Mario Party is back, with Mini-Games and Mega-Fun
- NA release: 21st October 2002
- JP release: 8th November 2002
- EU release: 29th November 2002
- Developer: Hudson Soft
- Publisher: Nintendo
- NGC Magazine Score: 68%
- Mods Used: Widescreen Code
I’m not the biggest fan of the Mario Party franchise, and Mario Party 4 seems to focus a lot on the particular aspects I hate, mainly the sheer randomness. A lot of this is due to the board design, as each board has areas that you can’t reach without reaching a junction that randomly decides which route you’re taking. This means just aimlessly going round in circles until the game decides to let you go the way you need.
Making this even worse is the mini and mega mushroom mechanic. When you land on a mushroom spot, you randomly get one or the other. The mega mushroom makes you grow, lets you roll two dice and steal coins from anyone you pass. The mini mushroom lets you go through pipes to take shortcuts or specific routes. The last issue I have with the boards is that they’re all just grey platforms hovering in the air, so much that you don’t really notice the theme that much.
One neat thing about the minigames is that the story mode has some unique ones, including a final boss fight against bowser that is a platformer taking place on a cube of lava. For the regular minigames, there’s a bunch of good ones such as a 2-vs-2 platform challenge where you and your partner have to hit switches to move obstacles for your teammate, another fun puzzle game where you can interfere with the playing area of other players and a bunch more. There are some modes that let you play just minigames, with various rules for different setups.
However, these minigames don’t save the game. The main mode doubles down on the worst aspects of the boards, and are made even worse by how lifeless the boards are. There’s no fun theming, it’s just another Mario Party.
Fine
Let’s face it: Hudson have had four attempts to refine the franchise, so by now you’d think they’d have nailed it. And while this is a pretty decent version, with some clever touches and entertaining minigames, there’s still plenty of room for the defining Mario Party. One where the board lets you form proper strategies to mess up the other players. One where pure chance is replace by tactical skill. And one where there’s more than just a measly 40 minigames to play in Party Mode.
Steve Jarratt, NGC Magazine #75
Remake or remaster?
There’s some minigames that deserve to be in later games (and some of them have done).
Official Ways to get the game
There is no official way to get Mario Party 4.
Europe
Japan
North America
GameCube Games by Date
2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Speaking from the perspective of a series aficionado, I have a bit of an on-off relationship with this game.
Obviously, this was the first game in the series to move beyond the N64 hardware; and as such, it was a huge leap in terms of presentation and production values. This was both a blessing and a curse, as the increase in visual fidelity meant that the actual amount of minigames and boards plummitted from its N64 predecessors; with only 50 standard minigames and 6 standard boards being available. Duel Mode is also tragically gone, never to return; though we do at least have the awesome Volley Ball subgame. A subgame so good that it would get reused wholesale (literally copy/pasted) within Mario Party 5 and would get multiple remakes in both Mario Party Top 100 and in Mario Party Superstars.
In terms of minigames though, this is a matter of quality over quantity; as they are all absolutely top shelf. Some of the very best minigames that the series would ever produce (the likes of Dungeon Duos, Three Throw, Booksquirm and Stamp Out would all go on to be fan favourites). So while there aren’t a lot of minigames on offer, nobody can complain about the quality on display here.
The boards however leave something to be desired. To start with, the theming is a bit bland, as they’re all rather similar looking; featuring the same unified Present Box presentation. They’re also fairly small, probably the smallest in the series outside of Mario Party DS; and while they do feature a decent variety of board events, most of them lack an obvious centralised board-wide gimmick that sets them apart. Indeed, this game’s big new central gimmick would be the Mini-Mega system; where you have the Mini Mushroom (Roll 1x 1-5 dice, grants access past mini gates; usually leading to specific board events) and the Mega Mushroom (Roll 2x 1-10 dice, steal 10 coins from each player you pass, skip all board events and star spaces). Overall, I’d say that this gimmick is a bit of a dud, as the Mini Mushroom is useful in so specific a manner as to be almost completely useless; while the Mega Mushroom often devolves into a game of squashing each other back and forward, while primarily just being used to get around the board quicker (something that the standard Mushroom actually does better). The big issue with this system is that it comes at the expense of the Item System in general, as the Item variety has absolutely plummeted in comparison to even Mario Party 2, let alone Mario Party 3! With only 8 non-Mini/Mega/Item Bag items being available, the item variety is flat out poor. So poor in fact that a recent mod called Mario Party 4 Deluxe was made to rectify this specific issue; and I can personally confirm, it greatly improves the board game mode as a result.
Also noteworthy is the soundtrack by Ichiro Shimakura; which is every bit as great as his previous work on Mario Party 3. This would be the last time he would directly compose music for the series, and would also be his penultimate original work; period. He would go on to score two more titles for Hudson (The GCN title Frogger’s Adventures: The Rescue, published by Konami, and the Japanese exclusive GBA RPG Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai), before taking on a supervisory role as Chief Music Director for other musicians within Hudson (and later, ND Cube/Nintendo Cube); which is a position he still holds within Nintendo today. You can really feel his absence in later titles, as the quality of the music really jumps off a cliff from Mario Party 5 onwards sadly; not to say that later games have bad music or anything, but future game soundtracks wouldn’t be anywhere even close to being as fantastic as the first four titles. Considering that we started out with no less a figure than Yasanori Mitsuda though? It’s a lofty standard that Shimakura lives up to in fine form, but that future musicians couldn’t hope to match.
It’s still a great time though, but I can’t help but feel that it’s a step back overall from the N64 Mario Party titles. Still mad looking forward to the day it comes out on GCN NSO though! 😀
Playing the Deluxe mod is gonna end up being a massive mistake we made once this gets on to NSO.
It’s gonna feel SOOOO slow!
Mini games are absolutely top-notch in this entry. But that doesn’t save it from being my least favourite Mario Party. (Advance doesn’t count) The mushroom mechanic single handedly ruins anything the boards might do well.
And yet, I’m still looking forward to when this gets on NSO. Not looking forward to dragging myself through Story Mode to unlock the last board though…
TimeSplitters 2 is the best FPS I’ve ever played. I played DeathMatch mode quite frequently with a friend, as well as the campaign mode (which we never fully completed, as Hard Mode Atomsmasher was brutal), and dabble for quite a bit with the challenge mode as well. The amount of content in the game is immense, and it encourages the player to interact with the levels in the kookiest of ways, it’s excellent. We didn’t even touch the map editor mode, and it already felt like the best game on the PS2. I really hope it comes to the NSO.