Summer is in full swing,
and I am sure that for most of you, your plans for the next three
months include a lot of outdoor activities.
And, why wouldn't they?
With the temperatures ranging between 20-35 C on any given day
between the months of July and September (well, unless you live in
the Southern Hemisphere, where you're experiencing winter right now),
it is the perfect time for outdoor activities.
How many of us have gone
to the beach on a hot summer day and just lay on the beach watching
the waves crashing along the shore? How many of us have grilled
burgers, hot dogs, chicken, and steak on the barbecue because it is
way too hot to cook anything indoors? How many of us have tried to
beat the heat by walking to the local ice cream shop to eat a banana
split or drink a frozen fruit slushie to cool off? I'm guessing that
the answer is...well...all of you!
Yes, summer can be some of
the best few months of the entire year, and because it is so short,
it's important to make every minute of each summer count.
So, I'm sure that most of
us can understand the frustration that we all have when the baby blue
skies suddenly become black, and when we see flashes of lightning
streaking across the sky followed by a torrential downpour. Nobody
wants to have rain falling down at an outdoor wedding, a baseball
game, or a camping trip.
And, I'm sure that the
people of Calgary, Alberta and Toronto, Ontario certainly don't ever
want to see another raindrop fall again. Both cities were hit hard
by heavy rains which caused major flooding in both metropolitan
areas, and in the case of Alberta, entire communities are still
rebuilding. In fact, if you click HERE, you can find a website where
if you want to, you can donate some money to help the people there
who may have lost everything in the floods. No obligation, of
course. Just posting the link here in case you want to help out.
Anyway, on a typical
normal rainy day in which we get the standard average rainfall in a
day, it can be a real bummer. I suppose that some people would go
outside and play in the rain regardless of how much falls (and
actually, I will be one to admit to running around in my backyard
when it was raining, as I found it fun). But not all of us were
willing to just get soaked outside just for the fun of it, especially
if there were strong winds or the risk of a thunderstorm.
So we stayed inside and
resigned ourselves to be bored for a few hours.
Of course there were
always things that you could do inside. And I suppose that one of
the most common ways to pass the time on a day with uncooperative
weather was to play a board game like Monopoly, Clue, Twister, or
Trivial Pursuit. For a while, these games could keep an entire
family of four entertained. But the problem with board games was the
fact that eventually people grew tired of them. I know that whenever
I played board games, I would usually get incredibly bored and/or
restless after the second or third time because each game went
exactly the same way. There's only so many times that one person can
pass go and collect two hundred bucks before wanting to throw hotels
at your competitors. There are only so many times you can accuse
Mrs. White of murdering someone with a lead pipe before you yourself
wish someone would clobber you over the head with a wrench to put you
out of your misery. And, don't even get me started on Trivial
Pursuit. I have seen many games of Trivial Pursuit end in a brawl
over a silly question about which Chicago Cubs baseball player scored
the most home runs in 1984.
(And, no, I do not know
the answer.)
So, how do you make board
games fun again?
Well, provide that a
thunderstorm didn't knock out your power, Nintendo came up with an
ingenious way to take the boredom out of board games using some of
their most popular and liked characters.
Hence the reason why we're
going to have a party.
A MARIO PARTY!!!
Now, Mario games have
almost always been universally well-received. And, there doesn't
seem to be a Mario game that doesn't seem to have at least one
sequel. There were three Super Mario games for the Nintendo
Entertainment System, another two games for the Super Nintendo, and
several more for the Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, WiiU, Game Boy, Game
Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS.
(WOW...that is a lot of
Nintendo consoles!)
Would you believe that
since the Mario Party game was first released on the Nintendo 64, it
would still be considered a huge success? Including the versions
released for Nintendo's hand-held consoles, there have been a total
of TWELVE different Mario Party games made with a thirteenth version
set to be released for the Nintendo 3DS later this year!!!
That's a lot of partying!
Of course, some Mario
Party games performed better than others. The original name, the
second sequel, and the DS version all scored very well, while the
version released for the Game Boy Advance tanked. But I suppose
that's true with all video game franchises. Loved Final Fantasy VI,
VII, IX, and X, but despised anything after XI.
(I still have not yet
played Final Fantasy VIII.)
But this isn't the Final
Fantasy blog. It's the Mario Party blog.
