Mario Party 1-3: Friends are the Superstars

hey guys thanks for watching today's episode before we start i'd like to thank skillshare for sponsoring today's video some of you know skillshare has been a partner before on the channel and we like what they do if you're not familiar skillshare is an online learning community offering thousands of inspiring courses for creative and curious people you can explore new skills deepen your existing passions and get lost in creativity there are courses ranging from topics like illustration to graphic design to web development and even music production an example of an available course i think that's interesting is finding fulfillment using pivots to power your creative career by emma gannon where she gives tips on how you can make a creative pivot in your career or just to find more joy in what you do what i like about skillshare is it's curated specifically for learning meaning there are no ads and they're always launching new premium courses so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you so if you want to check out what skillshare has to offer for you you can join now by clicking the link in the box down below the first 1000 people to use the link in my description box down below will get a one month free trial for skillshare premium thank you once again to skillshare for sponsoring today's video and now on with the show one of the things that really separated the nintendo 64 from other fifth generation consoles was its multiplayer with dozens of standout titles that supported up to four people the n64 dominated sleepovers throughout the 90s however there's one other classic that isn't held in the same regard as the mario karts and the smash bros even though it's been around just as long mario party now some may look down at the franchise because each installment feels increasingly unoriginal and merely a knockoff of the game that came before it but there's more to the mario party franchise than minor tweaks with each iteration and there's so much more required for completion than just multiplayer squabbles so nostalgia be damned as i complete the first three mario parties for the nintendo 64. that's right three hey everyone and welcome to an all new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them and not only are going to tackle three mario party games but full disclosure i don't really have that much experience with the mario party series outside of playing with friends every now and then when the first games came out in the late 90s i was more focused on solo experiences like ocarina of time final fantasy vii banjo-kazooie amongst many others so i somehow missed out on the mario party train when it first left that proverbial station with the release of mario party superstars i feel like it's finally time for me to really get that mario party experience on so grab your n64 grab some of your closest friends or in my case the most available employees and be careful with your thumbs it's time to complete mario party one two and three party on yes all glory goes to the winner game over wake up last one standing twins [Music] now there were a ton of games on the nintendo 64 that pioneered genres super mario 64 made 3d platformers a true reality goldeneye brought first-person shooters to consoles in a massive way and mario party did the exact same thing for party games while party video games have been around since the 80s mario party is what really cemented the popularity of the genre let me put it to you like this from the release of olympic decathlon in 1980 to the release of mario party in 1998 there were nine games that were considered party games in the same amount of time after 1998 there were 92 and that's excluding the other mario party titles of which there are many essentially mario party helped create the party game genre as we know it today some people say it was the recognizable characters that made mario party a success but there have been previous games that took advantage of existing ips like sonic the hedgehog's game world and timon and pumbaa's jungle games personally i think a lot of mario party's success has to do with the original commercial kids in hawaiian shirts and blue camo kneeling in front of a tv and waving their controllers around was exactly what nintendo needed to do to get 90s kids hyped for this game plus mario actually gets arrested in this commercial this game is so exciting that it got mario arrested yeah sign me up dude so what do you do in a game that is so exhilarating well it's essentially a board game you know the most exciting thing in the world the first one you play as one of six mario characters mario luigi peach yoshi wario and donkey kong each one of you roll a six-sided die numbered one through ten move around the board accordingly and try to earn coins these coins are then used to buy items or more importantly stars in order to win the game you have to collect more stars than your opponents one of the ways to earn coins is by landing on specific spaces a blue space gives you three coins while a red takes away three there are also some special spaces that have different effects for example green spaces with a question mark are happening spaces that trigger an event on the board then there are the red bowser spaces that take you to king koopa himself these are usually very terrifying because more often than not bowser is just going to take away a ton of coins from you or even worse you'll get a bowser revolution and all of the coins from every player will be distributed equally that's right bowser has become something scarier than ever before a communist after each player has rolled and moved you'll then take part in the most fun part of mario party the mini games these mini games are either a 4 player free-for-all 2 versus two or one versus three depending on what spaces the players land whoever gets first place will earn 10 coins and even get closer to winning the game there are also some special spaces and mini games that prompt a battle royale feature which essentially means there's no loser it's just all of the coins of the winners are divvied up differently so first place might get x amount of coins more than second third and fourth and that's essentially every mario party game ever made move around the board play mini games and try to get as many stars as possible it's really fun when you have a bunch of friends over to play only there's one problem when it comes to completing all three games there is a massive single player component across these three so i'm gonna have to spend most