Month of Mario: Mario Party 2 (N64)

The first Mario Party game was a bit of a trial run for what an original virtual board game could be. It had some rough edges as a result, strange board designs and minigames that actually hurt people to play, but it was certainly a learning experience for Nintendo, one they applied well when it came time to make the sequel, Mario Party 2. Had it just been the idea refined, Mario Party 2 would already be a better choice over the original when you wanted to get together with some friends and play something casual and fun. Mario Party 2 also decided to take the concept a little bit further though, this game leaning into a costume party angle that gives it even more character than the more straightforward board game party of the original.

Mario Party 2 begins with Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Peach, and Yoshi working together to build a wonderful world of fun, but when the name was proposed, things quickly turned to in-fighting. Mario got out in front naming it Mario Land, but everyone else desired for it to bear their name instead, and eventually, a compromise was proposed. The six characters would compete to see who could take down the evil Bowser across a set of board game lands, whoever could prove themselves to be a Superstar ultimately the one the new land would be named for. While this is the set-up for why these characters are gathering to play board games that are big enough that they move their own bodies across spaces, each board also has its own little tale to tell, and the characters all play along by getting dressed up for the event. Donning cowboy hats in Western Land, suiting up for Space Land, and even grabbing a wand and pointy hat to oppose the dangers of Horror Land, the six game boards mostly see them in some sort of appropriate costume and also playing along with a narrative where Bowser is framed as the villain. Be he an evil pirate captain or a mysterious sphinx with a riddle that curses you should you fail to solve it, Bowser always emerges to cause trouble at the end of a game of Mario Party 2, the winning player getting to see a scene where they step up and save the day from the appropriately thematic danger.

The six game boards, one of which is unlockable, are a fairly solid set because of the diversity of themes on show and how they play into their designs. A round of Mario Party will always involve four players, be they human or game-controlled, taking a turn to roll a die to determine how many spaces they travel, a minigame capping off the turn where people get a chance to earn coins that are crucial to your success. To win a game of Mario Party 2 requires you to collect the most Stars, Toad appearing at certain spots on the map you need to reach and requesting 20 coins in exchange for them. While traveling the board you might land on helpful or harmful spaces, some giving or taking a few coins, others triggering events like a sudden Battle game where everyone contributes coins that are distributed based on your performance, and areas like an item shop or the Koopa Bank will trigger as you pass them selling possible helpful tools or draining your resources respectively. There will always be some luck at play in a round of Mario Party 2, the die roll the most obvious case of it, but the focus on accruing and spending coins can help you influence your fate because of the minigames paying out so well, winning at them usually providing 10 coins so a skillful player can tip the scales a bit in their favor no matter how rotten their luck might be.

The different boards in Mario Party 2 usually have a pretty good sense for how much they should interfere with the flow of play as well. There are many branching paths on every board but all loop back to start eventually, meaning while you may moan when a Star appears far away or on a spot you just passed, you’re never technically too many turns away from reaching one since the board size is manageable and your paths influence your luck. Landing on Happening spaces in some boards can trigger events that may send you across the board, there may be a character like the living wall Whomp who will let you travel the path he blocks should you bribe him, and even during small moments, you might be made to make tougher choices like traveling on the path to the star even if you might land on the very dangerous Bowser Space that can lead to you losing big. Different boards feature their own unique considerations, Space Land for example having a satellite laser that ticks down and will shoot down a big corridor to wipe away the coins of anyone caught in its path. Mystery Land is almost too gimmicky, the board split into four isolated sections you need to travel through by paying UFOs or lucking into Happening spaces, but the small size of each section makes it at least somewhat manageable to do so. There are unique mechanics even in the simplest board Pirate Land, a pirate ship able to blast players back to start if they don’t cross the bridges successfully. While there are definitely moments where you will be a bit irritated by an unfortunate die roll, the scale of the boards means it’s not impossible to come back from a few stumbles into disadvantageous situations.

