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Chad's Mario Party Review
Cameo games have never really excelled in the field of graphics. Mario Kart 64 used sprites for the characters while polygons would have looks so much better. This said, Mario Party did a fairly good job in the graphics category. The characters need antialiasing badly, being so far away from the camera most of the time. This taken into account, the majority of the game's graphics were not of the characters, but the backgrounds. And these were incredible. Hudson Soft seemed to have a little theme going with fakey 3D objects, but it really worked, since after all, the characters are on a boardgame. The same goes for the minigames, the background there are incredible. I also enjoy watching the shadows on the characters rotate in the Hot Rope Jump minigame. All-in-all, the characters could have used some work, but the backgrounds were excellent. And DONKEY HAD THE BACKWARD DK!!!
8.9
Not much to say here. The sound effects were pretty basic. I don't particularly care for the Donkey "Carburator Voice", but it's a pleasant alternative to Yoshi's annoying "Bee-beeow!" noise. Anyway, I like the sound effect of the coins and all the basic items. They're what you would expect, but at least it's nothing out-of-the-ordinary. The music is fairly good, in that it draws you into the game. Probably my favorite song (as with Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party 2) is the end credits. Koji Kondo seems to be really good as credits. Ah, well.
9.4
Horrible. Wretched. Absolutely putrid. These are all words you would not use to describe Mario Party's play control. As with all cameo games, the control is simply amazing. Definitely the high point of this game. I could go on and on about how good it is, but amongst the glitter and glamor of Bumper Ball Maze 2 and Mushroom Mix-Up is darkness. Two minigames, one of which earned a spot in our DKU Fearbringers feature, have awful control. Tug O War and Paddle Battle. You must spin the control stick at blinding speeds to win these. Nintendo says to spin with your thumb, but that's impossible. You have to do it with the palm of your hand, creating horrible blisters upon blisters. Slush and I both have our Mario Party battle scars, and are glad that Hudson Soft opted to discontinue the spin-the-control-stick minigames in Mario Party 2. These two minigames, however, are not enough to degrade from the score too terribly much.
8.5
It was a freakin' board game! How more original can you get? I'd say that this game was a HUGE risk by Nintendo in trying out a basically new genre, and it succeeded admirably, creating what would become a goal of developers to make "party games" that were great to play in multiplayer. I, in fact, had more fun in single player than I did in multiplayer because I could steal coins and stars without risking bodily injury. Anyway, this was the beginning of a great completely original line of games, and I enthusiastically await Mario Party Dolphin, or Mario Party 128, or whatever the hell they end up calling it.
9.2
This was the first time we really got to see Donkey Kong in 3D (as stated before, Mario Kart 64 was just sprites) and it was an excellent game to debut the ape. It could have used some work here and there, but overall, it was much better than I had expected. A definite must-buy (if you own a Nintendo 64, of course. If not, then what are you doing reading this review in the first place?).
9.2
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