Staff Blog: Donkey Kong is a Cheating Bastard! - Mario Party

Donkey Kong is a Cheating Bastard! - Mario Party

On 08/18/2020 at 05:17 PM by Matt Snee

The original Mario Party was released for the N64 in February of 1999. While there certainly have been some not so good iterations of the series, the first game was a bit of a revelation. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and my roommate and I played this a lot. The whole "Mario board game" idea was very original, and the game was clever.

We played with two computer players, and you can choose which characters the computer plays as. I will say this: none of the characters cheated more than Donkey Kong. The guy always got the best dice rolls, always landed on the best spaces, and just got lucky. He wasn't so great at minigames though.

The minigames can be hit or miss. Some of them are great - our personal favorite was Bumper Balls, where the characters are walking on top of big rubber balls and trying to knock each other off a small island. However, some of the other games are terrible - involving rapidly rotating the analog stick, or smashing buttons, both of which could hurt your thumb after a while. And other minigames take a long time to figure out, and since there are a ton of them, you don't get a lot of chances to get things right. There is a practice mode for them, but still...

It's a fun game. I heard the Switch version is pretty good, and the series is still going strong. I'd love to play again - but not with Donkey Kong.

KnightDriver

08/18/2020 at 07:05 PM

I love the idea of Mario Party. I played one of them way back, maybe this first one. I wish the minigames had a little more to them. Most are just simple button mashers.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

08/20/2020 at 07:20 AM

yeah some of the minigames aren't so great. But some can be really fun.

08/21/2020 at 09:50 PM

I love the idea of the game. I want to play another one sometime.

Cary Woodham

08/19/2020 at 08:48 AM

I got Mario Party when I was in college. Luckily it came out when my roommate and his girlfriend were still around, so we got to play it a lot together. A video board game was certainly new at the time, and this was before Mario spinoff games were really big either.

I think it's interesting that most Mario Party games were made by Hudson Soft. I think it's because they had a lot of multiplayer experience with games like Bomberman, and also they made a popular video board game series in Japan that I just talked about briefly in my newest blog! I think before Konami destroyed Hudson, Nintendo hired out most of their employees, so that's good.

I didn't get too many of the Mario Party games after that because they're all prety much the same. Only other ones I got were one on the GameCube because it was being sold at a charity auction for cheap. And I got one of the Wii U ones because it came with an amiibo and you know how I like my amiibo figures! But that's it. I don't even have the one on the Switch.

SanAndreas

08/20/2020 at 03:31 AM

Hudson was one of the few Japanese publisher/devs that really remained on good terms with Nintendo during the N64 era. The last game I remember them putting out was Miami Law for the DS, which was localized by the guy who did all the localizations for Working Designs. I was a little surprised that Konami bought them instead of Nintendo. Nintendo would have at least kept them nominally independent like they do with HAL Labs.

08/20/2020 at 08:27 AM

Hudson also really supported the Wii with Virtual Console, WiiWare, and original titles.

08/20/2020 at 07:21 AM

Mario Party can be really fun with friends. You can really doublecross eachother. Ha ha. If I had people to play it with here, I'd totally get the new one.

PixlBit