PixlBit

When Nintendo released Mario Party in 1998, it further solidified the N64 as the system you played with your friends. That first entry established the formula the series would follow for years to come: Moving around a nonlinear board to collect coins and buy stars while going head-to-head with the other players in minigames. Mario Party was a hit, of course, and was followed in 1999 and 2000 with Mario Party 2 and Mario Party 3, respectively, both for the N64. After a year off in 2001, the party moved to the GameCube with Mario Party 4 in 2002 and didn’t stop until the release of MP7 in 2005.

Mario Party 7 was the culmination of the series to that point. It offered tons of everything—modes, boards, minigames, characters. It even came bundled with a microphone for certain games (though that started in MP6) and included a mode that let up to eight players play minigames at once using four controllers (everyone got an analogue stick and a shoulder button) and it was a blast. Mario Party 8 came in 2007 for the Wii and other than the addition of waggle control, not much changed. After nine years and eight console releases, serious franchise fatigue had set in.

That's a lot of games in a short period of time.

2008, ’09, ’10, and ’11 passed with no new game, the fatigue no doubt exacerbated by the instability of Hudson, the series developer, which was absorbed by Konami in 2012. But 2012 also saw the first new game in the series since 2007. Mario Party 9, however, held some surprises for longtime fans. Instead of moving around the board independently, all players ride in a vehicle together down a single path (optional detours always return to the main path). Players take turns as captain of the vehicle and shoulder the brunt of the good or bad things that happen that turn. You also no longer collect coins to buy stars, instead collecting mini stars along the way. Minigames are triggered by events or spaces on the board rather than waiting till everyone has moved. Another change is the addition of boss battles, minigames where everyone works together to defeat a large enemy. These occur at the middle and end of each board.

The result of these changes is a game that doesn’t really feel like Mario Party. Whatever the game says, “boards” is no longer an accurate term. “Stage” or “level” would fit much better, a fact accentuated by the boss battles. Much of the competitive spirit is gone too, even though there is still a winner. Forcing players to stick together while traversing the level and giving them a common enemy creates more of a disgruntled camaraderie. And again, there are no big stars to buy. None of that is to say that Mario Party 9 isn’t fun. It just doesn’t feel like Mario Party.

Coming next year: Mario Party Road Trip!

Mario Party 9 is the latest console release but there has been a game in the series since then. Mario Party: Island Tour came out in 2013 for the 3DS and pooped all over series tradition. Full competition between players returns but so do linear boards. You won’t be buying any stars because this time it’s a race to the finish! This game might as well been called Mario Party Race. Items are plentiful and have way too much impact on the outcome, causing luck to be a more crucial factor than any sort of skill. But the minigames are so dull that you won’t notice if they require skill or not. The silver lining is download play. If you have three friends (local, of course), you can all suffer together, which improves any experience. Perhaps a portable entry is the best way to try new things but the race gameplay never should have made it out of the prototype stage, if you ask me.

As you can see from this picture, this is the game where Princess Peach discovers that she can blow bubbles out of her butt, so that's something. Must have been how they arrived at this game.

So what is the series to do? Stagnate? Die completely? I think Mario Party could benefit from looking at Mario Kart, one of Nintendo’s other great multiplayer franchises. First of all, Mario Party got into trouble by having too many games too close together. It was a common joke in the GameCube era that Mario Party should just affix the year to each title. Mario Party ’05! Mario Kart, on the other hand, has kept itself to a single entry per system and Mario Party should follow suit. Nintendo should take its time with the Wii U entry for the series and then just let it stand. Mario Party ought to be an event, a piece of software you’ll continually bring out to play for the life of your system, not yet another yearly sequel to roll your eyes at. That way Nintendo can incrementally improve each one without the formula growing stale. And there is certainly room for improvement and innovation. The boss battles from MP9 are really fun, for instance. But we shouldn’t need to change the franchise into a starless race just to keep interest.

The Mario Kart series began in 1992 and is just now getting its 8th entry. Oh, and it's had online play since 2005.

The other thing Mario Kart has been doing since the DS days that Mario Party still lacks is online multiplayer. Seriously, Nintendo, let us party with friends and strangers from around the world. That will give the game legs like no entry before it. As long as the core game is solid, that’s all anyone should need till the next system comes along.

Mario Party is a lot of fun and it deserves better than it is getting. Mario Party 9 is an interesting—though still fun—departure for the series. Island Tour, on the other hand, barely warrants the name. Moving forward, I hope Nintendo can give us games that do push the series forward while still being unequivocally Mario Party.

This is just a fan mock up but I hope the actual Wii U game is worth our time.