The Mario Party series arrived on the Nintendo 64 at a time when communal four-player gaming was really starting to hit its first post-infancy strides. Play a video game? At a party? Really? With the lack of better party-time video game entertainment, the answer was most certainly "yes" when Mario Party was invited. And it was a good time, with drinking and yelling and jumping involved!
But in the newfound casual gaming Wii era, Nintendo's raised an interesting question, one that is almost specifically meant for them alone to answer: in the case of Mario Party 8, with full understanding that the word "party" is in the title, how many people at your party are going to want to play this over Wii Sports? It's a direct and valid question, because with Wii Sports we've Seen The Light, and as it is, as Mario Party 8 and the Mario Party series exists now, the answer is really kind of underwhelming.
You see, Nintendo's positioned themselves as the shining beacon of hope for non- and casual gamers; just pick up Wii Sports, they say! In comparison to this user-friendly experience, Mario Party 8 is programming in assembly, a series of mini-games and multiplayer activities buried behind a host of menus and a relatively tedious board game. That's not to say that Mario Party itself is a bad game! This one really isn't, and wouldn't be today if we could take it back before November 2006 and release it on the GameCube like it was obviously originally intended.
And what a disturbing sentiment—the core argument against this game curiously boils down to this very specific choice, re-tooling and release on the Wii, now, instead of the GameCube a year ago. And therein lies the aforementioned conundrum: Mario Party 8 is easily faulted for a number of things that I wouldn't usually fault a title for. The host of GameCube thumbprints tell that story like it is, from the lack of actual 16:9 widescreen support (Mario Party 8 fakes it by pillarboxing a 4:3 image with colorful borders) to the gameplay experience bereft of natural and easily understood controls (nearly every mini-game requires you to click "controls" to first have everyone read what exactly they're supposed to do to play this one).
Mario Party 8 isn't Wii Sports and isn't trying to be. But that's the problem. Nintendo's already set the bar for simplistic games that really define that "Party" in Mario Party. But they're part of a launch title that every Wii owner already has. Perhaps that very fact is the source of the agonizing Mario Party 8—we can all see what the series could be, should be—but for now this is what it is instead: the GameCube mentality of games for long-time gamers, instead of an easily accessible title in the vein of Wii Sports or even Guitar Hero, an arguably vastly more complex game brought to the limelight because it's so fundamentally easy to understand and fun to play.
Mario Party 8 is still Mario Party. It's just on the Wii instead of the GameCube. And in 2007, with more Wii Sports games and a host of other first-party casual-gamer accessible titles on the immediate horizon, Mario Party like we're still seeing it here, eight iterations in, just ain't the life of the party anymore.
But in the newfound casual gaming Wii era, Nintendo's raised an interesting question, one that is almost specifically meant for them alone to answer: in the case of Mario Party 8, with full understanding that the word "party" is in the title, how many people at your party are going to want to play this over Wii Sports? It's a direct and valid question, because with Wii Sports we've Seen The Light, and as it is, as Mario Party 8 and the Mario Party series exists now, the answer is really kind of underwhelming.
You see, Nintendo's positioned themselves as the shining beacon of hope for non- and casual gamers; just pick up Wii Sports, they say! In comparison to this user-friendly experience, Mario Party 8 is programming in assembly, a series of mini-games and multiplayer activities buried behind a host of menus and a relatively tedious board game. That's not to say that Mario Party itself is a bad game! This one really isn't, and wouldn't be today if we could take it back before November 2006 and release it on the GameCube like it was obviously originally intended.
And what a disturbing sentiment—the core argument against this game curiously boils down to this very specific choice, re-tooling and release on the Wii, now, instead of the GameCube a year ago. And therein lies the aforementioned conundrum: Mario Party 8 is easily faulted for a number of things that I wouldn't usually fault a title for. The host of GameCube thumbprints tell that story like it is, from the lack of actual 16:9 widescreen support (Mario Party 8 fakes it by pillarboxing a 4:3 image with colorful borders) to the gameplay experience bereft of natural and easily understood controls (nearly every mini-game requires you to click "controls" to first have everyone read what exactly they're supposed to do to play this one).
Mario Party 8 isn't Wii Sports and isn't trying to be. But that's the problem. Nintendo's already set the bar for simplistic games that really define that "Party" in Mario Party. But they're part of a launch title that every Wii owner already has. Perhaps that very fact is the source of the agonizing Mario Party 8—we can all see what the series could be, should be—but for now this is what it is instead: the GameCube mentality of games for long-time gamers, instead of an easily accessible title in the vein of Wii Sports or even Guitar Hero, an arguably vastly more complex game brought to the limelight because it's so fundamentally easy to understand and fun to play.
Mario Party 8 is still Mario Party. It's just on the Wii instead of the GameCube. And in 2007, with more Wii Sports games and a host of other first-party casual-gamer accessible titles on the immediate horizon, Mario Party like we're still seeing it here, eight iterations in, just ain't the life of the party anymore.