Mario Party 4

by Nintendo

Product Features

• Choose favorite Nintendo video game characters and compete in a series of contests to win the birthd
• Take advantage of the Mini-Giant system - players can use items on the boards to grow larger or smal
• Bump, whack and bang away in the newly introduced Tag Battle, which lets players pair up in two-man
• Set a handicap that allows players of all ages and abilities to compete against each other.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006HBTW
• Item Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 21, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (154 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,458 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

It’s a pretty bold claim but for many, Mario Party is the best multiplayer game series ever. No need for guns or complicated role-playing elements here--Mario Party is fun because it’s simple. The original N64 game created an entirely new subgenre--an unlikely combination of traditional board games and lots of ultrasimple arcade titles. The idea is that you travel around the board trying to collect stars, which must be paid for with coins, and you get coins by competing in minigames, which occur at the end of every round. These minigames generally don’t last longer than a minute or two, and many are based on old Game & Watch titles. There are over 50 minigames in Mario Party 4, and each involves either a free-for-all, two players against two, or one against three (depending where you land on the board at the end of your turn). These can involve anything from skydiving to basketball dunking, or car racing to hide-and-seek, to name a few.

Admittedly, this basic description of the gameplay might not sound too exciting, and indeed if you’re playing with less than three human opponents it can be pretty tedious. But play it with the full complement of non-virtual rivals and the game’s infinite capacity for cheating, backstabbing, and ganging up allows it to completely transcend the humdrum sum of its parts. There’s nothing terribly new in this third sequel except that the graphics are much improved and the minigames are all new, but that really misses the point: get this game out at Christmas instead of Trivial Pursuit and you’ll wonder how you ever got through the holiday without it. --David Jenkins, Amazon.co.uk

Product Description

The fourth installment of the wildly selling four-player party game walks the same path that the previous titles did, banking on the power of 50 totally new mini-games and vastly improved graphics to do the selling. Four people trek their way around an interactive game board and indulge in a wide variety of mini-games after each turn. Instead of points, you earn coins, which allow you to buy stars if you land on the correct space. The player with the most stars and coins wins. As for the very important mini-game challenges, they range from free-for-alls, to 1v3, to 2v2 matches. There are five totally new game boards available from the get-go, ranging from haunted Boo-themed environments to the tropical Koopa's Seaside Soiree.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars mario party is back... more great multiplayer fun!, October 18, 2002

By 

Big Daniel McFoot (NEW JERSEY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mario Party 4 (Video Game)

Generally speaking, a good party consists of loud music, obnoxious people you don't really know, copious amounts of cheap vodka, and a few loose women. While Nintendo's Mario Party 4 doesn't rely on any of the above, it does provide a digital alternative to raging hangovers and vague memories of the previous night's activities. Although it's the fourth title in the series, it's the first Mario Party game on the GameCube, and it packs a decent four-player punch.

Mario Party 4 goes a little above and beyond its previous incarnations, and thanks to some skillful development from Hudson Soft, eight of your favorite Nintendo characters are ready to do battle through over 50 nutty mini-games in order to win a juicy prize. Lending itself to a very simple gameplay premise, Mario Party 4 is best enjoyed with four human players -- the idea is to be guy that collects the most hidden stars and gold coins at the end of a party. Each party is played over a selectable number of turns (from between ten and 50 -- ten turns takes around 30 minutes to play) on one of five themed game boards.

Some familiar faces are on hand to meet and greet the party-players. Toad, Shy Guy, Koopa, Boo, and Goomba all offer a game board with themes such as the "Seaside Soiree," the "Haunted Bash," and the "Jungle Jam." There are eight Nintendo-friendly guys and gals to choose from at the player select screen: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, Daisy, and Waluigi. There are essentially two main modes of play in Mario Party 4.

Party mode is where the most fun occurs and involves between one to four human players getting jiggy on any of the game boards. Story mode is the single-player component of the game and pits you against three randomly selected CPU-controlled guys. If you win the game, you'll be awarded a prize, and depending on which character you were playing as, it'll be different each time (e.g. Playing as Waluigi, I won Waluigi's Shelf, which is one of many unique pieces of furniture that can be found for his mini-apartment -- viewable in the prize room).

One new feature to the series is the mini-mega system -- which manifests itself in the form of two different mushroom-based items. These items can be taken before you roll the die at the beginning of turn. A mini-mushroom will shrink you down, allowing you to access other areas of the board, but it'll limit your maximum die roll to five instead of six. Being mini will allow you to tackle some special "mini" mini-games too.

