Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nd Cube

Release Date: 3/11/2012

Available Exclusively On

I can’t believe this series has gone on for this long. It was a super-fun game back on the Nintendo 64 and continues to be so. The great thing about Mario Party is that it doesn’t fix what’s not broken. People love this game for its competitive nature and super-fun mini-games. Mario Party 9’s mini-games are pretty solid and some of the best yet; they just lack content.

The game consists of about seven boards, but instead of everyone moving around individually, you’re all stuck in a vehicle. This makes things fun because you are all heading in the same direction, and one person can decide everyone’s fate. The boards are fun and offer a lot of variety. Bowser’s Space Station has a jackpot and jackpot spaces. If you land on a mini-star space, it adds to the jackpot. If the jackpot reaches 20 mini-stars, a mini-game is thrown at you to determine who gets them. There are mini-bosses in each level, traps, hazards, and other fun things on each board. Blooper Beach has two islands that consist of negative stars and mini-stars. You are stuck on this six-space island until someone lands on the space to get out. Everyone loses stars or gains them until that happens. This is what I mean by saying that one person can decide someone’s fate. It’s like going on an adventure together, and you have to stick together.

However, I wish there were some other boards that allowed individual movement. You can unlock new vehicles with points in the museum, but there’s just not enough variety here. The great thing about having so few boards is that when you memorize them, things get challenging, and you can get really good and have an advantage over your player. With everyone staying together, the person whose turn it is is the captain. There are captain event spaces where that person gets to choose who moves during the board mini-game. It’s really a lot like Monopoly, where one person will be way ahead and then suddenly lose at the end. That’s so great about everyone sticking together, but it does have downsides.

The mini-games are the best part of Mario Party, and there are a lot of them here. They all use the Wiimote in a unique way, and each is different and a blast. Unlike other Mario Party mini-games, very few are unbalanced here. Everyone has a fair advantage, and most require actual skill thanks to Wiimote’s design. Some games have you tapping buttons really fast, shaking, pinching, and grabbing stuff, carefully tilting things around, and many others. Some Bowser boss fights get really fun and challenging, where everyone has to work together sometimes and then against each other during other times. One mini-game has Bowser throwing dice onto the platform. Each side has a player’s face, but one side has Bowser’s. You want your face to show up the most, but not Bowser’s. You have to decide whether to work together or against each other in order to get the most attack points.

A real big letdown is that there’s no online play. This game is really only fun with other people and is completely boring for you. It’s great to relax with, but the AI is usually cheap and not fun to play mini-games against. I also wish there were other characters, boards, and more extras for the $50 price tag. The graphics look great; there’s just a lot of aliasing, which is to be expected with the ancient Wii hardware. If you have a lot of friends with whom you play games at home, this is a must-have.