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A long time ago, there was an
idea for a Mario game focused of
multiplayer. Hudson took up the
task and developed Mario Party,
which has since grown into the
largest franchise to feature
Mario. Normally, when a series
can reach 8 main console games,
it's impressive. But in the case
of the Mario Party series, it's
just a bit different.
In short: Too much over
expansion.
Back in the mid 1990's, Mario
was on top of his game. Super
Mario RPG came out and took the
old 2D style and rendered it,
leading to the Nintendo 64 which
brought Mario into the 3D world.
It was a perfect time to expand
on the series as a whole, and
Nintendo then published Mario
Party.
Let's make this short as well:
It was a great game.
Mario Party created a new
dynamic to the Mario series. It
wasn't an adventure game. It had
no enemies. Peach wasn't
kidnapped. Instead, it was a
game dedicated to pure fun for
one person, and even more when a
few people got together.
But that was a long time ago.
After Mario Party came it's
sequel, Mario Party 2. That was
also a great game, possibly the
best in the series even today.
It kept it simple, and the new
minigames and boards were
welcomed by many fans after they
were done with everything found
in the first Mario Party.
And then things took a turn for
the worse.
Another short: Mario Party 3 was
released.
Most would argue with that. It's
not that I think Mario Party 3
is even that bad! But Mario
Party 3 was not like 1 or 2. No,
it was different. Instead of
sticking with what gave them
success, Hudson went and tried
to change it. Well, not really
change it, but they added a lot
of different things which
changed the dynamic of the game
overall.
And that's how it's stayed.
Mario Party 4 followed up with
the first Mario Party to be
released on the Gamecube. It had
decent graphics, terrible music,
decent (but not spectacular)
minigames, and was way too easy,
leading it to not be a fun game.
Mario Party 5 came and went, and
6/7 tried to change it even
more, further ruining what the
original Mario Party started.
Mario Party (the original) is
just an after thought today.
Why? Because there's so many
recent titles to think about
more. There's just too many
Mario Party games out there,
each becoming more repetitive
and worse off than the others.
I mean, 8 titles (including
Mario Party Advance) have been
released in less than 10 years!
And we're all waiting on the 8th
one to come, which being on the
Nintendo Wii, might be the one
to save the series.
But until we know...well, who
knows. If there was 4 or 5
games, things would be
different, because now, the
series has been shoved down the
throats of Mario fans. There's
just too much of it, and
everything that the first 2 or 3
games started has been diluted.
Maybe, maybe 8 will be the one
to change the series for the
better, maybe. After all, we all
know 9 and 10 aren't far off... |
