't like this game, my brother was too little to play, and I had no friends to call over, so I just spent loads of hours playing this, all alone. In that sense, this game holds a lot of nostalgia for me, despite being such a uniquely solitary experience, but being objective, this is not the best. The boards are pretty meh all things considered, the game is not balanced at all, and this one has those infamous palm-destroying minigames that were thankfully taken out of future entries. Despite all that, I still have a little soft-spot for this game, even if it's not all that amazing when compared to the rest of the series
I think that anyone who is decently literate in games or at least knowledgable about the consensus of many titles will rarely find themselves surprised by their opinions on a game. Like, when was the last time you were truly blown away by a game that you weren't expecting to be? For me, that usually comes from the inverse, hating games that are universally praised. But I found myself surprised by how much fun the original Mario Party turned out to be. This is supposed to be the one that aged poorly, right? There's not a different Mario Party 1 that has no reason to go back to it because the other games in the series surpass it in every way? Because this one slaps.
I LOVE the look of this game! Obviously this extends to 2 and 3, but the pre-rendered images for the maps are so detailed and lend a great aesthetic to each board. I love how the other characters shrink into little cursors when it’s not their turn, and all the bobbleheads in mini-games. The music slaps too, each board theme stars with a strong hook that makes the music more memorable than the other Mario Parties.
The mini games are ok overall. Some awful ones like Cast Aways, Bash ’n’ Cash, and Running of the Bulb, are balanced out by many surprisingly good ones like Face Lift, Hot Bob-omb, Mushroom Mix-Up, Shy Guy Says, Bobsled Run, and Bombs Away. The worst offenders, are the 1vs3 minigames as they almost always drastically benefit the 1 at the expense of the 3. Of the remaining 4 player minigames, the worst I can say about most of them is that they’re boring at worst but rarely groan-inducing. But getting paired with a CPU in Desert Dash is hilarious, because you can just move the stick back and forth as much as possible and your two friends can do nothing to stop you.
For better and for worse, I think this game showcases the two elements that need to come together in order to create a solid board: autonomy and gimmicks. These elements are what make or break every board in this game, and what determine whether a round of Mario Party is a hilarious time or a unanimous groaner.
Each board has a very distinct gimmick that permeates everything that happens in a given game; it's impossible to not notice, and I think in comparison the Gamecube Mario Parties (4 and 5 specifically) lack in gimmicks that actually do anything and are more tepid in comparison. Sometimes the gimmick is solid, like Mario's Rainbow Castle swapping Bowser and Toad when you land on a happening space. But other times (often actually) the gimmick ruins the board, like Yoshi's Tropical Island swapping Bowser and Toad when you land on a happening space.
Autonomy is the other big factors. The boards that have branching paths allow players to strategize not only their path to the star, but also to go toward Boo, and for the chance to land on chance time or happening spaces or one-player mini games. All of these things give meaning to your decisions and prevent Mario Party highly benefiting whoever gets the highest dice rolls. Obviously, the linear boards suffer because they lack in player choice relative to the non-linear boards.
Ok, here's the tier list
1. Eternal Star
2. Mario's Rainbow Castle
3. DK's Jungle Parkway
4. Bowser's Magma Mountain
5. Luigi's Engine Room
6. Peach's Birthday Cake
7. Wario's Battle Canyon
8. Yoshi's Tropical Island
Yoshi's Tropical Island fucking sucks. This board has easily the most aggravating gimmick, forcing Bowser and Toad to swap places whenever someone lands on a happening space. Other boards do this to, but the fact that you have to choose which island to be on means that any choice you make to head towards a star is completely meaningless, and all your board decisions are invalidated if any player lands on a happening space.
Wario’s Battle Canyon is guilty of being boring. I don’t know if the gimmick ruins it or if it’s the atrocious star placement. Either way it blows because it’s practically impossible to get stars, but it’s not aggravating like Yoshi’s Dumbfuck Fruit Rock.
Peach’s Birthday Cake feels suffocating. The piranha plants will likely never benefit you, and the seed roulette taking you away from the star is too punishing. Somehow feels like there’s even less player autonomy on this board than Wario’s Battle Canyon even though that’s objectively untrue.
Luigi’s Engine Room is pretty good. I like that everyone will end up going to Boo as, more than any other board, it will keep stars circulating the whole game. Sadly one particular star space can ruin this game, the one in the top right corner, as you have to land within a three block window on one turn and then roll high enough on the next turn or you’re blocked out of it.
Bowser’s Magma Mountain seems really punishing and restrictive, but I think the shortcuts actually work really well on this board to keep things fast paced and give players the opportunity to cut in front of other players in spite of its linearity.
