A Goomba, Koopa, Boo, Shy Guy, and Toad show up in a Borg cube to assimilate you into the party collective. What do you do?
You play Mario Party 4, of course. Resistance is futile.
I mentioned in the Backloggd Discord server that I've been playing these games while drinking, and I recall someone saying that "drunk Mario Party sounds fun." I promise you that getting liquored up while playing these is less for my own personal amusement and is instead purposeful, not unlike field medics pouring booze down the throat of a Civil War soldier before sawing off a gangrenous limb. It is a measure strictly taken to dampen the severe levels of psychological damage these games cause me, and though I know the only one holding me to the insane commitment of playing through the entire series is me, every couple of months I decide it's time to pickle my liver and enter into the dreaded party zone. I do this so you don't have to. Some would call me a hero, you know.
I've left some pretty harsh reviews for the first three Mario Party games, but I at least had the opportunity to play those with friends and develop an understanding of where Mario Party's true value is. Forcing people to play Mario Party with you also has the unintended side effect of driving them out of your life (strange, I know), so Mario Party 4 is the first in the series that I've played purely solo. Thankfully, Nintendo anticipated that weird losers might want to play Mario Party 4 and designed a whole story mode just for them. It's Waluigi's birthday, and he needs to earn his presents by beating his "friends" in the Party Cube. Can you collect all his gifts, including... A shower head? A calendar where every day is Sunday? What is this crap...?
The thing about story modes is that you want to make forward progress in them, and the thought of losing 40-60 minutes of playtime because you lost a game of Mario Party is just dire. At least Mario Party 4 has the decency to autosave at the end of every turn, but you probably don't want to rely on that too much. There was one instance where I got to the post-game star tally holding three stars to everyone else's zero. In the bag, right? Damn, I'm good at Mario Party - it's a game of skill!
Jump cut to Daisy claiming the What's Happenin', minigame, and coin stars while holding enough coins overall to break the tie and win. Since the game saved right before this, it was unsalvageable. After this loss, I began power cycling my Wii (which requires navigating through several software menus to access the hard drive, so it takes a while) to roll better turns whenever I felt the outcome would otherwise be too disastrous to recover from. According to USBLoader, I have started Mario Party 4 over 60 times. I'd say less than ten of those were me sitting down to start Mario Party 4 for a fresh session.
Despite how frustrating that must sound, the autosave feature does at least make this more tolerable than Mario Party 3, as the lack of seeded turns does allow you to manipulate your fortune to some extent. Were it not for rerolling turns, I'd still be playing this thing, so I'm choosing to internalize this feature as a net positive.
Minigames are overall better here than they were in the previous three games, although you're still able to roll the same minigames multiple times in a map. Ohhhh boy, it's Blame it on the Crane, again. Wasn't fun enough the first two times I played it, gotta dip back in once more! The low quantity of minigames does allow you to become well-practiced at a fairly large number of them - giving you an edge over your AI opponents - but if you're anything like me, the frequency in which some of the more lengthy and agonizing games show up will have you groaning "Bob-omb Breakers, time to reset" more than you'd like.
Ultimately, this is still Mario Party. I still don't like it. These are hateful, vindictive games, but Mario Party 4 is probably the best of the bunch that I've played. Introducing save-scumming to Mario Party is such a game changer.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
The answer to this should of course be a vehement "NO," and I'm not even sure why I thought to include it in my 2023 Summah Games series. I created this weird mental image of me in some sporty Summah clothes, chowin' down on a big slice of watermelon, seeds dripping off of me while a chorus of cicadas meets the whirl of the die, buzzing in my mind a breezy Summah jam. In reality, I was constantly getting up to reset the Wii, trapped in stuffy work clothes on my lunch break, trying to make up for lost time in a frenzied attempt to just be done with the damn thing while a documentary about FX's Breakfast Time droned in the background, volume on my TV off so I could spare myself from the constant cycle of Mario Party 4's soundtrack. That's not a Summah. That's not a Summah at all!
But as the Ministah of Summah I have a duty to uphold, and experiments must be done... I have subjected Mario Party 4 to a series of grueling Summah tests to determine its Summah vibes, which included deleting all the games off my Wii's hard drive and screaming at the top of my lungs while taking a cold bath fully clothed.
While these experiments did make me feel better, by deleting Mario Party 4 I found that I no longer had a game to test, resulting in a 0.1 on the Summah Index Scale, making Mario Party 4 Anti-Summah! This is a classification typically reserved for Wintuh games, but Mario Party 4 is so unfun that it could prove disastrous to your Summah. I am thankfully built of sterner stuff, but I cannot recommend this game to a Summah neophyte. Avoid it at all costs, and if you do stray across a copy at the beach, on a pier, or perhaps under a board walk, report it immediately to the Summah authorities.
