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Rating: Crappy Simply put, Mario Party is one of the worst video games of all time. The sickeningly cute music and the absurd story line establish from the very beginning that this game is targeted at five-year-olds, and I would still think this game sucks even if I were a five-year-old. The concept of the game is that as Mario or one of his friends, you must work your way through a bored... uh, I mean board game in an attempt to collect more stars and coins than your three opponents. You collect these stars and coins by landing on special places on the boards, and by doing well in Mario Party's many mini-games. Sure, the game has more than 50 mini-games to offer, but all of them suck and feel as though they were whipped together in an afternoon. Besides being utterly pointless, way too many of the mini "games" revolve around mindless button mashing or sheer luck. And should you be more lucky than your opponents and collect a large amount of coins, you could lose them all in the blink of an eye if you land on one of the "Bowser" pieces on the board. Now that's balanced game design... The music will slowly but surely drive you to the brink of insanity, and even the sound effects are annoying (most of them taken straight from Mario Kart 64). Mario Party tries to sell itself as a "party game," but aren't party games supposed to be games you would want to play at a party? If I were at a party and saw Mario Party, I would run screaming from the house and would dive through glass windows if necessary to avoid the horror. The sick thing about Mario Party is that somehow, somewhere, an idiot at Nintendo let the game slip through the company's "rigorous quality assurance" and make it to the market. Even slow-working, kiddie-oriented Nintendo must have realized this game sucks, making it one of the most shameless pieces of crap I've ever seen. I thought maybe if I kept playing Mario Party, it would grow on me and I would eventually learn to like it, or at least not lose my will to live while playing it. Unfortunately, I hated the game more with each passing minute, and would rather bathe in a tub full of scalding hot water than ever play it again. Mario Party is an embarrassment to Nintendo and the entire video game industry.
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com