Mario Party

About

Mario Party is a spinoff series that features Super Mario characters competing against each other for stars and coins in a series of mini-games, using a board game motif. Players roll a digital dice and move across a digital board, hoping to collect the most stars.

History

On December 18th, 1998, Mario Party was released in Japan for the Nintendo 64, with later releases in North America (February 8th, 1999) and Europe (March 9th, 1999).^[1] Nintendo released two more Mario Party video games for the Nintendo 64 in 1999 and 2000.

On October 21st, 2002, Mario Party 4 was released in North America for the Nintendo Game Cube. From 2002 to 2005, Nintendo released four Mario Party games for the Game Cube console.

Each Mario Party title up to Mario Party 8, was developed by Hudson and published by Nintendo.^[2]

Once Mario Party 8 was finished, several key designers left Hudson to work for Nintendo subsidiary Nd Cube.^[5] On March 1st, 2012, Hudson ceased to exist as a corporation and merged with Konami.^[6] Since the release of Mario Party 9 in 2012, Nd Cube is the soul developer of this video game series.^[5]

Super Mario Party

On June 12th, 2018, Nintendo announced that they would be releasing a new Mario Party installment for the Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Party. A trailer for the game was released (shown below) and displayed how users could use multiple Switch consoles for multi-player modes. The Verge^[9] said the game, "might be the most creative Switch game yet."

Reception

Mario Party series has received mixed to positive reviews over the course of its many titles. Since the debut of Mario Party, they have sold a cumulative total of 39.6 million copies worldwide, this data was record in December 2014.^[7][8] According to the Guinness World Records 2011: Gamer's Edition, Mario Party currently holds the record for the longest-running mini-game series in video game history.^[7]

Controversy

On March 9th, 2000, the BBC reported that Nintendo would releasing "gaming gloves" to players who developed blisters while playing a mini-game that required players spin their joysticks quickly. Many of which opted to use their palms to spin the joystick instead of using their thumbs. The company promised to pay $80 million for the gloves as well as $75,000 for the New York Attorney General's investigation.^[10]

Fandom

Let's Play

The respective entries of the series have inspired a number of popular Let's Play videos. On March 17th, 2012, YouTuber Shaun763 uploaded the video "Mario Party 9 – Every Boss Battle Minigame." The post (shown below, left) received more than 25 million views in six years.

Five years later, on April 16th, 2017, YouTuber Typhlosion4President published the video "Mario Party 9 – Boss Rush (Master Difficulty)." The post (shown below, right) received more than 40 million views in one year.

Fan Art

Memes

Related Memes

Luigi Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing

Luigi Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing refers to videos on YouTube that involve Luigi doing absolutely nothing while playing against easy CPUs beating different mini-games from the Nintendo series Mario Party.

Stressed Monty Mole

On October 3rd, 2018, YouTube channel GameXplain made a video pointing out an Easter Egg in the upcoming Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch in which, when playing a Whack-a-mole-esque mini-game in which players whack Monty Mole characters on the head, the playable version of Monty Mole will wear a pained expression, evidently upset he is hitting his brethren. The video gained over 39,000 views in one day (shown below).

Twitter user @KrazyBonesTV pointed out the Easter Egg on the platform, gaining over 6,400 retweets and 20,000 likes (shown below).

Other Twitter users reacted to the video with sympathy for Monty Mole. Twitter user @tinycartridge posted, "oh noooooooo, the way monty's eyes go wide 😭😭 this is not right," gaining over 50 retweets and 300 likes (shown below, left). User @metalucieart wrote, "He has to eliminate his brethren for the sake of entertainment and it's crushing him," gaining over 80 retweets and 430 likes (shown below, right). The reactions were covered by Twitter Moments.^[11]

Search Interest

External References