Mario Party 2 also offers Bonus Stars as well, adding a nice strategic extra to play albeit one with an unfortunate price tacked onto it. At the end of the game, whether it be a fairly manageable 20 turns, a longer 35, or a grueling 50, 3 more stars will be rewarded based on your performance in certain categories. Coin Star goes to the person who had the highest total of coins ever at one point in the game, Minigame Star rewards the person with the best performance in those, and the Happening Star rewards whoever landed most on those spaces whose effects change with every board. This gives players more to think about beyond just trying to race to and buy Stars, it quite possible for someone to come from behind if they cater their actions towards courting these extras. Sadly, they also come with the game sprinkling Hidden Blocks around the board, these appearing on nearly random spaces and rewarding tons of coins or worse, a full Star for free. While it happening once is a bit of a silly disruptive element, when I was playing a computer controlled player managed to uncover 3, the game nearly won by a player who didn’t really engage with any of the game’s elements beyond rolling the dice and lucking out. Luck is definitely a factor elsewhere, Chance Time leading to some incredibly harsh shakeups like players being forced to trade their stars away, but there are better ways to interfere with other players like recruiting Boo to steal coins or Stars, his price making it a payoff to work done elsewhere. Items are also a good way of influencing the action, Mushrooms giving the player multiple die rolls, Skeleton Keys letting you take routes that are entirely blocked off otherwise, and the Magic Lamp lets you pay a premium to be able to then teleport to the star next turn to buy it. These all require investment and decision making compared to the hidden blocks, and sadly hidden blocks can’t be turned off individually from the beneficial Bonus Star system, but most games thankfully won’t see 3 stars dished out to one lucky player.

If all you were doing was traveling around a game board. Mario Party 2 would be missing some of its zest. Where things get more interesting and involved are the minigames, most occurring at the end of a turn where everyone is thrown together to compete for the coin prize. Sometimes it will be a four player free-for-all, but based on spaces you landed on, you might instead tackle things two-on-two or have a skewed 1 vs. 3 game. A bit of an odd choice was made in having 21 minigames from the original Mario Party return, not even with major alterations all the time, but the even stranger choice was that porting over pre-made minigames didn’t necessarily lead to a great amount of variety. There are technically 65 minigames in Mario Party 2, but since they come in different formats, that starts to thin the variety some. For example, 6 of those are simple Item Minigames where one player gets a chance to earn an item while the 6 Duel Minigames are 1 vs. 1 competitions that often wrap up quickly since they use simple ideas like pressing a sequence of buttons faster than the other player or stopping a clock as close to a specific time as possible. These minigames are all themed to an individual board too, meaning every duel or item game there will be the same one, and while that gives boards a bit more personality, it also thins the minigame ranks a touch and ensures some repetition. The most common minigame type, the 4 player free for all, has 21 unique minigames, and while there is slight randomization in how they’re picked, it’s fairly common for a single 20 turn game to still see repeats, and even after playing the game quite a bit to cover this game, I only saw Hot Rope Jump once while I became rather well acquainted with the likes of Abandon Ship and Hexagon Heat.

The good news is, Mario Party 2 does have some good minigame concepts at play, and some that are even shaken up a touch on repeat visits. For example, Face Lift involves you distorting a character’s face and trying your best to match an example image. The character whose face is being altered can change and they feature different grabbing points as a result. Slot Car Derby, where you race your slot cars and need to balance speed with not spinning out, has a few tracks so you can’t just optimize your play perfectly, and Bumper Balls, where you try to knock players off a hill, has an icy variant and one with a few bumps in the terrain to help it avoid the stalemates common to the standard arena variant. Minigames play in a variety of ways, and some can be much more involved or psychological. Move to the Music has one player setting up some dance moves the other players need to duplicate properly, Handcar Havoc and Bobsled Run are races, and Looney Lumberjacks has you trying to find a rhythm in sawing a log with your partner. Trying to trace a picture with a jackhammer in Crazy Cutters is a particularly fun challenge, but there are some more straightforward or luck-based minigames that poison the selection a touch. There is at least a little tension in Bowser’s Big Blast where you take turns pressing plungers and hope you aren’t the one who will randomly set off a bomb, but Day at the Races is basically horse betting but with Mario enemies. Honeycomb Havoc has you roll a dice to grab either fruit or the beehive that eliminates you, and if you look ahead you can easily set up a player to lose and there’s nothing they can do to influence their fate. There are definitely enjoyable minigames to be found, Hexagon Heat a mad scramble to not be standing on spots that are about to dip in lava and Sneak ‘n’ Snore a surprisingly tough variant of Red Light, Green Light, but with the minigame pool being so small, you can end up seeing a few less liked stinkers repeatedly or ones where it feels like you might as well not be playing at all due to the randomness at play.

