The more I think about Mario Party 1 as a game, the more it absolutely fascinates me ngl.
I'll say this much that I owe it being the first step into what would become a very memorable party franchise. I do like the concepts the boards have and I guess some of the minigames can be fun. But man you can just smell the "first game syndrome" radiating off of this. The boards, while again, have cool concepts, some of them are a pain in the ass to explore, Wario's Battle Canyon and Luigi's Engine Room being prime examples of that. A majority of the minigames also have their fair share of frustration. It's very baffling how some minigames are clearly bias towards one player over the others like Coin Shower Flower, Bash 'n' Cash and Piranha's Pursuit, others are too easy like Crazy Cutters and Hot Rope Jump, and others are just up in the air on who'll win like Mario's Bandstand and Skateboard Scamper. You can tell they didn't have much variety with the 2 vs 2 minigames seeing as how there's a whopping 5 total in that category. It also amazes me that you'll actually lose coins in some of the minigames if you lose. Again, everything about this game is just fascinating in it's execution. Also just saying the fact that you have to play the game nonstop until you collect 100 stars in total to get the end credits and unlock the final board when it'll only count the coins and stars from the human players, not the AI, is a bit too much to ask for. I'll never understand why they decided to do that. At the end of the day, I'll still have my fair share of fun with the game, but it's clear you can tell this was the first time attempting a party game and it shows in the execution and final product.
I'll say this much that I owe it being the first step into what would become a very memorable party franchise. I do like the concepts the boards have and I guess some of the minigames can be fun. But man you can just smell the "first game syndrome" radiating off of this. The boards, while again, have cool concepts, some of them are a pain in the ass to explore, Wario's Battle Canyon and Luigi's Engine Room being prime examples of that. A majority of the minigames also have their fair share of frustration. It's very baffling how some minigames are clearly bias towards one player over the others like Coin Shower Flower, Bash 'n' Cash and Piranha's Pursuit, others are too easy like Crazy Cutters and Hot Rope Jump, and others are just up in the air on who'll win like Mario's Bandstand and Skateboard Scamper. You can tell they didn't have much variety with the 2 vs 2 minigames seeing as how there's a whopping 5 total in that category. It also amazes me that you'll actually lose coins in some of the minigames if you lose. Again, everything about this game is just fascinating in it's execution. Also just saying the fact that you have to play the game nonstop until you collect 100 stars in total to get the end credits and unlock the final board when it'll only count the coins and stars from the human players, not the AI, is a bit too much to ask for. I'll never understand why they decided to do that. At the end of the day, I'll still have my fair share of fun with the game, but it's clear you can tell this was the first time attempting a party game and it shows in the execution and final product.