You play Mario Party 4, of course. Resistance is futile.
I mentioned in the Backloggd Discord server that I've been playing these games while drinking, and I recall someone saying that "drunk Mario Party sounds fun." I promise you that getting liquored up while playing these is less for my own personal amusement and is instead purposeful, not unlike field medics pouring booze down the throat of a Civil War soldier before sawing off a gangrenous limb. It is a measure strictly taken to dampen the severe levels of psychological damage these games cause me, and though I know the only one holding me to the insane commitment of playing through the entire series is me, every couple of months I decide it's time to pickle my liver and enter into the dreaded party zone. I do this so you don't have to. Some would call me a hero, you know.
I've left some pretty harsh reviews for the first three Mario Party games, but I at least had the opportunity to play those with friends and develop an understanding of where Mario Party's true value is. Forcing people to play Mario Party with you also has the unintended side effect of driving them out of your life (strange, I know), so Mario Party 4 is the first in the series that I've played purely solo. Thankfully, Nintendo anticipated that weird losers might want to play Mario Party 4 and designed a whole story mode just for them. It's Waluigi's birthday, and he needs to earn his presents by beating his "friends" in the Party Cube. Can you collect all his gifts, including... A shower head? A calendar where every day is Sunday? What is this crap...?
The thing about story modes is that you want to make forward progress in them, and the thought of losing 40-60 minutes of playtime because you lost a game of Mario Party is just dire. At least Mario Party 4 has the decency to autosave at the end of every turn, but you probably don't want to rely on that too much. There was one instance where I got to the post-game star tally holding three stars to everyone else's zero. In the bag, right? Damn, I'm good at Mario Party - it's a game of skill!
Jump cut to Daisy claiming the What's Happenin', minigame, and coin stars while holding enough coins overall to break the tie and win. Since the game saved right before this, it was unsalvageable. After this loss, I began power cycling my Wii (which requires navigating through several software menus to access the hard drive, so it takes a while) to roll better turns whenever I felt the outcome would otherwise be too disastrous to recover from. According to USBLoader, I have started Mario Party 4 over 60 times. I'd say less than ten of those were me sitting down to start Mario Party 4 for a fresh session.
Despite how frustrating that must sound, the autosave feature does at least make this more tolerable than Mario Party 3, as the lack of seeded turns does allow you to manipulate your fortune to some extent. Were it not for rerolling turns, I'd still be playing this thing, so I'm choosing to internalize this feature as a net positive.
Minigames are overall better here than they were in the previous three games, although you're still able to roll the same minigames multiple times in a map. Ohhhh boy, it's Blame it on the Crane, again. Wasn't fun enough the first two times I played it, gotta dip back in once more! The low quantity of minigames does allow you to become well-practiced at a fairly large number of them - giving you an edge over your AI opponents - but if you're anything like me, the frequency in which some of the more lengthy and agonizing games show up will have you groaning "Bob-omb Breakers, time to reset" more than you'd like.
Ultimately, this is still Mario Party. I still don't like it. These are hateful, vindictive games, but Mario Party 4 is probably the best of the bunch that I've played. Introducing save-scumming to Mario Party is such a game changer.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
The answer to this should of course be a vehement "NO," and I'm not even sure why I thought to include it in my 2023 Summah Games series. I created this weird mental image of me in some sporty Summah clothes, chowin' down on a big slice of watermelon, seeds dripping off of me while a chorus of cicadas meets the whirl of the die, buzzing in my mind a breezy Summah jam. In reality, I was constantly getting up to reset the Wii, trapped in stuffy work clothes on my lunch break, trying to make up for lost time in a frenzied attempt to just be done with the damn thing while a documentary about FX's Breakfast Time droned in the background, volume on my TV off so I could spare myself from the constant cycle of Mario Party 4's soundtrack. That's not a Summah. That's not a Summah at all!
But as the Ministah of Summah I have a duty to uphold, and experiments must be done... I have subjected Mario Party 4 to a series of grueling Summah tests to determine its Summah vibes, which included deleting all the games off my Wii's hard drive and screaming at the top of my lungs while taking a cold bath fully clothed.