It seems hard to believe,
but it's been fifteen years since the first game of the Mario Party
franchise came out. On December 14, 1998, Nintendo released the game
for the Nintendo 64 system in Japan. North American gamers had to
wait until February 1999.
Now, I know what some of
you may be saying. For those of you who have played at least two or
more of the Mario Party series, you may think to yourselves that all
of the games are the same. And, in some ways this is true, as all of
the games feature worlds designed like a standard board game complete
with dice. But the plot of each Mario Party game is slightly
different.
In the original Mario
Party game, the plot of the game is to determine who out of Mario,
Luigi, Wario, Yoshi, Princess Peach, and Donkey Kong will be the
superstar of Mushroom Kingdom by playing a series of large board
games complete with several minigame options. In the second game,
Princess Daisy and Waluigi were added as characters. And, in the
later installments of Mario Party, Bowser would cause all sorts of
havoc, and the games would include boss battles between the player
and Bowser's minions.
The objective of each game
board of Mario Party was to go around the board to collect as many
stars as possible. The player with the most amount of stars at the
end of a series of turns (depending on the game you play, each board
can have a minimum of ten rounds and a maximum of thirty) will win
the entire game.
And, how do players earn
stars? Well, there are several ways.
The most common way to
earn stars is to go around the board and pass a star checkpoint. If
you pass the checkpoint at exactly the right time, you will earn one
star...provided that you have enough coins to purchase one.
That's right. In a lot of
the Mario Party games, you will have to collect coins in order to
earn a star. Coins have been a huge part of the Mario franchise
since the first Super Mario Brothers game was released in 1985 so
it's almost expected that you will have to get your hands on a whole
bunch of them in the Mario Party series.
Now comes the next
question. How do you earn coins in Mario Party?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
And, to answer this question, I am going to use examples from the
game Mario Party DS, one of the games in the series that I have
played quite a bit.
Most of the times, you can
get coins simply by landing on the right space. In this case,
landing on a blue space will earn you three coins. But be
careful...landing on a red square will cause three coins to be taken
away.
In the case of Mario Party
DS, you can also earn coins through other spaces as well. If a
friend of yours lands on a golden space, the friend can share coins
with you. But be careful, because if those squares turn purple, then
the friend turns to foe, and you will have to fight them for coins.
In addition, there are
green question mark spaces which are kind of similar to the Chance
cards that one can find in Monopoly. Depending on what green space
you land on, you can either win a bundle of coins, or lose
everything.
Now, if you happen to get
through the first round and you still have all of your coins, you
still shouldn't get comfortable. Because at the end of every round,
you will have to play one of the many minigames that are included in
each version of Mario Party. Some minigames are as easy as pie, and
others will prompt you to toss a controller out of a window. But if
you succeed at the minigame, you could earn as much as thirty bonus
coins each time depending on what the minigame was. As the game
continues, sometimes you might even have to play a minigame to keep
your hard earned stars in your possession.
Here are just a sample of
a few of the minigames that can be found in various Mario Party
titles. There are usually anywhere from fifty to eighty minigames
found on each game.
Here is a sampling of
minigames from the original Mario Party from 1998.
From Mario Party 4 from
2002.
From Mario Party 7 from
2005.
From Mario Party DS from
2007.
And, finally from Mario
Party 9 from 2012.
So, you see...each
minigame differs between game to game. And, the best part about it
is that nine times out of ten, you have absolutely no control over
what minigame you get to play as it is all controlled by the
computer. You could be in the lead, and all it will take is epic
failure in one minigame for you to lose that lead. It's very easy to
do.
Now, at the end of each
game, the stars are tallied, and you automatically think that the
person with the most stars wins the game. But did you know that you
can also earn bonus starts by meeting a set of criteria while you
played the game? If you landed on more green squares than anyone
else, you got a star. If you won more minigames than anyone else,
you got a star. And, in this game, sharing your coins could earn you
a star if you did it more than anyone else.
And, that's not all. Some
Mario Party games have tournament options where you can challenge
opponents to a series of minigames in random order where you can win
bragging rights.
Seriously, with Mario
Party, you always have a party as you will literally never play the
same exact game twice. Seriously, pick up at least one of these
Mario Party games. You may just be the best party host ever with it!
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