Mario and Luigi, I’m sure you’ve heard of them somehow throughout your life. If you, by chance, haven’t heard of them, they two characters created that have many sagas together and unique, one of a kind games. These games spread to different consuls from Nintendo game boys to the newer styles of gaming like Wii. Although they have many games, Mario Party 8 is my absolute favorite. Recently, I purchased Mario Party 9 about two weeks ago. I’ve played it 6 times so I have used all the maps, and it has been a bit difficult to adjust. My thoughts on Mario Party 9 compared to 8 are still a bit iffy.
Going into the different elements of the newer game did help quite a bit when adjusting to its overall outcome. I had a lot of expected criteria when buying this game, including the pace of the game, mini-games, characters, stars, quality, maps, and controls. Many of these expectations were not met. Starting with the pace of the game I was hoping for a longer game like in Super Mario 8. An hour would be perfect, but in this case my friends and I played a full game in about 29 minutes. I felt very rushed and didn’t have much time to actually enjoy the game. Mini-games are a huge importance in this game, other than earning stars, winning mini-games can earn you more coins and the more coins you get, you could win bonus stars leading to winning the game overall. In this game, Mario Party 9, mini-games are even more important. You are winning mini stars instead of coins, that effect the overall outcome of who wins. My expectations for these mini-games were to have newer games, which they met, there were a ton of new games to play, but the same ones would repeat over and over again. For example, I played 20 turns and I was given the option to play the same game over 5 times. The whole point is to play different games so every player has a new chance to win. If there is someone that is good at that particular game, there’s a chance that they will win over and over again. Another element I was looking forward to was the characters. I was hoping there would be more characters than in Mario Party 8. I was led to believe there would be more new characters, particularly a new yellow Toad character. I saw this yellow toad character on the front of the disk case and was immediately drawn in by him. Come to find out, he is just the character that talks throughout the game and tells you what to do and how to do it. There are still plenty of characters that you can choose from, like regular Toad, Toadette, King Boo, and Mario of course, along with other originals that make an appearance in all the games. Stars are also a part of this game, they can make you or break you. The more stars you earn throughout playing, the better chance you are at winning the whole game. In Mario Part 9 I was hoping they would make it a bit more challenging to receive and earn these stars. For example, in Mario Party 8 you must play the whole map and a single star would be at a specific location along the digital board. Once you get to that specific spot you earn that star. Once earing it, in some cases it moves to a different location and you are put back to the beginning of the board or you may continue, depending on the map you choose to play. Playing Mario Party 9, there are no stars, only mini-stars. Earning mini-stars was made extremely easy; every spot you move, you earn mini-stars. Whoever collects the most mini-stars, wins the overall game. I believe this is where the makers really went wrong. The kart they use in the newer game, holds all the players inside. So, in other words, all players go in the same direction and cannot go their own ways like in Mario Party 8. This makes it let interactive for the players in my opinion. The overall quality of the game, was impressive, no glitches or stalling while loading the next game. It was very smooth and satisfying to play. I played three times in one night, used three different maps and I didn’t have to restart it at. Speaking of maps, when I was buying this game, I was ready for new maps to play. They did put in new locations and boards, but I do wish they added on to the maps already in Mario Party 8. There are no maps reoccurring from Mario Party 8. The last thing I expected when buying this game was for all the controls to stay the same to keep it simple. When playing Mario Party 9 most controls are the same, besides “rolling” the dice. In Mario Party 8, you would take your Wii remote and punch the floating dice about your head to choose your movement number. In this newer game, you just click the A button. Which again, make the game less interactive and almost boring when moving spots.
Super Mario Parties have always been interactive and fun in my opinion. This game isn’t the absolute worst ever; it is also not the absolute best ever. I would recommend this game to anybody that would love a complete change from the Mario Party games. This is a game full of new maps, mini-games, a new outlook on earning stars, and the quality is phenomenal. If you are looking for the same feel as the other Mario Parties, I would stick to Mario Party 8. It might just be me not wanting to step outside of my comfort zone, but I will continue to play Mario Party 8 instead of Mario Party 9.