While these experiments did make me feel better, by deleting Mario Party 4 I found that I no longer had a game to test, resulting in a 0.1 on the Summah Index Scale, making Mario Party 4 Anti-Summah! This is a classification typically reserved for Wintuh games, but Mario Party 4 is so unfun that it could prove disastrous to your Summah. I am thankfully built of sterner stuff, but I cannot recommend this game to a Summah neophyte. Avoid it at all costs, and if you do stray across a copy at the beach, on a pier, or perhaps under a board walk, report it immediately to the Summah authorities.
5 Comments
@Bojangles4th Yeah, I do think this is the strongest set of minigames in any Mario Party I've played yet. The only real problem I had is a few of the more lengthy ones ending up in the rotation too often, but like you said, they could just remove games you played and shuffle them back in until you run through the list. Getting the crane game three times in a 15-game turn (actually happened) shouldn't be a thing when there's 9 total 1 vs 3 games.
15-turn game*, whoops.
Summah ounterpoint:
Youre walking down the street one afternoon. School has been out for 3 weeks.
4 weeks?
You dont care, youre 13.
Its Friday and your friend on the other side of the block asked if you wanna come over. He said his parents are gonna order a bunch of pizzas and hes inviting a bunch of people to play some Gamecube. Who knows, maybe itll even turn into a sleepover.
You show up to his house.
You knock on the door, his dad answers.
You can already hear some excited and wild yelling coming from the house, he tells you theyve already gotten started in your friends room.
Youre not really part of his core friend group, but thats okay. You have fun anyway.
As you enter your friends room (his name is Colson) you witness an incredible scene: A rogue CPU Yoshi leading with 5 Stars against 3 human players who barely have a single Star between them. Colsons friend Mira was the owner of the only other Star in play and she apparently just stole it from Colson moments before.
You witness the final couple of rounds, and during the closing ceremony Yoshi scores 2 of the bonus stars, ending this session with a kind of supreme domination youd have to see to believe. This Yoshi was a monster - in fact CPU Yoshi is always a monster for some reason.
You get handed Player 3.
Mira isnt a big time gamer, shes very spent after that long half hour of devastation.
Youre up for anything tho, and so a revenge run against CPU Yoshi ensues.
Many alliances are formed, and then ommediately broken once Colson gets to steal a star.
Yoshi wins again, but this time with only 3 Stars - we had 4 stars between us but Yoshis divide and conquor campaign was too successful.
Colsons dad yells out.
Pizza is here.
2 Meat Lovers, 2 Supremes.
Is this not what Summah is supposed to be about.
Youre walking down the street one afternoon. School has been out for 3 weeks.
4 weeks?
You dont care, youre 13.
Its Friday and your friend on the other side of the block asked if you wanna come over. He said his parents are gonna order a bunch of pizzas and hes inviting a bunch of people to play some Gamecube. Who knows, maybe itll even turn into a sleepover.
You show up to his house.
You knock on the door, his dad answers.
You can already hear some excited and wild yelling coming from the house, he tells you theyve already gotten started in your friends room.
Youre not really part of his core friend group, but thats okay. You have fun anyway.
As you enter your friends room (his name is Colson) you witness an incredible scene: A rogue CPU Yoshi leading with 5 Stars against 3 human players who barely have a single Star between them. Colsons friend Mira was the owner of the only other Star in play and she apparently just stole it from Colson moments before.
You witness the final couple of rounds, and during the closing ceremony Yoshi scores 2 of the bonus stars, ending this session with a kind of supreme domination youd have to see to believe. This Yoshi was a monster - in fact CPU Yoshi is always a monster for some reason.
You get handed Player 3.
Mira isnt a big time gamer, shes very spent after that long half hour of devastation.
Youre up for anything tho, and so a revenge run against CPU Yoshi ensues.
Many alliances are formed, and then ommediately broken once Colson gets to steal a star.
Yoshi wins again, but this time with only 3 Stars - we had 4 stars between us but Yoshis divide and conquor campaign was too successful.
Colsons dad yells out.
Pizza is here.
2 Meat Lovers, 2 Supremes.
Is this not what Summah is supposed to be about.
@_YALP You make a compelling argument and one I would confront the Magistrate of Summah with were he not currently slumbering far below the Earth, his body fed upon by grubs that are digesting him and scattering his remains through the soil. On June 20th his matter will converge, and he'll take form once more, rising up from the dirt to oversee another glorious Summah season, a is tradition. Perhaps he'll reconsider his stance then.
("Rogue Yoshi" got a pretty big laugh out of me tho and I liked the story, had a similar experience with friends playing 5.)
("Rogue Yoshi" got a pretty big laugh out of me tho and I liked the story, had a similar experience with friends playing 5.)
Bojangles4th
9 months ago