DK’s Jungle Parkway is a pretty standard course, definitely the best board to start with. Sadly it has a kinda boring layout and the happening space is a little obnoxious as it gets activated a bit too frequently. Personally, I think I’d sooner play on Luigi’s Engine Room or Bowser’s Magma Mountain again, but I think it’s better designed, and the Whomp Gatekeeping the poor players is too hilarious.
Mario’s Rainbow Castle definitely rewards high rolls too much, but surprisingly gives a decent amount of player autonomy by allowing you to choose to rush or stall how quickly you go down the path. Also Toad and Bowser swapping works really well in this board to force all players to adapt on the spot and actually be able to do something about it unlike Yoshi’s Shitty @##&@$??!?!
Eternal Star is surprisingly my favorite board. The gimmick is really fun and forces players to pay attention while also being fresh on every playthrough. And the comedy potential is great.
Overall, a surprisingly fun time. Has some stinker boards and some stinker minigames for sure, but I really appreciate that the gimmicks of each board are distinct enough that every board feels different and has its own personality. And I think that Boo and the various space types are enough to make each game really fun. Went into this expecting it to be a slog, but found myself having a surprising amount of fun. Worth a few rounds at the very least.
I LOVE the look of this game! Obviously this extends to 2 and 3, but the pre-rendered images for the maps are so detailed and lend a great aesthetic to each board. I love how the other characters shrink into little cursors when it’s not their turn, and all the bobbleheads in mini-games. The music slaps too, each board theme stars with a strong hook that makes the music more memorable than the other Mario Parties.
The mini games are ok overall. Some awful ones like Cast Aways, Bash ’n’ Cash, and Running of the Bulb, are balanced out by many surprisingly good ones like Face Lift, Hot Bob-omb, Mushroom Mix-Up, Shy Guy Says, Bobsled Run, and Bombs Away. The worst offenders, are the 1vs3 minigames as they almost always drastically benefit the 1 at the expense of the 3. Of the remaining 4 player minigames, the worst I can say about most of them is that they’re boring at worst but rarely groan-inducing. But getting paired with a CPU in Desert Dash is hilarious, because you can just move the stick back and forth as much as possible and your two friends can do nothing to stop you.
For better and for worse, I think this game showcases the two elements that need to come together in order to create a solid board: autonomy and gimmicks. These elements are what make or break every board in this game, and what determine whether a round of Mario Party is a hilarious time or a unanimous groaner.
Each board has a very distinct gimmick that permeates everything that happens in a given game; it's impossible to not notice, and I think in comparison the Gamecube Mario Parties (4 and 5 specifically) lack in gimmicks that actually do anything and are more tepid in comparison. Sometimes the gimmick is solid, like Mario's Rainbow Castle swapping Bowser and Toad when you land on a happening space. But other times (often actually) the gimmick ruins the board, like Yoshi's Tropical Island swapping Bowser and Toad when you land on a happening space.
Autonomy is the other big factors. The boards that have branching paths allow players to strategize not only their path to the star, but also to go toward Boo, and for the chance to land on chance time or happening spaces or one-player mini games. All of these things give meaning to your decisions and prevent Mario Party highly benefiting whoever gets the highest dice rolls. Obviously, the linear boards suffer because they lack in player choice relative to the non-linear boards.
Ok, here's the tier list
1. Eternal Star
2. Mario's Rainbow Castle
3. DK's Jungle Parkway
4. Bowser's Magma Mountain
5. Luigi's Engine Room
6. Peach's Birthday Cake
7. Wario's Battle Canyon
8. Yoshi's Tropical Island
Yoshi's Tropical Island fucking sucks. This board has easily the most aggravating gimmick, forcing Bowser and Toad to swap places whenever someone lands on a happening space. Other boards do this to, but the fact that you have to choose which island to be on means that any choice you make to head towards a star is completely meaningless, and all your board decisions are invalidated if any player lands on a happening space.
Wario’s Battle Canyon is guilty of being boring. I don’t know if the gimmick ruins it or if it’s the atrocious star placement. Either way it blows because it’s practically impossible to get stars, but it’s not aggravating like Yoshi’s Dumbfuck Fruit Rock.
Peach’s Birthday Cake feels suffocating. The piranha plants will likely never benefit you, and the seed roulette taking you away from the star is too punishing. Somehow feels like there’s even less player autonomy on this board than Wario’s Battle Canyon even though that’s objectively untrue.
Luigi’s Engine Room is pretty good. I like that everyone will end up going to Boo as, more than any other board, it will keep stars circulating the whole game. Sadly one particular star space can ruin this game, the one in the top right corner, as you have to land within a three block window on one turn and then roll high enough on the next turn or you’re blocked out of it.
