The Good - The Summer of Mario Party 4
The summer that followed the spring of Monkey Target sprung a new obsession, one that lasted the entire summer.
Like the Super Monkey Ball games, Mario Party 4 was a Christmas gift along with the Gamecube. I had only played it by myself of with my sister for the next several months as me and my friends generally stuck with SMB2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Once summer vacation began, my friends wanted to try something new and they had their eyes set on Mario Party 4.
50 turns of Toad's Midway Madness. Due to having already played not only plenty of MP4, but also a ton of the series, I had a great advantage. I held the lead for the majority of the game until the last five turns where I landed on a chance space. That pinball game always screwed me over, and I ended up having swap my stars and massive amount of coins to someone who obviously wasn't the leading player. The beneficiary, if you could venture a guess, was ecstatic. I wasn't able to come from behind in such a short amount of time.
I had plenty of opportunities to win again though as my friends became hooked with that game. We would go all over the neighborhood, often sneaking into some homes without gaining the parents' permission, and though the venue changed, the in-game settings did not. It was always 50 turns of Toad's Midway Madness. I think we tried Goomba's Greedy Gala once, but everyone complained, so we reverted back.
The games were, more often than not, more or less the same. I would take the lead early and hold onto it until a late chance time screwed me over and forced me to hand the victory to someone else. A few times though, I never had to deal with a chance time, or I lost everything from a chance time and got everything back a few turns later via the same thing.
In all, there were about a dozen of us playing the game across three months. We probably played close to 30 games. Though, I ended up losing a bunch to unlucky circumstances, I got over it after the first time. I was having so much fun hanging out with everyone that I honestly didn't care if I won or lost.
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