The Gamer's Quarter

[kirkjerk]

What "Pac-Man Fever" can teach Mario Party:
Pacing

(This is about the Party game, not the song)

Seriously. I haven't played the latest installment of Mario Party but I'm fond of the series and of minigames in general. But the board game is so slow, and fiddley, and arbitrary in its "rubberbanding"

The games in Pac-Man Fever are more pedestrian, the character selection is small and barely draws from Namco's heritage ("Tiger Jackson" from Tekken? And is Reiko from "Ridge Racer" known? I haven't dealt with that series much... over "Dig Dug" and a guy from Point Blank and who knows what else...) and the ending victory screen lackluster, but, man...

I bought it on a whim for my aunt (got her a GC mostly for Super Monkey Ball 2's Monkey Target) maybe because of the Pac-Man reference, or maybe my uncle got it for her, but it's really not bad, and actually of all the random "see if she likes it' cheap games she has, was probably her favorite.

I was trying to think of what the secret of the pacing was. Load times are kept to a minimum, for one. But I guess it might be the simplified board game itself; no dumb decisions to make, or powerups to screw someone else with (there is some player attacking that goes on, but it's all determined by what square you land on) - and no gratuitous die rolling, or waiting for players to press A already. You play a minigame, you're ranked 1 to 4, you move 1 to 5 spaces based on that, and the last 3 or 4 spaces before the end of the board are special and require you to place at least second or sometimes first to advance, so there's a chance for laggards to catch up.... every square in the path does *something*, simple boardgame-y things like advanced fwd, or challenge another player to a minigame for tokens, that kind of thing.

I dunno. Maybe I just don't "get" the board game aspect in much the same way I don't "get" monopoly. But the pace of Mario Party is so sluggish, and as Penny Arcade pointed out, the ending stars so arbitrary, and I don't know who the audience even is... I mean, you'd say kids, but there are so many fiddley decisions to make (stuff to by, forks in the path to take) and some of the minigames are complex enough that.... feh.

So, given how I still feel the Wii has reached maybe 1/3 of its minigame potential between Rayman Rabids and Supe rMonkey Ball and Wii Sports and Wario Ware... I hope with Mario Party they figure out that for some people, the boardgame is just a bit of tasty bread for the minigame meat, and that waitin gfor people to roll the die and watching little avatars boogie across the screen just is annoying.

....

The best Mario Party board game was "Mini-Game Stadium" in the very first game... just go in a circle (well, star shape maybe?), get a star for passing go, and blue and red squares mix up the vs. aspect and add a little randomness. A few of the regular boards or ok, but as the series regressed (I think they may have gotten a bit better 6/7) they just got terrible, and we'd usually stick with some of the mini-game-only modes.
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[dessgeega]

i feel as though the mario party series peaked with 2.
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[Ethoscapade]

i know that's the one i'm waiting for on virtual console.

[kirkjerk]

It might have in many ways, before they added that weird dice-based toad clone.

(And it's probably a little corny to say that a lot of series seem to have a peak in the 2nd game in the series, where the originality from the first is refined but not to the point where they're desperate to add in new parts to make it "worth" buying)

In some ways it all comes down to the minigames. Frankly, what every one of these games could benefit from, but most designers are way too ego-ish to allow, is a feature to let you turn off minigames from coming up in the random select, sort of like how you can remove certain weapons or playing boards from the rotation in Smash Bros. Melee. But no designer wants to admit "yeah, some of our minigames ar ejust filller, or just poorly thought out so they kind o suck."

So 2 had some great specific minigames, though its been a while, but 3 had a few good ones as well. I forget which one had some nice "tank" games, something I'm always on the hunt for. At least they got rid of those blister-and-lawsuit-inducing stick rotation games from the first one.

ANYWAY, even the possible pinnacle of MP2 lacked the simple "just a frame" elegance of Minigame-Stadium. And the pacing and complexity of the board games started to drag, but I think at that point it wasn't too bad.

...

I always thought party game minigames were a nice way to let oldschool classic game design peek through, just a simple mechanic and head to head action.
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