So, does anyone else think a “Mario Party 9 was good, actually” resurgence is imminent?
I was discussing with some others a while ago about how Nintendo YouTubers have hyped up games including Banjo-Kazooie and Mario Kart 64 as the “greatest of all time” and there’s been more attention recently brought to the fact Internet users are prone to mindlessly parroting the opinions of big YouTubers until they become the standard “popular opinion” of their respective fanbase. Some of these include classic memes about Navi and Slippy Toad being the worst video game characters and the most annoying things ever, which many have now realized were overexaggerated early 2010s gaming humor. Some of which is currently ongoing nonsense about Kazuya Mishima being an obscure character and how we instead needed the “more iconic” character Geno in Smash Bros. instead, who probably owes a good chunk of his enduring popularity from people hearing their favorite YouTuber, who was actually old enough to play Mario RPG when it first came out, say Geno would be cool in Smash. And then there’s stuff I’m not sure what the consensus is at this point, pretty sure Twitter got into a fight over if the Water Temple was actually as hard as people made it out to be for decades and couldn’t come to an agreement. This even extends to things outside of the realm of gaming, such as a thread on Twitter I saw the other day about how season 4 of SpongeBob had plenty of gems and was unfairly lumped into the downfall of the series by YouTubers and critics.
The conversation eventually morphed into this question: Which Wii game is going to randomly get a renaissance of “it was good, actually?” I put my vote in for this one. The day before I saw someone whose profile bio was “the only Mario Party 9 enjoyer.” When I brought up Mario Party 9 as the game that would get a big flip in consensus, someone else in call SCREAMED at everyone about how he was saying “it was good, actually” since 2012. I brought up this conversation on another Discord server the next day, get a response saying “oh yeah I knew someone whose favorite game of ALL TIME was Mario Party 9.” I then saw it rank higher than 8 and one of the GCN Mario Parties on a tier list a few days later. Today I saw a tweet with a bunch of people proclaiming themselves as “Mario Party 9 enjoyers” which reminded me I had to publish this review.
Mario Party 9 is definitely a victim of “someone told me it was bad and not like the iconic N64 original games' so it's bad' and it gained this negative reception for a pretty notable reason, they overhauled the gameplay completely by shoving everyone into a car, and instead of everyone being able to move individually, you’re all moving together on a linear board aiming to (I do not remember what the win condition for this game even is, is it just most Mini-Stars wins?) which is widely considered a downgrade from previous entries that had codified a pretty solid gameplay loop for a little over a decade. 9 does have its positives though, the minigame selection is fairly solid, apparently held up as one of the series best. This game also adds in boss battles, each board having its own unique midboss and boss at the middle of the road and the very end respectively. You work together to defeat the boss while also trying to maximize your own individual score for a higher ministar payout. Bosses are an interesting idea and they’re fun fights (disregarding some of the really RNG ones, but it is Mario Party after all), they also have decent music, Bowser Jr.’s Mad seems to be the fan favorite but I’ve always had a soft spot for King Bob-omb’s themes.
It’s not hard to see why this game upset a lot of people and caused an endless wave of “N64/GCN Mario Party good car bad” and “when is Nintendo going to make a REAL Mario Party again?” It’s not my personal Mario Party choice, I grew up playing 8 a lot more and usually play the N64/GCN titles whenever friends want to play it. However, with the Mario Party franchise slowly slipping back into its original gameplay style, as well as the fact a lot of people who grew up with Mario Party 9, myself included, are getting older and louder on the Internet, I really think we’re going to be seeing a lot more “Hot Take: I think Mario Party 9 was good” posts on Twitter with a bunch of replies going “no yeah I agree with you I loved that game as a kid!”
I don’t know if we’ll ever see a renaissance for Mario Party 10, the other main entry using the car system, which seems to still have its reputation as “the bad one™,” is stuck on the Wii U, and widely regarded as much less balanced and much more boring. The people who grew up driving cars in Mario Party 10 are probably old enough to drive cars in real life now (I already see a handful of “Mario Party 10 was my childhood” scrolling through its backloggd reviews.) so it's probably not out of the question, you never know! Apologies if you grew any gray hairs when I said that.
