LogFAQs > #938683156

Costumes (MP2)
What I love most about this idea is that it was actually kind of difficult to implement. Sure, you have Mario, Luigi, and Wario of all roughly the same body structure, but then you have Peach, who has to have her outfits designed fairly differently from the others. And then you have Yoshi, who's a damn dinosaur with a weird tumor saddle shell on his back, and whatever the Hell Donkey Kong's spine is half the time. You get really cute and unique outfits like the adorable stripey shirt on Yoshi in Pirate Land, most of Peach's unique dresses, and the weird monstrosity that is Wizard DK. Bowser gets the absolute best out of these, with Eggman Mech Bowser being a pretty great highlight. I also really love how much they add to the flavor of duel mini-games - have them work without the costumes and they're pretty boring, but just having the cowboy outfits adds so much to Popgun Pick-Off. A lot of people tend to gravitate toward Mario Party 2 as the "best", with critics dismissing those ideas because "it's the most memorable because people like the costumes". And it's quite true! I do admittedly wish that Bowser Land had some costumes, though, even as just an intro gag. It doesn't have to be much, just like Bowser horns and hair that look like Mickey Mouse ears.

Dueling Glove (MP2)
The tricky thing about the Dueling Glove is that it is never worth its price. Buying it, you're down 15 coins, which already limits the amount of coins you can possibly gain from dueling someone. The Dueling Glove's function - to start a duel against the target of your choice - will essentially be limited to either whoever has the coin lead or whoever is right in front of Boo and has enough coins for a Star Steal. You're never gonna be wanting to use this item while in the lead, as that brings a rival closer to the coin star should you fail, but it's made to benefit you if you have more coins. The only reason that you'd want to use it is if you were absolutely confident that you could beat your opponent in a duel mini-game. This is actually an advantage MP2 has over MP3, as duels are tied to boards rather than a roulette. However... very few duel mini-games can be won with absolute confidence. Two of them are timing-based (Time Bomb and Popgun), two of them are reaction based and honestly likely to result in a Draw if the players have much skill (Sabers and Brew), and one of them is literally just Rock Paper Scissors what are you even doing. These are not skills that you can often be CONFIDENTLY ahead of your competition in, at least not nearly as much as something like button mashing. That leaves Mystery Land's telekinetic showdown as the only one where you can reliably win IF you are a better alternating masher. As cool of an item as the Dueling Glove is... it's just hyper situational and not even very GOOD in the situations where it CAN be useful.

Pushy Penguins (MP5)
The single best thing about Mario Party 5. The mini-game is just fun, kinetic pathfinding, along with hilarious storytelling about the penguins from Mario 64 getting revenge for all the times they've been pushed and thrown off of places and an allusion to the Bumpty Penguin species. It's so simple a concept, but always an intensely fun scramble. Definitely one of the best 'survival' based games where you have direct control.

Look Away (MP2)
BAH bah BAH-DAH BA ba-ba bah-dah BA bah BAH-DAH BUH ba-ba-ba buh BAH
...
Yehoo!

A game that really can only be played with three or four humans, as it just kind of becomes miserable chance with computers. It's a fun game of jukes and mindgames, especially given the half-second after the timer finishes that you're still allowed to move around in. But it absolutely needs the right people to play with - if you have a bunch of stone-faced analytic types, this is going to be the most dull affair. If you've got at least two wise-asses in the group, now it's a party. I also love how the heads that have been eliminated can keep playing, and love the animation where the losing heads just fade into nothingness before vanishing.

Face Lift (MP1 & MP2)
Face Lift is an unfortunate case where the flavor is so much stronger in the original game, but the execution is much stronger in the second. MP1's face lift is always on Bowser, and the parallels to Mario 64 are so strong and so much fun here. Hell, the background literally says "Super Bowser 64" repeating just like the Mario 64 title screen, it's utterly perfect! And frankly, Bowser's face is just a lot more interesting to stretch than the other characters - the giant eyebrows just make him naturally way more expressive. Unfortunately, most of Bowser's stretching patterns are way too easy to match. For a vast majority of them, all you need to do is stretch his bits to 100% elasticity and you'll get a solid 100 every single time. This absolutely trivializes Bowser's Face Lift, as the minimum required score of 80 is just WAY too easy to get. Mario Party 2 fixes this by giving each character three variations of their face AND turns it into a battle game in order to really up the ante... but I'm sorry, most of the faces are just boring. The Brothers Mario are quite dull since they lack the springiness of Mario's 64 head, Peach's stretchy features are just her hair, and Yoshi doesn't really have anything to grab onto other than his eyeballs that would make him fun. That leaves the already goofy-faced Wario and the weird hair tumor of Donkey Kong to carry novelty duties, and neither of them are up to the task. The background is also a whole lot duller, and most of the faces just have less places to grab onto than cuddly ol' Bowser. This is a damn fun mini-game, but a perfect version doesn't exist between the two games, kinda sad.

Triple 7 Golden Shroom
I'll tell you how cool it is when it happens, because this is something I have never witnessed personally (that wasn't save stated into existence, at least). I like that it exists, and it gives the usual great slot machine feeling of "OH TWO OF THE REELS ARE ON THE JACKPOT", but I can't really speak for it until it happens.

Peak Precision (MP9)
You don't need me to tell you that this is a great one. What I love about it compared to other reaction games is that it's essentially a test of immediate reaction time with the initial sprint, and then rhythmic reaction time as each new button prompt gets revealed. This puts it ahead of games that reveal all of their buttons at once (Saber Swipes) or in individualized sets (Fish & Drips), always keeping pressure on the player to react as swift and accurately as possible, while not looking too far ahead so they doing accidentally press something a few steps ahead in the pattern. Just a really strong, well thought-out mini-game.

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