Bowser’s Magma Mountain seems really punishing and restrictive, but I think the shortcuts actually work really well on this board to keep things fast paced and give players the opportunity to cut in front of other players in spite of its linearity.
DK’s Jungle Parkway is a pretty standard course, definitely the best board to start with. Sadly it has a kinda boring layout and the happening space is a little obnoxious as it gets activated a bit too frequently. Personally, I think I’d sooner play on Luigi’s Engine Room or Bowser’s Magma Mountain again, but I think it’s better designed, and the Whomp Gatekeeping the poor players is too hilarious.
Mario’s Rainbow Castle definitely rewards high rolls too much, but surprisingly gives a decent amount of player autonomy by allowing you to choose to rush or stall how quickly you go down the path. Also Toad and Bowser swapping works really well in this board to force all players to adapt on the spot and actually be able to do something about it unlike Yoshi’s Shitty @##&@$??!?!
Eternal Star is surprisingly my favorite board. The gimmick is really fun and forces players to pay attention while also being fresh on every playthrough. And the comedy potential is great.
Overall, a surprisingly fun time. Has some stinker boards and some stinker minigames for sure, but I really appreciate that the gimmicks of each board are distinct enough that every board feels different and has its own personality. And I think that Boo and the various space types are enough to make each game really fun. Went into this expecting it to be a slog, but found myself having a surprising amount of fun. Worth a few rounds at the very least.
Full of contempt for the player, and featuring a couple of minigames that quite literally physically hurt to play. Still, the concept is brilliant, and - even putting aside nostalgia - I cannot help but get a lot of mileage out of its pure sadism. A guilty pleasure.
Decided to give Mario Party a random play recently, I think it does a fine job of establishing a series of Party games.
Mario and friends walking across a board is almost natural, just like in Super Mario Bros. 3
The Mini-games are fairly fun, it’s obvious Hudson are still finding their groove. Along with the good are some absolute stinkers, any game requiring rotating joysticks is an absolute pain - I was one of this kids who gave themselves stigmata spinning the joystick with the palm of my hands.
I played with a few friends who had no clue, I thought some mini-games weren’t really well explained to players new to the game. Later versions have a practice mode which is absolutely fine.
The stages have alright gimmicks but they’re sorta frustrating, it makes collecting stars rewarding when it occurs. But yeah, it can be disheartening seeing your hard earned coins disappear because someone hit a ? Space rotating Toad to Bowser, then taking a turn and immediately losing 30 coins in one hit.
I should probably say it has a killer soundtrack and I adore the CG title screen artworks.
Mario and friends walking across a board is almost natural, just like in Super Mario Bros. 3
The Mini-games are fairly fun, it’s obvious Hudson are still finding their groove. Along with the good are some absolute stinkers, any game requiring rotating joysticks is an absolute pain - I was one of this kids who gave themselves stigmata spinning the joystick with the palm of my hands.
I played with a few friends who had no clue, I thought some mini-games weren’t really well explained to players new to the game. Later versions have a practice mode which is absolutely fine.
The stages have alright gimmicks but they’re sorta frustrating, it makes collecting stars rewarding when it occurs. But yeah, it can be disheartening seeing your hard earned coins disappear because someone hit a ? Space rotating Toad to Bowser, then taking a turn and immediately losing 30 coins in one hit.
I should probably say it has a killer soundtrack and I adore the CG title screen artworks.
Sure, the original Mario Party paved the way for quite the great franchise to follow... but it also doesn't hold up quite as well nowadays. Stick rotating minigames are a pain, 1-v-3 games taking money from the losers is just ---- why? ---- and everything feels a bit unpolished compared to what would come. In a vacuum, though, MP1 is still fine. Can still be fun to test your friendships with.
This game is pretty rough. Not only do you lose coins when you lose minigames, the gameplay is pretty slow and mostly feature the joystick. You can't even access the final board unless you have 980 coins so good luck grinding.
Would destroy my hand again
Mario Party on the N64 is the definition of chaotic fun with friends... and friendship-ruining competition. The mini-games are a blast (watch those analog stick spins!), the boards are surprisingly strategic, and those random chance moments will either make you cheer or scream. It hasn't aged perfectly - some mini-games are brutal, and the solo mode is pretty weak. But for pure multiplayer mayhem and nostalgia, it still delivers the goods.
A work in progress - later games fix many of the questionable choices made in this game (e.g., losing a 2vs2 minigame causes you to lose coins). There are a couple minigames that are straight-up bangers, but many of them got reskins in later Mario Party's anyway.
My palm's greatest opponent.
MY LEFT STICK
i hope i never have to play this game again