of my time with each game by myself which is super strange because by design mario party games aren't meant to be played alone but i am the completionist and if i want to complete these games i have to play it by myself like i did all those years ago man i really hope this doesn't affect my opinion of the series as a whole that happens a lot here in the show i just want to like video games you guys [Music] so let's start at the very beginning with the original mario party which unsurprisingly is the most threadbare and rough around the edges when compared to other entries in the series but i was surprised to see just how different mario party 1 is from the other n64 mario party entries and i don't necessarily think that different is a good thing here the game starts off nice enough with a cool village area that serves as the menu it really establishes mario party as its own unique world separate from other mario games but that's where the visual charm stops after that all of the game boards seem a little lackluster in my eyes granted i'm talking about me being a 33 year old dude and not the nostalgic kid who used to play this game a lot when he was younger first of all there are some things we now expect from mario party games missing here there are no items to help you travel the board also mushroom spaces either give you a regular or poison mushroom these either will let you move farther or make you lose your next turn this is more frustrating than fun because i don't feel like i did anything to make that happen other than just roll dice second of all all the levels have wildly different goals for example peach's birthday cake has players wandering around a giant cake planting piranha plants that steal opponent's stars meanwhile wario's battle canyon is set up with five individual sections that you can then only access via canon this makes it seem like the devs were throwing whatever they can at the wall to see what sticks all of these can get unbelievably frustrating especially when you just want to get to the star now this makes grinding for coins and stars even slower than it already is you're going to have to do a lot of that if you want to complete this game oh yeah i didn't mention you need to get coins and stars in order to complete this game yeah it is super weird that there is a single player component in which you need to complete the game i didn't come up with it they did after you finish playing a board all the stars and coins you earn are deposited into a bank the coins are used to purchase items that affect each board now these essentially work as cheats where you can turn off certain event spaces increase the amount of coins given to you etc and this is all fine but getting all the item costs about 3980 coins and when you only get about 50 coins at the end of a normal game that takes forever and it takes even longer when you lose coins if you lose a mini game and thank god that didn't come back in later games there's also the mini game houses here you can purchase mini games to play whenever you want after you buy 30 of them you can get the rest of them by using the gumball machine in the shop on average you'll be spending around 300 coins per mini game and since there are 50 total mini games that means you'll be spending at least another 15 000 coins so we're looking at a total of earning 18 980 coins yay fortunately the mini game house has a mode that you can abuse to get coins quickly the mini game stadium now this is a smaller map that is meant to be able to have players play a lot of mini games in a short amount of time to do this you must first set the rules so that each player starts with 50 coins instead of 10. then extend the total amount of turns to 50 and then switch every player to a computer player on the very last turn switch all the computer characters to player characters not only does this guarantee that all the coins go into the bank but all of their stars as well if you do this on a regular board this dramatically shortens the amount of time to get all the needed coins but it still takes forever when you're looking and thinking about all of this in one package and while you're doing all of this at some point you will hit 100 stars in the bank once you do so bowser will steal them all and unlock the final level eternal star this features another new level gimmick where you have to outroll seven different baby bowsers to earn seven stars and this is actually really cool and that final board feels like a great culmination of the game so far but once you've beaten it that's it you get a cut scene blasting bowser and baby bowser into space and there isn't anything else it makes playing all those different levels beforehand feel retroactively unsatisfying especially when you're playing by yourself because let me remind you yes i completed these games during the pandemic in which i had limited people around me most of my time was playing against computers and maybe the editors every now and then the good news in all of this is that the mini games are mostly a lot of fun many of the classic mario party games like bumper balls and bowser's facelift are right here in this game but there are some stinkers too my least favorite games are slot car derby and tug of war slot car derby is exactly what it sounds like except players can easily lose control if they go too fast it may look cool but it becomes really hard to maintain any kind of position especially when you spin out for what seems like no reason tug of war on the other hand has you playing a game of tug of war by rotating the joystick on your controller as fast as possible now this mechanic is very infamous and resulted in numerous controllers being broken worldwide which i essentially did this also became infamous for children literally being taken to the hospital because they hurt themselves while playing this game because of this and a lawsuit nintendo has never used these controls again every mini-game can be played on mini-game island essentially the story mode for mario party you'll travel across the island trying to beat each of the mini-games until you reach the final boss toad you know what i didn't want to see that one coming it's kind of weird toad then challenges you to beat him at slot card derby oh my god you've got to be kidding me and this time to beat is absolutely insane so best of luck if you want to attempt this bad boy beating toad and every mini game on the island unlocks bumper ball mazes one and two for the players and these are actually pretty challenging and fun finish them both under a certain