Mario Party DS

Gamecow’s Price	RRP $69.95     Save $7.00 $62.95
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Genre	Party Games
Platform	Nintendo DS
Release Date	06/12/2007
Rated

Mario Party DS Product Information

Everything you love about Mario Party...in the palm of your hand! The party boards and minigames are crazier than ever in a new title that shrinks down the whole Mario crew for whimsical party play.

Everything you love about Mario Party...in the palm of your hand! With 70+ minigames and five themed game boards, Mario Party DS packs all the goods for portable play. And it’s brought to life with fun surprises players can see only on Nintendo DS, such as touch control, microphone control and dual-screen challenges.

Play as one of eight characters: Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Daisy, Toad, Wario and Waluigi. They’re all ready to foil Bowser’s latest scheme. He seeks five powerful crystals and shrinks down the crew so they can’t stop him. But each of the tiny heroes wants to be the one and only Superstar that brings down Bowser.

Mario Party DS makes the series’ multiplayer action portable at last, from playing with friends on the game boards to challenging them in favourite minigames. And now players can throw a party anywhere and play wirelessly with friends, since much of the game can be shared to other Nintendo DS systems from just one game card.

Mario Party DS Review

The set-up for Mario Party DS is much the same as in previous titles. Like a traditional board game, you choose a 'piece' (a character from the Mushroom Kingdom), and roll the dice to move along the board. While progressing you gain or lose coins, participate in mini-games and try to gain stars. In Mario Party DS Bowser is up to his old tricks again, and has shrunk Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Daisy, Yoshi, Wario and Waluigi to get them out of the way while he gets up to no good. As a result, each board revolves around the theme of your character being small.

The mini-games present are what make Mario Party DS stand out from the other titles in the series. Rather than recycle some of the mini-games from other Mario Party games Nintendo has gone back to the drawing board to take full advantage of the DS' abilities, so you'll be blowing into the microphone and using the stylus to full effect. If you are out in public and don't want to make a fool of yourself, the good news is you can choose to exclude the microphone mini-games, a feature we wish was more DS games that use the microphone had.

The sheer number of mini-games is also very impressive. There are over seventy, and for the most part the quality is very high. It really doesn't feel like Nintendo were just stringing together some by-the-numbers ideas just to say 'over seventy mini-games' on the box, Nintendo have come up with mini-games that utilise the Nintendo DS creatively and are just genuinely fun. The story mode is the meat of the game, but there are a few other inclusions that add value to the package. There is a party mode which lets you edit a few options, such as tag battle or a free for all battle, and select one of the boards for a more casual game. There is also a mini-game mode which lets you play through all unlocked mini-games, and even an option to just play through the boss mini-games. A surprise inclusion in Mario Party DS is the puzzle mode, which features six puzzles, mostly interpretations of classic puzzlers like Columns.
 
Overall Mario Party's début on the Nintendo DS is a successful one. While the formula hasn't been heavily modified (which may or may not frustrate veterans of the series) and there are a few remaining issues, the quality of the seventy plus mini-games found in Mario Party DS makes the title a worthwhile investment for party game fans.

Full review PALGN