I was discussing with some others a while ago about how Nintendo YouTubers have hyped up games including Banjo-Kazooie and Mario Kart 64 as the “greatest of all time” and there’s been more attention recently brought to the fact Internet users are prone to mindlessly parroting the opinions of big YouTubers until they become the standard “popular opinion” of their respective fanbase. Some of these include classic memes about Navi and Slippy Toad being the worst video game characters and the most annoying things ever, which many have now realized were overexaggerated early 2010s gaming humor. Some of which is currently ongoing nonsense about Kazuya Mishima being an obscure character and how we instead needed the “more iconic” character Geno in Smash Bros. instead, who probably owes a good chunk of his enduring popularity from people hearing their favorite YouTuber, who was actually old enough to play Mario RPG when it first came out, say Geno would be cool in Smash. And then there’s stuff I’m not sure what the consensus is at this point, pretty sure Twitter got into a fight over if the Water Temple was actually as hard as people made it out to be for decades and couldn’t come to an agreement. This even extends to things outside of the realm of gaming, such as a thread on Twitter I saw the other day about how season 4 of SpongeBob had plenty of gems and was unfairly lumped into the downfall of the series by YouTubers and critics.
The conversation eventually morphed into this question: Which Wii game is going to randomly get a renaissance of “it was good, actually?” I put my vote in for this one. The day before I saw someone whose profile bio was “the only Mario Party 9 enjoyer.” When I brought up Mario Party 9 as the game that would get a big flip in consensus, someone else in call SCREAMED at everyone about how he was saying “it was good, actually” since 2012. I brought up this conversation on another Discord server the next day, get a response saying “oh yeah I knew someone whose favorite game of ALL TIME was Mario Party 9.” I then saw it rank higher than 8 and one of the GCN Mario Parties on a tier list a few days later. Today I saw a tweet with a bunch of people proclaiming themselves as “Mario Party 9 enjoyers” which reminded me I had to publish this review.
Mario Party 9 is definitely a victim of “someone told me it was bad and not like the iconic N64 original games' so it's bad' and it gained this negative reception for a pretty notable reason, they overhauled the gameplay completely by shoving everyone into a car, and instead of everyone being able to move individually, you’re all moving together on a linear board aiming to (I do not remember what the win condition for this game even is, is it just most Mini-Stars wins?) which is widely considered a downgrade from previous entries that had codified a pretty solid gameplay loop for a little over a decade. 9 does have its positives though, the minigame selection is fairly solid, apparently held up as one of the series best. This game also adds in boss battles, each board having its own unique midboss and boss at the middle of the road and the very end respectively. You work together to defeat the boss while also trying to maximize your own individual score for a higher ministar payout. Bosses are an interesting idea and they’re fun fights (disregarding some of the really RNG ones, but it is Mario Party after all), they also have decent music, Bowser Jr.’s Mad seems to be the fan favorite but I’ve always had a soft spot for King Bob-omb’s themes.
It’s not hard to see why this game upset a lot of people and caused an endless wave of “N64/GCN Mario Party good car bad” and “when is Nintendo going to make a REAL Mario Party again?” It’s not my personal Mario Party choice, I grew up playing 8 a lot more and usually play the N64/GCN titles whenever friends want to play it. However, with the Mario Party franchise slowly slipping back into its original gameplay style, as well as the fact a lot of people who grew up with Mario Party 9, myself included, are getting older and louder on the Internet, I really think we’re going to be seeing a lot more “Hot Take: I think Mario Party 9 was good” posts on Twitter with a bunch of replies going “no yeah I agree with you I loved that game as a kid!”
I don’t know if we’ll ever see a renaissance for Mario Party 10, the other main entry using the car system, which seems to still have its reputation as “the bad one™,” is stuck on the Wii U, and widely regarded as much less balanced and much more boring. The people who grew up driving cars in Mario Party 10 are probably old enough to drive cars in real life now (I already see a handful of “Mario Party 10 was my childhood” scrolling through its backloggd reviews.) so it's probably not out of the question, you never know! Apologies if you grew any gray hairs when I said that.