time limit and you get a third bumper ball maze and that is essentially the completion bonus for mario party 1. getting the bumper ball mazes was a decent reward for completing mini game island but you don't get anything for doing the rest getting 100 stars and beating bowser left me feeling nothing while purchasing all the items and mini games just meant i had the items in mini games i didn't get any deep feeling of satisfaction of doing all this just kind of felt like i wasted 18 hours of my life being older now this isn't the game i remember and it wasn't fun mario party felt interesting for most of the first board but once the grind really started setting in i just got bored especially when the best method to grind for coins was to not actually play the game and when that's the case sometimes you don't have a good game right here which is why out of the n64 trilogy mario party 1 is highly regarded as the worst out of the three but speaking of the worst let's talk about one of the best [Music] all right now this is what i'm talking about although i refer to all mario party games as just mario party mario party 2 is the first one that comes to mind when i think about mario party and i'm glad i do because the sequel improves in the original in almost every way the world of mario party 2 feels so much more cohesive instead of being a land where all the characters happen to take part in mini games mario party 2 is a play a theatrical play a la super mario bros 3. now this is awesome and helps make everything feel a lot more uniform speaking of uniforms each character also dresses up based on the genre of the board they're playing on so as an example western land has everyone dressed up as cowboys and cowgirls while spaceland has everyone dressed as astronauts this is so much more visually interesting than the first game seriously tell me you don't want to see donkey kong dressed as a wizard do it hysterical these different genres also give each board a much more distinct identity seriously in the original mario party one two levels were tropical two were rocky and two were floating and ethereal each of the levels in mario party 2 however feel unique and interesting especially western and spaceland there are also a lot of gameplay changes that have now become staples of the series the best example of this are items on each board you'll pass a shop that sells items that will help you on your journey most of these affect movement like the golden mushroom which lets you roll three dice blocks and a warp block which has you randomly change places with an opponent this is a lot more fun and puts that chaos in the game in the hands of the player and not the board which i am always in favor of another great part for me was the lack of grinding i didn't have to grind for any stars this time in order to get the final level this time bowser land i had to play each board at least once and that was much more feasible than getting 100 stars i still had to do some grinding for coins but it was so much less than before especially since i was using the exact same strategy that i did in mario party 1. however i only had to buy mini games for mini-game land and if there's a minigame land that means there's also another solo adventure where i just play mini games in mario party 2 it's called mini game coaster and instead of 50 mini games to beat there are now 65 other than that it pretty much felt exactly the same the mini games were a lot more fun especially without all the joystick rotation my favorites this time around were shell shocked where you battled enemies in the tank or filet relay where you play as penguins in a race where they use fish instead of batons it's actually pretty funny the bad minigames here also felt less bad shock drop and roll has a great title but feels almost impossible for people who aren't controlling the wheel unfortunately the mini game coaster also makes some games feel more frustrating than they do in a regular game hot rope jump is usually fun but it's less fun when you have to do it 50 times in a row by yourself once you get to the end of the mini game coaster toad is replaced with three baby bowsers and you have to beat all of them in a game of shell shocked this is a lot of fun and actually a pretty decent challenge if you win you get access to a completely new game driver's ed driver's ed is a car mini-game where a solo player has to drive through balloons in numerical order within the allotted time since there's no other game like it anywhere else in the game it genuinely feels like a reward and not something just tacked on last minute overall mario party 8 felt great especially playing it right after the original even though it took me about the same amount of time to complete the game 16 hours roughly it felt more like eight because of how fast things went by however i still don't know if i can say it was completely worth it i liked unlocking driver's ed but the pointless grinding for coins without actually playing the game is still not fun and for me it's kind of a huge mark against mario party 2. so although i definitely enjoyed mario party 2 way more than one i still don't think there's enough here to really justify completing the game it really felt like there was something missing from my experience here's hoping this increase in quality continues into the third game [Music] whenever people talk about mario party on the nintendo 64 they usually bring up the first or second one what about mario party 3 well after completing mario party 3 i can confidently say that it deserves to be forgotten playing a board is the same as ever get the stars and win however there is no requirement to gather coins to buy mini games instead you just have to randomly come across them in game and to be clear these are some of my favorite mini games in the whole series the beat goes on as a classic pattern game while asus high has you engaging in an actual airplane dogfight however mario party 3 also has some of the weirdest mini games of all time with mpiq which literally asks you about your mario party save data which is so much fun huh however the biggest change is that there is an actual story mode and not a gauntlet of mini games this story follows the millennium star a silver star with an incredibly evil looking mustache it wants to award someone the title of superstar of the universe and now mario and all of his friends have to compete against each other for this title but there's a twist the main antagonists of the story are waluigi and daisy who are making their mario party debuts they