Mario Party: The Top 100 (3DS)
The minigames are definitely the highlight of the Mario Party experience. A quick competitive activity at the end of every turn of the virtual board game allows you to have more control of your fate than usual and the range in creativity shown in these quick but entertaining bursts of action really breathe life into the play experience. It’s not too hard to imagine then a game that compiles the best of the minigames being entertaining itself, but these minigames were designed for a specific context. Mario Party: The Top 100 promises a collection of beloved minigames from the 10 numbered Mario Party entries to play any time, but with their initial purpose removed, some feel like they’re missing a vital piece of why they worked in the first place.
One thing that can at least be said for the minigames offered in this compilation though is that, in general, the picks made are actually pretty solid. Any compilation of the best of anything will be contentious, but Mario Party: The Top 100 doesn’t shackle itself to trying to present equal representation for the Mario Party games it draws from. Mario Party 5’s excellent range of games tops the list with 17 represented, but then you have the game not straining itself in trying to pull from Mario Party 8 or 10, as those two have 3 and 4 games present respectively. Even with this willingness to show appropriate favoritism there are quite a few choices that can seem baffling. At the Chomp Wash and Crank to Rank are stylus focused games that don’t require much thought, Pokey Pummel is a very straightforward button mashing test, and games that are entirely luck-based like Deck Hands and Pier Pressure have no real value when they’re turned from ways fortune can shift in a board game to activities meant to stand on their own. It does feel like you need to strain yourself if you want to identify 10 outright poor choices though, especially since while some aren’t compelling in solo play against computer opponents, others definitely deserve their inclusion when you factor in multiplayer competitions.
Most minigames in Mario Party: The Top 100 are a competition involving four players, but some are split up so it’s one player with an advantage versus three others or teams of two competing against each other. There are also one-on-one games and even a special game here or there that works more like a solo challenge. A few games like Dart Attack and Speeding Bullets feel a little rough since they use the microphone and tilting the 3DS respectively for their action, but most games control well and often present fun ideas that are a bit more layered than a simple action. Monty’s Revenge has players playing competitive whack-a-mole where they’re the ones popping out of the ground, the goal being to stay out as long as possible without being bonked by some vengeful moles. Booksquirm has you running across a giant book trying to find the holes in falling pages so you can slip through without being squished, while Eatsa Pizza turns pizza consumption into a test to see which team of two can consume more of a giant pizza in the time limit. Most minigames are pretty quickly completed, a few sports based ones like bowling or golf allowing a little more time so players aren’t rushing to take their turns, but mostly there’s one major consideration with a few wrinkles to keep it exciting. Trace Race has you using a giant crayon to trace a line, but that line gets more complex as you get closer to its end. Pushy Penguins has a horde of penguins running forward to shove you off the ice, and eventually enormous penguins and larger clusters make it harder to hang on. If they are just one task done at length, things will often speed up instead, the scramble to stay on the platform that isn’t dipped into lava in Hexagon Heat for example getting so fast it feels inevitable someone will eventually slip up.
Many of the minigames can be enjoyable on a quick play, but when there’s not much to do besides replay them, some do start feeling a little shallow. Figuring out a trick can undermine a few while others feel like they wrap up too soon for you to be really invested in them, but Mario Party: The Top 100 does make some efforts to add context to play. The major one is Minigame Island where you’ll be progressing through a world map by completing most of the 100 minigames on offer. Oddly enough, you don’t actually need to get first place in most minigames to progress, the game allowing you to move along if you place third or better. There is a star ranking system though that only pays out maximum stars for a minigame if you place first, these helping you unlock the Special minigames that aren’t playable otherwise. The game-controlled opponents do get tougher the further you get along the island, but this mode definitely exposes the issue with including purely luck-based minigames as you are granted only so many lives and you can easily lose them to the luck of the draw trying to earn those stars. Thankfully there are many chances to earn lives so you can eventually brute force those games, and otherwise the broader goal of clearing the island against computer opponents who can sometimes hold their own provides something for a solo player to dive into despite the fact it just takes a few hours to clear even if you have some bad luck.