Going the other route and taking a mega-mushroom, will in contrast increase the size of your guy, and it'll give you a combined roll of two dice, increasing your ability to travel further around the board. You'll also squish any players that you travel past, causing them to hemorrhage value gold coins. Being large also means you'll be immune to any event spaces on the board. The mini-mega system is cool in theory, but in actuality, it doesn't really add that much to the gameplay.

There are a ton of new items, events, traps, and bonuses that are scattered through the game -- such as the Genie Lamp which costs 30 coins to buy -- but it'll warp you straight to the current star on the board. All these factors throw more uncertainty into the mix, with the final game experience getting more and more random compared to the first three games in the series. Is this a bad thing? It depends on your point of view, but it can be pretty frustrating to be on top for most of the game and then have it all snatched away at the last minute. There are a few constants; these arrive at the very end of the game in the form of stars awarded to the player that collected the most coins, won the most mini-games, and triggered the most event features.

There's no doubt that Mario Party 4 sports classic multiplayer fun and all of the mini-games are a blast in their own right, but there's one hugely annoying factor -- the CPU controlled characters. In the single-player mode, you'll be forced to watch the CPU guys take their individual turns.

This happens at a mind-numbingly slow pace, and after a few games you'll be begging to have bamboo shoots inserted under your fingernails to alleviate the tedium. Essentially, the single-player game exists to let you win the prizes -- something that becomes very unimportant all too quickly.

Huge Mario gets ready to squash the others. Putting those issues aside, Mario Party 4 as an actual party game, works really well. Teamwork, smack talk, and cajoling come heavily into play, and it's certainly the best in the series to date. The GameCube provides the graphical grunt to take Mario Party 4 to the next level and all of the characters, boards, and mini-games display slick animation, special effects, and a sweet bouncy-cartoony look and feel. Controls for the most part are extremely simplistic, but this really only adds to the pick-up-and-play nature of the game as a whole. There's a myriad of nice Nintendo-tastic tunes, voices, and sound effects, which wrap the game up into a well-presented, good-looking game.

For those that enjoy Nintendo's rich characters and imagination, Mario Party 4 is a great game to have. With four-players in tow, it's a total blast, but for those that are looking for some solid, non-anger-inducing solo play, you'd do well to swerve away from this one for sure.

The Lowdown: More of the same great Mario Party multiplayer action.

Pros: It looks great; the mini-games are a hoot; really good fun with four players.

Cons: More features aren't necessarily a good thing; there's little fun when flying solo.

BIG DAN's OVERALL RATING - 7.5/10

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply The Best., June 22, 2006

By 

Etc. (Florida) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Mario Party 4 (Video Game)

Ah, yes. Many years of playing Mario Party games, this one can only be dubbed Number 1 in the Mario Party series. I've played most of these games, let alone Mario Party 6 (Provided with the information from so many people that it sucks so much), and of all of them, THIS is the one to buy. We could go into detail on it, so I might. Mario Party, Mario party 2, and #5 are the only ones that may come close to this one. Trust me, 3 was really.......odd. 7 Is a great game, but let's face it folks, microphone games aren't everyone's thing. Now, Mario Party 4 has a few playable characters, but just in case you don't want that 'Ugly Gorilla', Donkey Kong, there might be something else for you. Then there is the 'Happenings (Question mark spaces, remember those?)' of the game. Building that little Koopa's cabana/resort is usually worth the money, he's cool. But what makes that thing a challenge is that if you land on a Question Mark space, bam. Gone.

Theres lots of great minigames in this particular Mario Party. If you're looking for fun, this game is for you.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another 4-Player Funfest, December 8, 2002

By 

"gamecubedfreak" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mario Party 4 (Video Game)

Well what did we expect from the latest Mario Party game. There are many other games that tried to imitate these series' successful achievement of delivering an accessible fun and simple 4 player game has failed and this latest addition effortlessly beats the rest of the competition. Well technically it doesn't look very good at all by today's standards and sounds quite annoying but those points are quite irrelevant because this game is simply about multiplayer mayhem. Alone this game is OK but is so much better when there is 2-4 of you playing. I recommend this to anyone looking for a good multiplayer game which doesn't require so much skill but which still provides great entertainment for any kind of gamer.
Graphics:6
Sound:5
Gameplay-1 PLayer:8
Multiplayer:10
Value:10