There are unlockables in Mario Party 2, the final board available after playing the other five and even some minigames are only available after you’ve seen all the others, something that thins that pool a bit more but at least gives you something to shoot for. After a round of Mario Party, your coins and stars are banked to be spent at the Minigame Tree where you can unlock the option to play minigames any time you like, but you can also start to unlock extras like Mini-Game Land that foregoes stars entirely in favor of a smaller board game where the coins you earn are all that determine your success. The most enjoyment you will get is definitely playing with other human players though, it far better as a game to return to from time to time rather than one to invest consistent attention into in order to earn the small selection of unlockables.

THE VERDICT: There is a lot to love in Mario Party 2’s presentation, the costumed characters exploring well-themed boards that feature unique elements but sensible designs. Bonus stars, items, and plenty of split paths give players ways to influence their performance before you even consider the minigames on show, and while the selection is small and that leads to some of the weaker ones appearing a bit too often, there are still enough that provide a quick burst of more involved fun that they are still a nice way of topping off each turn. Because there is usually a good mix of making impactful choices and interfering with others, most of the times the whims of fortune are there to keep things more competitive rather than blowouts leaning in the favor of the best player.

And so, I give Mario Party 2 for Nintendo 64…

A GOOD rating. It’s easy to see why Mario Party 2 is one of the more beloved entries in the series. The small cast size means it’s easy for all of them to dress up and participate in the little performances tied to each themed board, and those board themes aiming for entire genres with their design direction leads to an interesting mix of unique events. The boards are generally spaced rather well too, Mystery Land still feeling a bit experimental but even it knew to compensate by making sure traveling between sections isn’t too luck dependent. Luck is also balanced fairly well here save for the board sizes meaning Hidden Blocks crop up a bit too often sometimes. While there are moments that can lead to huge shifts in who is on top, there are also many more opportunities to influence your performance yourself. It really does feel like the limited selection of minigames is what makes Mario Party 2 feel like it’s still missing something. 65 isn’t necessarily a bad amount despite that being a number with a few asterisks, but some of the minigame pools do feel like they’re polluted by games that are too simple or they lose their charm through inevitable repetition. Even if the game developers didn’t have the time to make more, Mario Party 2 almost touched on a way to alleviate some of the issues by having minigame variants. Shell Shocked, a tank game where you fight in a little room, is made more involved when you play the versions with more pipes blocking your path, so why not spice up something like Totem Pole Pound that is usually just about doing the same action repeatedly otherwise? Generally though some like Honeycomb Havoc are better off pruned or heavily altered, Mario Party 2 still needing to feel out the minigame design space a bit more so that these highlight moments that elevate the game beyond standard board game elements are most consistently exciting when they crop up.

Mario Party 2 definitely provides most of the enjoyment the series has become known for without the early oddness its predecessor had as it figured out what worked and what didn’t. The boards are great, there are a good deal of decent and good minigames to make up for the uninspired ones, and luck is a factor you consider rather than a heavy hand deciding everyone’s fate. There is clear room for improvement still, mostly in terms of thinking outside the box when it comes to what a minigame can comprise of, but the nice thematic touches throughout still make this party feel like a special one worth returning to even after well over 10 follow up games all trying out their own twists on the formula that more accurately could be said to have started here than in Mario Party 1.