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GBL337's Mario Party (N64)
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| [February 22, 2007 12:28:47 AM]
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Okay, second round of playing solid, and I had forgotten how much fun this game is. Perhaps with a full set of players, I was right when I said that it is easily some of the most fun you can have with a party game, at least in the realm of videogames.
I feel like I'm repeating myself on a lot of the elements as to why this game deserves the title of "classic" but those are truly its shining elements in the game.
An easy interface and overall simple design allows for a wide variety of gamer demographics to pick it up and play it within minutes of slapping the cartridge into the system. That is perhaps the single most powerful reason to call this a classic game because it has NO learning curve, just like a good party game. The rules are pretty obvious, the controls are beautifully simple, and the game naturally focuses itself on the interactions between the players and the frenetic pleasure of the minigames therein.
There is no storyline, there are no complex characters, and there is no angst. This is not your story-driven epic game; this is a boardgame like Candyland, only without the creepy characters that you only find funny as a kid. This is a game that is meant to be played with a huge group and with tons of player interaction, and this game ROCKS.
I think that's all I really CAN say..
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| [February 21, 2007 01:14:18 AM]
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I started playing with my friend and roommate on this game today, and unfortunately because there weren't four players, things got...frustrating.
But what makes this classic is a topic of heavy discussion. There are many elements that offered gamers a radically new element to gameplay, especially in the realm of multiplayer. This is absolutely the most multiplayer-oriented game on the Nintendo 64 gameset aside from Super Smash Bros. and for a reason--you can't play this sucker without someone else, otherwise you will throw this game away and quickly.
I digress--it fuses the "fun" elements and immediate gratification of a boardgame with the wild fun and cartoon-like graphics power and extra-physical capabilities of a videogaming system like the N64. It is a true testament to Nintendo's tendency to think outside the box and provide gamers with an instant classic.
This was the intro for many gamers into the multiplayer set on a 3-D console, and thus it had to be easy to pick up--the controls were almost too simple: press A to hit your diceblock and use yo control stick to determine direction at crossroads on the gameboard, while using B occasionally in the minigames. The only game I can think of that has more intuitive and simplistic controls is Katamari Damacy. Because it is so easy to pick up, it offered gamers an entry into a multiplayer game that offers so much fun for friends to go head-to-head in healthy competition and is, as the title suggests, a great party game.
The fact you are playing what is, in essence, a virtual board game, you have many elements of fun with multiple players, such as the frenetic minigames, the strategic ways of dealing with bad dice rolls (which happen frequently) and moment after moment where players can converse and admittedly trash talk quite a bit.
The problem with the game is that unless you have 4 people to play with, you are stuck with the badly programmed CPU-controlled characters who seem to conveniently win every minigame and get ALL of the good rolls. This is a side-effect of a multiplayer game such as this, because all of the focus is on actual multiplayer gameplay as opposed to single-player.
Really, that is all I have to say right now...in a few hours, my views should solidify more on this classic.
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GBL337's Mario Party (N64)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 21 February, 2007
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