Ever since it first debuted in late 1998 in Japan, the Mario Party titles has been the definitive party game/mini-game collection that all other games in the genre inevitably find themselves compared to. Now, for the first time ever, a new game in the series, Mario Party 9, has been developed by someone other than series creator Hudson Soft (albeit via a studio, Nd Cube, who has a number of veteran Hudson Soft employees working for it). Does the first Mario Party game in almost five years live up to the best legacies of games past or is it time to turn off the music, put away the drinks, and send the guests home for good?

There may have been platformers and side-scrollers before Super Mario Bros., but not for nothing did that game become the archetype from which modern titles are still drawing influence and inspiration from even today. Similarly, while party games such as You Don’t Know Jack did exist before Mario Party debuted, it was not until after the latter game that the genre truly took off and became a major part of the overall industry. The Mario Party games were trailblazers for the idea that players of all skills, hardcore gamer and non-gamer alike, could equally enjoy and play a video game together, an approach that Nintendo would ultimately invest heavily in famously when creating the Wii.

Yet for all of this, following the release of 2007’s Mario Party 8 on the Wii, the series glory days seemed like naught but a distant memory of the past. While MP8 was certainly a financial success (having sold over 7.6 million copies worldwide and earning the number 10 spot on the list of bestselling Wii games of all time), critically it was not particularly well received. It only earned a score of 62 on Metacritic, placing it as the lowest rated of all the console Mario Party games and continuing a trend of ever dropping scores for every (almost yearly released) subsequent title following the original. The Wii’s audience of largely new to gaming players may have made Mario Party 8 a success, but for long time series and Nintendo fans, the seams where beginning to show. This may have seemed especially true in light of titles such as the Mario and Sonic Olympic themed games easily filling the void, financially if nothing else, left by the absence of Mario Party during the last five years. Thankfully, Mario Party 9 proves there is still life in the old formula after all.

Someone set us… You know what? No. I am not making this joke. I am better than that.

First and foremost, Mario Party 9 benefits immeasurably from Nd Cube’s decision to back away from the series increasing focus on unnecessarily gimmicky and uncreative mini-games. Instead of endless waggle-fests, MP9 favors designs that vary between mini-games with a surprisingly large dose of old school charm and mini-games that actually use the Wii’s motion controls in an intelligent and engaging manner. Well over half of the 80 mini-games featured in MP9 are played by turning the Wii-mote on its side, NES style, and using the buttons and directional arrows for control. Mini-games that use this control style range greatly from simple follow-the-leader style input contests to various platformer-esque challenges (these include bouncing on other players heads in a 2D environment in order to gain air to pick up balloons to running and jumping along a series of icy platforms in a 3D environment while the screen automatically scrolls forward) that will remind players of any number of Mario games of both the 2D and 3D varieties.

Even when motion controls are used for mini-games in Mario Party 9, they mostly end up being either of the pointer (point at the screen in order to splat paint on a canvas or to select cards in a concentration variety for example) or of the tilt (roll a metal ball to portions of a small platform as they light up without causing the ball to fall off the edge or swim around a fenced off portion of the ocean in order to collect hula hoops being tossed into the air) variety. Maybe three or four games at most use a style of motion control that could be called waggling and even these focus more on proper timing (be the first of four players to chop blocks of wood, by swinging downward, placed at random intervals one at a time on a stump but watch out for bombs being placed instead) instead of simply shaking one’s hand as wildly as possible.

Boss Battles are one of the best new additions to Mario Party 9.

Even among the many excellent four player free-for-alls, two-on-two, three-on-one, one-one-one, two-against-the-computer, and other permutations of player numbers featured in Mario Party 9’s mini-games, the title’s twelve boss battle encounters still end up being real stand outs. A new addition to the series, the boss battles are mini-games that have all the players taking on various minions of Bowser together in a wide variety of extended challenges. Some of these boss battles are reflex focused even while others are more concerned with mental dexterity, but all tend to be around twice as long as a standard Mario Party mini-game and require players to work together to defeat a particular minion even while also competing with each other for the highest score.

One challenge is a fast paced take on Bejeweled that forces players to use the same board simultaneously in order to make matches that damage the enemy’s life bar. Several are platforming focused, like one that requires players run around a closed off 3D environment while hitting question blocks to shoot off Bullet Bills to damage a Spiny-throwing Lakitu. Another, also 3D platformer in style, has players fighting a Wiggler by ground pounding his segments while he runs around the stage, with Piranha Plants popping up at random from the ground just waiting to take a bite out of a player’s score. These twelve challenges remain locked off initially and can only be unlocked by encountering them during a full regular game of Mario Party, board game and all. It can take a while to unlock all twelve but it is well worth the effort as these games can produce some of the most memorable and enjoyable multiplayer moments in Mario Party 9.

I do not know about any of you, but for me it is not really a party until someone brings out the paint cannons.

Speaking of the other major component of the Mario Party experience, it is on the board game side of the equation where Nd Cube clearly extended the lion’s share of their attempt to shake things up. In what constitutes the single biggest change to the Mario Party formula in the history of the series, Mario Party 9 no longer has players moving across the board as individuals but instead as a single group all riding the same vehicle. Each turn, the player taking the wheel and designated captain rotates which is also what determines who rolls the die on any given turn. While at first this might sound like a design decision that strips the board game portions of the game of complexity, in practices this is not true at all.