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Mario Party

Mario Party Advance is a Mario Party series game for the Game Boy Advance. It was developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo in 2005. The game features mini-games and Gaddgets as you travel through Party World. Unlike the console games, the game is more single-player oriented, and it does not have a four-player mode. Instead, Mario Party Advance allows players to play Duel Mini-games against other players or download mini-games and Gaddgets to another Game Boy Advance for friends to play. The game does, however, include a Bonus Board packaged with the game, which is a physical board game that uses Mario Party Advance to let players play against each other in Gaddgets.

In 2014, Mario Party Advance was ported to the Wii U Virtual Console.

Story[]

The story starts when Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi are invited to Party World. Toad welcomes them. The sky grows dark, and Bowser crashes onto Toad with his minion, Koopa Kid, enraged that he wasn't invited. Then he stomps on Toad, making all the games and Gaddgets scatter all over Party World. After that, Toad pops back up from his flattened state, and requests the heroes to look for all the games and Gaddgets that Bowser has scattered to all of Shroom City.

Gameplay[]

There are four modes in Mario Party Advance: Shroom City, Play Land, Party Land, and Challenge Land.

Shroom City[]

The objective of Shroom City is to find citizens of Shroom City that'll give quests to the players, who must complete them to receive rewards. Most quests will award a Gaddget, but some will grant special mini-games in which players can win Coins. Mushroom are used as dice, and the game ends once a player has run out of mushrooms (characters start with five). Every three turns, players are forced to play a Mushroom Challenge mini-game. For winning the Mushroom Challenge, players receive three mushrooms (at random times, they are given chances to win six mushrooms). Losing the Mushroom Challenge results in no reward. There are also mini-game spaces on the board; if a player lands on one, he or she can play a mini-game for more mushrooms. If Tumble appears, he or she will get 2 mushrooms for clearing the mini-game. But if Koopa Kid appears, he or she can only win 1 for beating the mini-game. In addition, the player will lose one Mushroom if he or she fails. There is also another space on the board that'll cause a player to have another turn without rolling another mushroom. Shroom City also has various areas: Town Area (town), Seaside Area (beach), Jungle Area (jungle), Desert Area (desert), Snow Area (snow), and Horror Area (haunted).

Play Land[]

In Play Land, the cartridge owner can play any mini-game previously unlocked in Shroom City. One format is similar to Who Wants to be a Millionaire and 1 vs 100, where the player can play up to 15 mini-games to win 1,000,000 coins. The player can drop out at any time between games and earn the Coins, or play on to risk their winnings. Also, the player has helps such as second chance; if the player fails to win the game, they can play it again. Practice, similar to the second chance but can practice it many times. Extra options help by adding two more options to the three should the player not feel confident in playing the original three games. Gamers can also trade or give away mini-games or Gaddgets and play a special game called Penguin Race, a 4-player (or fewer) game, the outcome of which is determined by mini-game high scores.

Party Land[]

In Party Land, multiplayer games are made available. Two gamers can access Duel Games with a single Game Pak, or play Secret Battles and Koopa Kid Battles with two paks. There are two special modes, 100-Player Battle and 100-Player Attack, that use a single Game Boy Advance and are centered on beating another player's high score, or making one's own high score last the longest.

Challenge Land[]

In Challenge Land, gamers play different modes to earn Coins, which are used to buy extra Gaddgets. The modes include Mini-game Attack, Game Room, Duel Dash, and Bowser Land. In Mini-game Attack, Coins are rewarded for completing games without failing, and for every level (which are called 'attacks') successfully completed, increasingly large Coin rewards are granted. Game Room holds special "coin games", which are typical casino games such as slots and rubbing spaces on a card. Duel Dash pits the player against a computer opponent for a series of duel games. There are three difficulty modes: Easy, Normal, and Hard, with the harder modes awarding larger amounts of coins. In Bowser Land, Bowser's roller coaster deposits the player on a randomly chosen Mini Bowser mini-game. Completing the coaster in the right amount of time will grant the player Coins.

Playable characters[]

There are four playable characters in Mario Party Advance, fewer than any other Mario Party game:

Gaddgets[]

A Gaddget is 'a wonderful toy with many functions'. They're earned by completing quests in Shroom City, beating Bowser's many Koopa Kid mini-games, and buying them with coins in Challenge Land. Some of the many Gaddgets include Dessert Menu, where the player can make a dessert by picking three things from three categories, Tap-Tap Sumo, where one plays a popular Japanese game with Goomba characters, and Screen Clean, in which one's Game Boy Advance screen is cleaned by the game. The hardest one to get is Power Star, which players must buy with 100,000 Coins.

Bonus Board[]

Mario Party Advance comes with a paper board that can be used in conjunction with the video game for an enhanced multiplayer experience. The game acts as a dice-roller and mini-game chooser. The mini-games that are played are 4-player Gaddgets.

Reception[]

Mario Party Advance received generally okay reviews, as demonstrated by 54% in Metacritic. The game is known as the least popular Mario Party game in the series, due to it straying away from the classic formula.

Trivia[]

  • This is the first Mario Party game to have a vehicle mechanic. This mechanic was reused for Mario Party 9.
  • This is the first Mario Party game that Donkey Kong doesn't appear in at all, the second being Mario Party: Island Tour.
  • This is the Mario Party game with the smallest character roster. This is likely due to the limitations of the Game Boy Advance.
  • This is the first Mario Party game since Mario Party 2 in which Waluigi and Princess Daisy are not playable characters.
    • Additionally, this is the first (and so far only) Mario Party game in which Wario is not playable.
  • The game uses music from Mario Party 3 and Mario Party 4.
  • Along with Mario Party 6, they both spell minigames as mini-games.

Navigation[]

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