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Mario Party 5 Review - Gamecube

It has been many years since Nintendo released the very first Mario Party for the N64. It proved a smash hit and saw a new franchise for Nintendo. It saw Mario and friends arguing over who was the Super Star out of them all. To find out who was the Super Star, they all agreed to battle it out on board games and playing mini-games. Unfortunately, the game saw mini-games that made you rotate your controller stick around using your palm or thumbs. This gave many people broken thumbs and also many blisters. Nintendo was forced by the courts to pay thousands of dollars in thumb reattachment surgery and which later lead them to releasing gloves to play the game with but these gloves were only released in the US. After the first game, the sequels saw hardly any use of the controller stick at all. The first game was a fresh idea in its days and was soon followed by two sequels on the N64 and two sequels on the GameCube. But one must ask a simple question. Do we really need another Mario Party title?

Gameplay

Mario Party 5 works pretty much in the same fashion as its prequels did. Basically you chose either Mario or one of his friends and you play against another four players on different board maps that have different themes. The themes are often well presented and often have events that are linked with the theme. Unfortunately, the events often feel too much the same. Also, you move around the board by using a dice a block that lets you move up how ever many numbers appears on your block after you hit it. After every player has had one turn, a mini game will follow where players will battle it out for coins. The mini games are decided on what type of space you and others land on (blue, red or green). But the game mainly focuses on every player going for a star, which costs 20 coins to buy. The player with the most stars at the end wins.

The boards as said before, are based on different themes which all have something to do with dreams. The story is this, Bowser has invaded Dream Port where everybody has their dreams. The Dream Port guards (whom are actually different coloured stars) ask Mario and his friends to help them defeat bowser. This leads to a new feature for a Mario Party game, the boards are all fully 3D. Feel like a sweet? You can play on a board, which is actually a giant cake with all kinds of mini cakes around it. Feel like swimming? Go under the ocean and play with the fish. The themes have been nicely done to suit the 3D boards and no one can complain about the boards overall but one can criticize the events being very similar.

The spaces themselves are full of surprises, sometimes you'll land on a space (continued next page)