You can play more than 80 new minigames in the most recent Mario-themed party game, Mario Party 7. Mario and pals needed some time off, but they forgot to invite Bowser on their cruise. You can battle against an angry Bowser or up to seven of your friends on a single GameCube system. Mario Party 7 includes a few new characters and brings back microphone support from Mario Party 6.
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By this time, the series was pretty tired and should've been put out to pasture. Instead, the series soldiered on for another several games before finally collapsing under its own weight. Giving characters unique items sounds like a good idea, but makes the characters wildly unbalanced. Also, it was around this time that the series abandoned the classic 3 bonus stars (minigame/coin/happening) for 3 random ones drawn from a larger possible pool, making a series famous for rage-inducing RNG even less strategic and more random.
My personal favorite of the GameCube MP titles. My sister & I played this one a lot together when we were younger & we enjoyed our time with it. Later on, I tried out the 8-Player Mode & that was actually surprisingly decent too. The wide variety of board gimmicks on tap help keep things fresh from round to round as well. Chain Chomp chases through Pyramid Park, racing to the top of Pagoda Peak ---- good times.
In many ways, it's more of the same as 6, but that's certainly not a bad thing. The orbs are still great, there are tons of cool minigames, and the boards are some of the best in the series, with fantastic visual designs and excellent mechanics. I'm not the biggest fan of the character-specific items, the duel system isn't nearly as good as 6, and the new mic mechanics kinda suck, but otherwise this is another really solid entry!