Mario Party: The Top 100 does include another mode of substance, this one even attempting to bring over the board game design the Mario Party series is known for and yet somehow messing it up. Minigame Match presents you with a very small game board, its shape almost like a slightly warped 8. While it is comprised of very few spaces in total, the die you roll to traverse it is a six-sided die, and while you can choose your direction across the squares rather freely, it can still lead to many turns of barely traveling with bad rolls. The objective is to get the most stars by the end of the game, players needing to earn coins to pay for them. Stars are only available at balloons that drop in random locations and the first person who touches it is the only one who can buy one that turn, but there are bonus stars awarded at the end so you can still get some for doing things like earning the most coins or collecting items that can do things like increase your movement or decrease another player’s for a turn. Strangely though, minigames actually feel deemphasized in this mode. Turns aren’t guaranteed to have minigames, players needing to hit the right space or a minigame balloon to trigger them. Every player earns coins unless they outright fail the minigame, although your placement is proportional to your reward. Still, winning a minigame feels less meaningful when you’re only getting a little bit more than second place, Minigame Match an odd mix of being a bit too accommodating, having a fair few uneventful turns, and not properly emphasizing the minigames this 3DS game is all about.
If you do want some modes focused purely on minigame competition though, the last two major ones are basically just a bit of structure added to minigame play. Championship Battles are a best of 3 or 5 set of competitions where players pick a “minigame pack” that contains five minigames and random selections made from each participating pack determine which ones you will compete in. It could do with having higher numbers if you want to see more of the Top 100, but it is at least straightforward enough if all you want is a way to compete in minigames beyond doing them one at a time. The Decathlon is a bit more involved and unique. Competing across either 5 or 10 minigames that are consistent every time albeit it in different orders, the goal is not just to win the minigames, but to perform well in them to earn points. In a game like Leaf Leap that goes on for as long as the timer allows, you want to jump across the beanstalk’s leaves to get as high as you can, even a second place player potentially able to get a very high score. This approach does make the competition a bit more interesting than who places first place, and having some games like the hurdle jumping on a conveyor belt in Track & Yield extended beyond just being a competition to last the longest actually make the minigame more interesting than usual. It is a shame more minigames couldn’t be adjusted to this format to make it more interesting to revisit, but it does feel like the closest the game comes to a multiplayer mode that utilizes the minigame-focused format well.
THE VERDICT: While Mario Party: The Top 100 has a pretty strong selection of the series’s best minigames, it also doesn’t have the best ideas on how to present them. Minigame Island is decently designed for solo play if a bit too kind outside of the luck-based minigames, but then Minigame Match provides a hollow board game experience and only Decathlon feels like it presents something that really aims to draw more out of the minigames than throwing them at you in order. There are still enough enjoyable quick activities to be found in the 100 Mario Party minigames featured here, but more thought needed to be put in how you play them over what you’re playing to make this worthy of being a full game rather than just a nifty idea.
And so, I give Mario Party: The Top 100 for Nintendo 3DS…
An OKAY rating. Minigame Island does have an unlockable hard mode that pushes back a bit better (while exacerbating the luck-based games’ issues more), but for the most part Mario Party: The Top 100 feels like it lacks the greater stakes necessary to make these minigames more than just quick and simple amusements. Decathlon feels like it touched on a strong idea, extending certain minigames into endurance challenges or designing modes where merely winning a bunch of games in a row a possible direction to go that isn’t just making a full-on new Mario Party. The poor board design of Minigame Match feels like a symptom of the game not wanting to just go back into being a virtual board game, but even then it should have gone with more standard design so that the minigames aren’t barely present for the context they were originally designed around. Still, with so many of the minigames presented here actually pretty fun, it’s hard to say that Mario Party: The Top 100 isn’t at least enjoyable in small spurts. Pop on and play some of your favorites and it’s not like being devoid of context is going to rob many of them of their little thrills, but it can still feel a little empty to play what often amounts to 60 second challenges, especially if they do have a trick that can take away their difficulty even against the toughest AI foes.
Mario Party: The Top 100 feels like it would have been fine as a small offering on the 3DS digital store. If thought of as a nice way to play some of the series’s best minigames when you get the itch, it is easier to buy than all 10 numbered Mario Party titles, but funnily enough, Mario Party would revisit this idea and do it better later down the island. Mario Party Superstars includes 100 minigames from the series’s past but also has 5 classic game boards for its virtual board game component, and while Superstars makes different selections, it feels like the more robust experience. Mario Party: The Top 100 doesn’t seem to aspire to be much more than a minigame collection though, and while it has a good set of games on offer, it also reminds us there is value found in knowing how to present things to the player to make them even more enjoyable.