AbstractWalks the same path of the previous four-player board game party titles, with 50 totally new mini-games and vastly improved graphics.
ESRB rating
 |
Mild Realistic Violence |
Full descriptionThe fourth title in the whimsical board game series that debuted in 1999, Mario Party 4 offers five new 3D boards and a lineup of 50 mini-games. Up to four players can choose from Mario, Wario, Donkey Kong, Peach, Daisy, Luigi, Waluigi, and Yoshi as they take turns moving around a series of colored spaces. After each character completes a turn, a mini-game is played, the nature of which (two versus two, three versus one, etc.) is determined by the space each character ends up standing on. Players once again earn coins by winning mini-games, which are used to purchase items and stars. Stars determine the game's overall winner after a finite number of turns.
The featured boards include Goomba's Greedy Gala, Shy Guy's Jungle Jam, Toad's Midway Madness, Boo's Haunted Bash, and Koopa's Seaside Soiree. Each features a number of interactive elements, such as roller coasters and giant roulette wheels. An additional board starring Bowser is also available after completing the single-player Story Mode. Other notable features in Mario Party 4 include special Mini and Mega Mushrooms giving characters the ability to increase or decrease in size to access different parts of the board, a handicapping system to balance play for partygoers with different skill levels, and a tag battle option allowing two teams to compete for stars instead of four individual players.
Examples of some of the featured mini-games include Paratrooper Plunge, where players freefall through the sky to collect as many coins as possible (all while avoiding enemies); Mario Speedwagons, a four-player drag race; Butterfly Blitz, where two teams race to catch valuable butterflies with their nets; Mr. Blizzard's Brigade, which has players trying to avoid being hit by snowballs while standing on a frozen pond; Booksquirm, where players look for holes in a giant book to avoid getting crushed by its continuously turning pages; Stamp Out, a game which has characters bouncing atop rubber stamps in an attempt to blot the most ink on a white sheet; and Candlelight Flight, where one player is left holding a candle while the other three players try to douse it with squirt guns.
Additional mini-games and modes of play can be earned by beating each of the boards using all eight characters, and players are free to compete in their choice of mini-games after first unlocking them in either the four-player Party Mode or single-player Story Mode. Records for each character and board are kept in the areas of number of games played, number of times won, highest number of coins earned, and highest number of stars earned. Top performances in the individual mini-games are also tracked and saved to a memory card.
Mario and friends are back for another round of great console board game action with Mario Party 4 for the Nintendo GameCube! Mario Party 4 will feature more mini-games than you can shake a fist at, all new boards, better graphics and much more to entice all GameCube owners with the newest version of one of the most popular games coming straight from Nintendo. Are you ready for another round of non-stop action and entertainment?
Other releases of this product
There are other releases of this game:
click here to see them all.
Editorial reviewSource:
AmazonIt’s a pretty bold claim but for many,
Mario Party is the best multiplayer game series ever. No need for guns or complicated role-playing elements here--
Mario Party is fun because it’s simple. The original N64 game created an entirely new subgenre--an unlikely combination of traditional board games and lots of ultrasimple arcade titles. The idea is that you travel around the board trying to collect stars, which must be paid for with coins, and you get coins by competing in minigames, which occur at the end of every round. These minigames generally don’t last longer than a minute or two, and many are based on old
Game & Watch titles. There are over 50 minigames in
Mario Party 4, and each involves either a free-for-all, two players against two, or one against three (depending where you land on the board at the end of your turn). These can involve anything from skydiving to basketball dunking, or car racing to hide-and-seek, to name a few.
Admittedly, this basic description of the gameplay might not sound too exciting, and indeed if you’re playing with less than three human opponents it can be pretty tedious. But play it with the full complement of non-virtual rivals and the game’s infinite capacity for cheating, backstabbing, and ganging up allows it to completely transcend the humdrum sum of its parts. There’s nothing terribly new in this third sequel except that the graphics are much improved and the minigames are all new, but that really misses the point: get this game out at Christmas instead of Trivial Pursuit and you’ll wonder how you ever got through the holiday without it. --David Jenkins, Amazon.co.uk
Earn special presents by challenging the board's host character at the end of each game
Ride vultures, dolphins, roller coasters and more to grab coins or to take shortcuts
Revisit each board with new characters in Story Mode to unlock secrets
New lottery spaces help spread the wealth
- Portions of content provided by Rovi Data Solutions, Inc. and IGN Entertainment, Inc.