Jayke's Mario Party Journey
Growing up, I didn't get as heavily engrossed in video games like others in my generation did, but I do have my selection of favorite interactive entertainment software. One franchise in particular, or really, a sub-franchise of a franchise, always intrigued me since my first experience with it as a young child: Mario Party.
Mario Party is a series of casual family/party games spanning every Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64, featuring (predictably) characters from Nintendo's main Mario franchise. The main mode has up to 4 players competing against each other on digital board games to collect the most stars. Players need a combination of strategy, skill, and luck to clinch the win while navigating the boards and battling in minigames. Each board and each game provides their own variety of shenanigans and strategy-influencing mechanics.
My History
Unlike many others who have fallen for this series, I was not playing console games (or at least, not Nintendo games) at the time of the N64, and the Mario Party entries that came with it.
Instead, my first exposure to Mario Party was playing Mario Party 5 with a neighbor kid, and after that one night in Pirate Dream, I was hooked. We got the game for our own house, and then afterwards swapped that out for Mario Party 7 (our original copy of which, I still own!) and also rented out Mario Party 8 from Family Video (insert "I'm old" joke here). I loved my time with each of these games, and they got me hooked. I wanted to experience the rest of this series, one day...
Soon after leaving college, I got Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch, and spent a lot of time playing it with my spouse, forming a lot of wonderful memories together along the way. During college and these years afterwards, I slowly built up my collection of the remaining Mario Party games. I wanted to spend a lot of time learning, playing, and exploring each of these games, so I figured that since I'm already going through the effort of going through them all, I may as well also find some way to share my love and thoughts on the series online.
My Project
I am working on a multi-year project to explore and study each of the home console (i.e., not GBA, DS, or 3DS) Mario Party games. In other words, I'll be looking into the numbered Mario Party games (1 through 10), followed by the 3 Mario Party games on the Nintendo Switch. (I'm hoping that there won't be a new Mario Party game that comes out by the time I finish this project, but there probably will be. I'll decide at that time whether or not that'll be covered too, depending upon how far along I am.) This exploration will culminate in a series of detailed and thorough reviews of each game, presented in both video and text form.
I will not only be looking at the main mode in each game, but also exploring any and all side content that is presented, and even looking at the menu screens too.
The Mario Party series has always fascinated me since I was young, so I want to take the time to learn all about this series from all angles, and I also want to share what I've learned and seen with the world. Others may dive even deeper into these games than I will be, but I still want to bring my opinions and perspective to the table.
Livestreams
As part of this, though, I will also be doing another thing: an ongoing series of livestreams, where I play through each board in every game, starting with Mario Party 1 on the Nintendo 64, and ending with Super Mario Party Jamboree on the Nintendo Switch. These livestreams are occurring every other Thursday, starting around 7:30 PM Central US Time. (* I reserve the ability to skip certain days or rearrange the schedule as needed.)
To learn more about my livestreams and see my schedule, view the Livestream Information page.
Past Streams
I will be posting the recordings of each stream onto a YouTube channel to be able to be viewed later. I have not yet edited through the videos, and so they are not yet public. I will update this webpage once I have videos set up.
My Inspirations
A few people and video series have inspired me to undertake this project, including these:
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ZoomZike's Identifying Luck
An extremely in-depth overview on the boards and minigames of each Mario Party game. Each video is multiple hours long simply because he goes into every single board and every single minigame, explains all the mechanics, and how to win at them. Kind of the secret manual to Mario Party.
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KingK's Chance Time
Similar to me, a fan of the series since his childhood. An insightful and witty retrospective on Mario Party 1 through 5 (at the time of writing). While I originally came across King K's works due to his thorough retrospectives on the 3D Zelda games years ago, his writing skills have only improved since then.
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Scott the Woz's Mario Party videos
View compilation video on YouTube
A more casual overview of each game (thus far just the first 3 Mario Party games), mixed in with Scott's signature humor and quirky skits. These videos aren't as deep and analytical as Zoom Zike's or King K's, but are a good look at what it's like to be a group of friends sitting around a TV playing a game together.
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Mark's Rec Room
Randomly stumbled across this video series while I was mid-production of some of my scripts, so of course I had to give it a watch! Even when he and I don't have the same opinions on some things, he's great at explaining the basis of his thoughts, and is very thorough and knows exactly what he's talking about. I enjoy him taking the time to rank the "beginner friendliness" of each game, as it's an important consideration that sometimes gets a bit lost in considering by us who have played this series for so long.
Disclaimer
Mario, Mario Party, Nintendo, and other terms, trademarks, and intellectual property are owned by Nintendo Co., Ltd. (or associated companies). I have no affiliation, association, endorsement, or sponsorship relationship with Nintendo.