Disney's Party Hands-On Impressions

We played a bit of Disney's Party, the Disney-themed GameCube party game from Electronic Arts and Hudson Soft, at the recent Camp EA press event. As you might expect, the game lets you play as a number of Disney characters--Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald, among others--in a wide variety of minigames. These games will be accessible from a board-game-style hub where you'll keep track of the points you've amassed and your progress against the other players involved in the game. The minigames will be spread out across a number of theme worlds, from an Old West town to a futuristic city and a steamy jungle. Disney's Party looks to be following the party game formula closely, which will likely be a recipe for success.

We got a chance to play a few of the minigames in Disney's Party during our brief time with the game, and they seem to offer the type of quick, easy-to-learn fun that party game fans and younger players should appreciate. One game lets up to four players run around a fountain, collecting crystals that fall from the sky. You can shove other players out of the way, and by throwing bombs that also fall from the sky, you can knock your opponents' crystals out of their hands. The player who retrieves a gold star that drops into the fountain at the end of the round is declared the winner.

Two of the other minigames we tried were a bit more cerebral and less action-oriented. In one, a simple equation consisting of a few shapes and a plus or minus operator was presented at the top of the screen. Each player had to hop onto the proper shape, completing the equation from a group of tiles on the floor below. In another game, Goofy and a new robot character took turns standing behind a curtain, and a spotlight revealed only small bits of their silhouette, indicating what they were doing. The four players then had to quickly guess from a list of animations which one the character was performing. In order to score the most points, we had to make a correct guess as quickly as possible.

Disney's Party is looking like a solid entry in the party game genre. Disney fans will surely appreciate another chance to play as their favorite characters, and from what we saw, the actual minigames seem like they might be pretty entertaining as well. A Game Boy Advance version of Disney's Party is also planned, although strangely enough, it won't have any GameCube connectivity features.