decided to compete as well and serve as antagonists for the story mode so this presentation is actually pretty enjoyable the story is just interesting enough to keep you engaged and to see bowser constantly get beaten up by waluigi and daisy is really funny the only thing that makes me kind of sad here is the complete replacement of toad now usually toad appears as your guide as well as the person who sells you the stars now the millennium star sells you stars and your guide is a sentient dye named tumble who looks suspiciously like toad but in cube form but it's not the same so the presentation seems fine and the levels themselves are all right right between mario party 1 and 2 for quality so what is my big issue with this game well simply put dual mode dual mode features one-on-one battles where you try and deplete your opponent's hearts from 10 to zero you do this based on who your partner is all of them are classic mario enemies that can deal damage you'll wander the map trying to attack your opponent by passing them with your partner at either your front or your back in story mode you alternate between battle royale maps and dual maps battle royale maps take you and your 8th grade class to a deserted island where only one of you can survive as you're killing your classmates you learn i'm just kidding it's actually just regular mario party but after you win a battle royale map you have to go against an opponent in dual mode repeat this six times and you've completed story mode now this takes hours especially since to complete the game you have to beat story mode with all six of the original characters doing this gets that mario character's head put on mount mario more which is one of the dumbest things i've ever said in the video mount mario moore that means i have to beat 12 total maps six times that's 72 total games minimum yes mount mario moore definitely looks interesting but it is not worth that time commitment but that's not all my friends in story mode you get ranked based on how badly you beat your opponents to get an s ranking on a battle royale map you have to beat second place by at least two stars and on a dual map you have to beat your opponent without losing to health which is really hard when you have to pass your opponent to damage them getting eight of these s ranks gives you the overall rank of miracle star the highest in the game however getting 10 s ranks also gets you a thank you from the developers so i went for that obviously this is nice but it goes away as soon as you start a new story mode so it's kind of completely pointless but believe it or not that's still not all there was one challenge left if you got eight s ranks with every single character on super hard difficulty and got 2 000 coins in guy's game room you unlock golden mount mario it's the exact same mountain but gold now this made me very nervous because i knew it would take so many more hours of my life to perfect this game and i already spent dozens going in could i do this fortunately i didn't have to because the whole thing is not real it's a hoax even though people to this day are talking about it like it's still a thing these people are still probably trying to get mew from under the truck in pokemon but it was in that moment that i realized how miserable this experience was for me i spent a total of 40 hours playing mario party 3 more than the previous two games combined half of that was boring because it was in duel mode the other half was born because i already had played 34 hours of mario party and i get it guys no one should have to experience mario party the way that i did but hey i completed 3 mario party games in one video in the end i felt like i had died and wound up in limbo and instead of burning flames or eternal bliss i had to experience infinite mediocrity by playing mario party alone [Music] playing through the first three mario party games was a disappointing process i spent a total of 74 hours buying more than 100 stars spending over 20 000 coins and earning at least 48 s ranks while playing 186 total mini games and although there were moments of bliss especially in mario party 2 i was overall felt feeling pretty empty none of the original mario parties held up to the nostalgia i'd built up in my mind all these years later what changed have these games aged that badly have i gotten older or more cynical was it different this time than all the other times before and then it hit me friends i was playing this game without friends have you ever tried playing monopoly by yourself neither have i because that sounds stupid and that sucks so i got some friends and ted together and we played each of these mario parties and you know what we had fun we had fun with all three of these games in fact i wouldn't mind doing it again sometime just sitting next to a bunch of people whose company i enjoy and ted while playing video games made for a great experience who cares if the first isn't that interesting visually who cares that the third one has an absolutely pointless duel mode who cares that ted stole my first star and got two bonus stars so he stole victory for me right when it was in my grasp ted i was having fun and that my friends it's what video games is all about i played these games for 74 hours by myself got a few rewards for it and hated most of that process but those three hours i spent with my buddies laughing yelling at each other in the words of tina turner it was simply the best playing the mario party games by yourself is like going to a party alone it's boring uncomfortable and feels like it will never end but when you get other people involved the energy is palpable it's chaotic a ton of fun and sometimes frustrating but in the best way possible and yes friendships are torn apart in a moment but they're mended just as quickly if you have an n64 and four controllers i couldn't recommend the mario party games enough but if you're by yourself this is a hard pass so with that in mind i give all three of these games my completionist rating of play it with friends [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 197,449

Keywords: mario party, super mario party, mario party 2, mario party 3, mario party review, mario party n64, n64, mario, nintendo, mario party gameplay, super mario party review, completionist, g4, g4tv, game review, game reviews, gameplay, superstars, mario party superstar, nintendo switch, switch, nintendo life, luigi, minigames, mario party switch, gaming

Id: bfgDgfOC2JI

Length: 27min 17sec (1637 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 13 2021