2003 Nintendo
The first I'd heard of Mario Party-e was when I saw it on the shelf at Wal-Mart, in among the Gameboy Advance games. Which is kind of weird, because you don't need to buy any hardware to play.
Yes! Nintendo has returned to its playing card roots! It's true that having a Gameboy Advance and e-Reader will considerably improve the game experience, but the fact is that Mario Party-e is a card game with some minor videogame additions, and not a videogame with a card game tacked on. Nintendo doesn't seem to be advertising this very much, so let's begin with a good description of what you get and what you'll need. (If I had known all this stuff when I first saw it on the shelf, I would have bought it instantly.)
Features
- up to 64 cards to collect and play
- cards feature scannable Dot Code for e-Reader Mini-Games
- based on the Mario Party series of games
- card game played for two to four players
John Harris:To lead off, I have to say that Mario Party-e is a non-collectable card game. You don't need to buy more than one box, and there are no "booster packs" to purchase, either. That's right, this isn't one of those games in which your chances of winning is directly proportional to your outlay of cash! A good, old-fashioned, not-rarity-driven card game, completely lacking in economic considerations and columns upon columns of unreadable print in Scrye magazine!
Also, despite the fact that many of the mini-games are for two players, you only need one Gameboy Advance and one e-Reader if you want to play with the videogame additions. Finally, while you can play the game with only two people, like many card games of this stripe, the game only really gets interesting once you have three, or even four, players. (While the rules allow for games with more than four players, it suggests that you get a second deck of cards if you wish to play that way.)
The object of the game is to collect, and play, one of each of the three different kinds of "Item" cards, Superstar's Shoes, Superstar's Clothes and Superstar's Hat, then play a Superstar card to win. Even if you don't have all the items, Superstar cards can be used to swipe in-play Items from other players, making them highly sought-after. The catch is that all the Item cards (and many of the other cards as well) require that you have in-play Coin Cards before you can lay them down. Coins kind of work like Mana in Magic: The Gathering, except there's no different "colors," and you actually lose coins that you use to pay for cards and items. Also, most of the time, on each turn you draw only one card from the deck, then either discard or play only one card. Because you can only play one card a turn, even if you start the game with all the needed Item cards in your hand, it'll be at least nine turns of coin-collecting and item-playing until you can win, and even then you'll need a Superstar card to claim victory * and this is all assuming none of your opponents steal these things from you.
Coins are also important because you need them to pay for some of the special effect cards, but some of the cards, any that say they contain a "Free Challenge," carry coin costs but can still be played without coins. If played for free, the player scans both sides of the card into the e-Reader and then plays a little game on the Gameboy Advance. It's important to note that, unlike the Mario Party N64 and Gamecube games, there is no random factor in the choice of game played. The same card always contains the same game, so this tends to make these cards more valuable to the player who's good at them. On the whole, however, these games are either very difficult or random, so even veteran gamers will lose at them sometimes. If a player plays a card that has both a cost and a Free Challenge on it, he must pay the cost. Because of this, it was several games of Mario Party-e before we'd even gotten to all the mini-games. The Yoshi game, especially, is almost all luck.
Some other types of cards include Duels, Blockers and "Wonder Challenges." Duel cards are always yellow, and upon paying the required coins, let you challenge another player to a mini-game. Since all the games are programmed to require only one Gameboy Advance and e-Reader, you always take turns while playing them. Most of them are the kind of thing where one player plays and tries to achieve a high score or good time, and the other player tries to beat him. Usually, the challenging player gets to take hand or in-play cards (either Items or Coins) from the victim if he wins and nothing happens if he loses, but the cards bearing images of the Anti-Plumber, Wario and Super Wario, put one or more of the challenger's in-play Items at risk, too. Super Wario's game, which is very similar to the various don't-pop-the-balloons that have been a mainstay of the Mario Party series, has an unavoidable random element, so it's always risky.
Blockers, which are always blue cards, are only put into play when another player tries to do something to you. They're the only cards that get around the play-one-card-per-turn rule. They all cost one coin, so broke players can't block. Each blocker lists, right on the card, what kinds of attacks they block. They can even be used to block duels, but only before the game is played. Two of these cards allow the blocking player to pay an extra coin and attempt to steal from the attacker, but this attack, too, may be blocked. There are only five Blocker cards in the whole deck, so you rarely have the kinds you want.
Only two cards in the whole deck have Wonder Challenges on them, Lakitu and our ol' buddy, Bowser. Their games are the most interesting of the lot, because so many things can happen. They're both Roulette-style games, where the player picks randomly from a list of possible outcomes. Once selected, there's a short time when the player can influence which effect is actually chosen. There's several different possibilities with each card, but no more than three can seriously be chosen in a given play. The Lakitu effects all relate to taking cards out from the discard pile and putting them in play, or forcibly discarding cards that are already in play. Bowser's wheel tends to be of the "screw everyone either a little or a whole lot" variety, and is great to spring on everyone when you're far behind.
Since it takes a fair amount of work to get Items into play, while item theft is relatively easy (Superstar cards steal Items and don't cost coins), Items tend to change hands rather often. These robberies can be thwarted with Blockers, but you need coins to play them anyway. While mini-games can conceivably turn a losing player into a winner, it's possible to win without playing a single game. Games tend to be won by the player who knows just who to screw over and when. Since knowing what a player has in his hand is very valuable knowledge in deciding this, those cards which allow you to look at another player's hand and swap with him cards of your choice carry an important side benefit. Hand swapping cards, in general, seem to be ignored by beginning players, but seem more useful now that we've gotten a few games under out belt.
As I said before, the game can be played without any hardware. Free Challenge cards are simply not played unless the player has enough coins, Duel games are decided by a flip of a coin, and both the Wonder Challenge cards have alternate, non-random rules to be used in no-e-Reader play. In fact, Wonder Challenge cards are a bit confusing when played with an e-Reader. The alternate directions are printed on the card first, so it isn't obvious whether to use the instructions on the card or given on-screen after the game. Even the otherwise-helpful Q&A section in the manual doesn't clarify the rules in this case. In our games, we ignore the directions on the card and leave it completely up to the Gameboy Advance to decide what happens. Another questionable issue is that the red Chaos Cards described in the manual don't actually seem to be a "real" type of card, as one of them has a Wonder Challenge on it, some have coin costs, and some don't. A little common sense makes is fairly obvious what the cards are good for and when they can be played, but it would have been better if the rules were completely clear in this regard.
Despite the somewhat cutesy premise (collecting a wardrobe? C'mon now), Mario Party-e has kept our apartment full of college students engaged for several evenings now. It is definitely worth a look for anyone who isn't so full of themselves as to think an "ordinary" card game beneath them. It is extra attractive due to its price: I picked it up at Wal-Mart for less than ten bucks, and that includes sales tax! If you already have an e-Reader and friends who still appreciate tactile gaming, you can't go wrong with this. If you don't have an e-Reader, and the Animal Crossing, Pokemon and NES cards aren't yet enough to make you pick one up, then here's another reason, maybe the best yet.