It also took us more than just a second try. Most of our losses are simply from the last two turns where suddenly the computer just seems to do everything perfectly.
Apparently, not only did I forget about the single player boards, I also forgot about the duel boards. I vaguely remember it after this video, but not well.
I know I had Mario Party 1 and 2, but I guess I never owned 3. I must have rented it instead.
1 Like
That or it was all a fever dream
1 Like
Calli cackling at the game as Michael contemplates skipping story mode altogether is my spirit animal. I was momentarily worried during the first video about how I’d be explaining how bad the story mode is when you two seemed into the idea. I should have expected Mario Party would do as Mario Party is wont to do. This episode was a rollercoaster of emotions for everyone involved, I swear.
In response to “I wonder what everyone is thinking right now,” I was mostly marvelling at you beating Game Guy twice and earning a stackload of coins on the mode that it barely matters at all.
Duel mode is the part of Mario Party 3 I barely remembered enough about because I barely did it after playing the story mode once. It’s certainly a cool mode, except only two people can play it at a time, which is usually not the number of people you have around when you choose to pop in Mario Party (he said, acutely aware of the irony). There are more subtle mechanics at work, like how the coin penalties for landing on the opponent’s spaces depends on how many spaces they’ve claimed, there are a bunch of partners you can form different strategies around, and the different boards considerably affect movement, but sadly the best way to approach a duel game is to take the shortest path back to your start space over and over again, ideally one that passes Belltop. You claim spaces to get extra money, you get extra money from the start space, you get partners regularly, and you get a higher chance of getting the slow roulette for your partner, which means you get to just pick the best option (Boo) outright. Even if your opponent does the exact same thing you just need to win more minigames, since coins decide the outcome if hearts are tied.
Imagine if they’d incorporated the minigames into the story mode instead of just making you win on every single board by yourself. Like, if you were challenged to complete specific minigames to continue or meet certain requirements within them. That’d be a pretty cool addition. Then they’d just have to make the results of the party and duel boards not be a strict pass/fail check for your story progress and it would be a pretty fun mode. Especially since it’s keeping track of how well you did on each board, there’s no reason they couldn’t have just made it that if you didn’t get enough good grades or an overall good enough grade then you couldn’t get to the ending. A system like that could even work back into playing with other humans, too.
Imagine that…a good Mario Party story mode…
2 Likes
I’m glad that this is your spirit animal. When I listened back to it my first thought was, “fuck I sound so dumb. who laughs like this?” so to have you say this makes me feel pretty good about the episode. Also story mode does get better…eventually…
Unfortunately I am unable to do that. Everything time I try to think about it my mind mysteriously shuts down and reboots to before the concept can hit.
1 Like
The best part about story mode is that Luigi, as the character with no stamp of his own who shows up to claim the stamp of the character you play as in the story, is canonically the hero of Mario Party, to counter the ultimate evil that is Waluigi.
2 Likes
Ah yes. Luigi. The true master of Wit, Kindness, Strength, Love, and Courage
Please disregard us talking about the order of uploading, it took a while to figure out how we were going to schedule this. But since we are now on multiplayer, it’s time to vote! Who’s going to win? Calli, Michael, The Normal, or the Hard Computer?
1 Like
I was tempted to vote for DK since he was doing fairly well, but after seeing the computer ignore using the Magic Lamp and immediately faceplanting into a Bowser space, I’m voting Calli.
MP3 definitely adds in a lot of variables, though. They’re not infallible, but Boo Bell and Magic Lamp make things a lot trickier.
1 Like
I haven’t gotten to watch the video yet, but I’m still voting Calli. 
1 Like
continuing the trend, I also vote for Calli!
1 Like
Calli seems the safe bet here. She’s been winning things, stepping on ?s and has had a bunch of coins on top of already being in the lead.
1 Like
Don’t mind me, I’m just here to also vote for Calli.
1 Like
I don’t have much free time during the middle of the week and I don’t want to miss the voting time trying to describe exactly how I think it’ll go, so I’ll drop a boy (don’t know how autocorrect got that from “vote”) for Calli here in the meantime. I also highly doubt it will be as wide a margin as it’s seeming so far.
1 Like
We conclude our time in this frozen waste land. I didn’t think we would make it to this point and I would say, “Mario Party 3 is the best Mario Party so far.” And yet here I am, saying just that. Difficult Story Mode aside, it’s a pretty solid one that’s a lot of fun to play with someone else.
2 Likes
Michael, my heart goes out to you after this board.
1 Like
Thank you. I really appreciate it.
1 Like
So we go straight from the ice into the ocean. It seems like as we go the boards get more difficult to traverse. This will continue to be true for a while.
I do like the board however, except for the one spot where it’s random on which way you end up going.
2 Likes
I thought this was an LP by cool crime-doers, but apparently I was wrong.
So is DK just gonna be the constant rival in this game? Because so far he’s ruined two story mode attempts (on screen) and he was a pretty constant threat in the multiplayer board.
2 Likes