Identifying Luck in Mario Party

September 21, 2020 6:27 AM

For two decades and across seven systems, the Mario Party games have been a beloved but frustrating experience. You might try with all your might to be the damnable Super Star, but a plethora of factors, some luck-related but some not, conspire to throw the match to your eight-year-old cousin who always plays Yoshi. YouTuber ZoomZike has compiled amazing and exhaustive videos going through every element of four games in the series, and showing what can be manipulated and what can't. It's IDENTIFYING LUCK IN MARIO PARTY: One - Two - Three - Four

In total, these videos are nine hours long! But they're presented entertainingly and don't grate too bad. Please consider them, won't you?

posted by JHarris (6 comments total)

Sometimes what you need in Mario Party is not luck, it's just to do nothing.
posted by Merus at 7:27 AM on September 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Always calls to mind this comic.
posted by Carillon at 1:51 PM on September 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have been playing Mario Party DS since last December. Instead of doing Story Mode, I have been setting up custom teams and seeing how they fare through the five worlds, seeing which configurations do better towards me getting a perfect game, and I absolute have to watch these.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:09 PM on September 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ah, not my platform. Still watching these.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:11 PM on September 21, 2020

They're amazing. Even if posts like this don't get a lot of favorites and might be niche in interest, I still strongly feel that these things right here are definitely best of the web. If you're a game designer or aspire to be one, certainly, I think these things are near required viewing.
posted by JHarris at 7:31 PM on September 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

Lots of games put their thumbs on the scales behind the scenes in service of providing a more enjoyable experience. It's always fun to see these techniques laid bare.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:30 AM on September 24, 2020