Thanks to its staggered - some may say relentless - release dates, every year since 1998 has been a Mario Party year somewhere in the world. Some years have even been multi-Party years, and while few of the many hundreds of minigames that comprise Nintendo’s critically maligned - yet hugely successful - series have been particularly memorable, the age of the Mario Party has rarely been dull.
Minigame Island
The very first N64 version included the Minigame Island mode, which was a compilation of minigames to give the multiplayer-oriented Mario Party a little value for lonely gamers. It involved traveling as far as possible across a world map, winning coins in solo games, and it was actually quite good. It has never been seen in any subsequent Mario Party.
Glove giveaway
The first Mario Party featured a handful of games that required brawny manipulation of the N64’s groove-topped analog stick. The easiest way to rotate the stick fast enough to complete the likes of Paddle Battle and Tug o’ W🐼ar was to jam it into the palm of the hand, which resulted in “cuts, punctures, blisters and friction b♛urns” for some of the most enthusiastic, soft-skinned players.
Because one child had to have a tetanus injection, around 80 parents complained and Nintendo offered to supply Mario Party players with a free set of fingerless, padded gloves to avoid future problems/lawsuits. If all of the 1 million Mario Party owners had applied, the cost to Nintendo would have been $80 million, but relatively few did, making the free gloves collectors’ items now. Nobody outside of America even registeꦇred a complaint, proving tha෴t European and Japanese gamers have tougher hands/are not so stupid.
Gang up
One of the signature features of the entire Mario Party series, and probably its finest idea, is the three-on-one minigame. Three slightly handicapped characters attempt to knock down/flatten/beat/submerge and generally tussle with a lone player who must flee, terrified, in the hope of surviving until the end and reaping a huge coin bonus. The seldom-played Mario Party 3 has a particularly good selection of them.
