Let's Play Every Mario Party and Not Get A Divorce [Current - Mario Party 6]

If order matters, I’m gonna say Michael then Calli. If it doesn’t, then I guess I’m just hedging my bets here.

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Who’s tryna muscle in on my turf?

Anyway, knowing what this Song of Ice and Fire…y hot sand is, I’d wager Calli will take both of them.

So then, I broke this down when I ruined Honeycomb Havoc forever last year, but it’s a little different this time, so let’s look at how his type of game works.

Necessarily, the counter must move down each rotation by the number of players still in. In this case, there are only ever two players in, so it will always move at least two and, at most, four. Because of this, every third number is a death number, and it can mean that, against two players who know exactly what they’re doing, one can be randomly handed a loss right from the start.

In the case of Honeycomb Havoc, it was when there were three, six, nine, etc. fruits before the beehive. If you had that many left on your turn, your opponent could jut flat-out keep you stuck on a slow ride towards doom. In Head Waiter, it’s when the counter is at 1, 4, 7, 10, etc.

The only way to break out of this trap is to advance the counter an even number. Every time the counter advances by two, the player currently doomed to lose changes. Or, possibly a multiple of the same number as the number of players in, I’d have to run some tests to be sure. So, against a ruthless human who hates fun, you’d have to hope that when you advance it one, they are stupid and also advance it once. Or twice if you advance it twice.

That’s with Honeycomb Havoc, anyway, where the remaining number of fruits is always visible. I actually really like this addition to the game, even more so because it didn’t return until just now, so it feels a lot more fresh.

Because of this change, the true way to win would be to mind-game your opponent. If you both know how many the counter needs to move by to change the doomed player, it becomes a question once the counter disappears of whether the doomed player has already moved the counter in a way that would benefit them. It’s like playing eight games of Scissors, paper, rock, with both of your hands in a box so you can’t see the results, and each result affects the next round’s result, and you only get to see who won at the very end and none of the results of the first seven rounds actually matter by the end. My kind of chaos. It’s beautiful.

Of course, when you’re playing against a computer, like with Look Away, Hide And Go BOOM, and Fight Cards, there is no possible strategy or way to undermine the computer’s efforts, because the probability of them just flipping a coin is more than zero. If I had to guess, I would say that the easy computers are just going to randomly pick a number to advance the counter by each time, the medium ones will know what to do, but generally be random idiots, and the hard computers will barely ever do the wrong thing. Or…they all pick some random garbage. The best thing you can do is set the counter in a way that is favourable to yourself and then advance it by two to get to the end as fast as possible, while also hopefully countering their attempts to reverse the doom.

Make sense? It shouldn’t. This is how you stop having fun playing Mario Party, which is already not necessarily fun in its original state.

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Going for Calli then Michael.

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I’m voting Michael for ice and Calli for sand.

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We interrupt everything to… oh. Calli interrupted. Anyway, who enjoyed that volleyball game from Mario Party 4? I know we sort of did! Now how about you take away the fact that you have to go against impossible to beat computers? Well, I’d say I now remember why I didn’t play 5 that much, everytime I did play I wanted to do the Volleyball! Also, hockey.

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So who’s ready for the prehistoric Pirate Dream? So many Pirates here. I’d say this is the first map where it actually feels very large. being so zoomed in now makes it hard to get a full read of the map and is kind of confusing. I’d say it’s an okay map, but its just kind of boring I guess? The most interesting part is the boulder and waterfall moving you around, but the latter doesn’t even matter since I think it keeps you at the same amount of spaces.

But it’s also time for voting. Michael, Calli, Computer, Computer. Who could possibly come out on top here?

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Eh, I’m behind anyway. I’m betting on that good good Toad to pull a win and finally get retweeted by Nintendo.

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The gods of Mario Party have apparently decided Toad is the winner.

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And Pirate Dream comes to a close. Honestly, I’m ready for Mario Party 6 at this point. The boards just aren’t wowing me this time around.
Pirate Dream is really big. The paths feel really windy since it’s so zoomed it you can’t really see anything. Even when scrolling around I have to take a second to make sure I’m going where I want to. Everything looks the same as well. The only really interesting set piece is the Pirate Ship and no one ever really ends up there since it’s just a longer way around. The one saving grace for me personally is the button mashing game to get coins. But, that’s just me. I’d love to hear everyone else’s opinions.

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It’s Peach’s Birthday Cake 2.0 this time. Everything’s sweet and boy does this make me want confectionery so badly. Will Bowser make this dream tart? I doughn’t know about you, but I think we need to stop him. Next time it’s a big Mini-Game Marathon so get those votes in on who will make it out on top!

I’m gonna go with Michael for the mini game marathon.

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Considering how many minigames involve button mashing, Michael seems like a safe bet.

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Make sure to get your votes in before the next video is posted.

So here we go! It’s a Decathlon! Where you just play 10 minigames and try to get as much coin as possible. Don’t worry. No one here is in trouble for voting on a sports event. That would be awful. Instead, watch this video and see who will come out on top!

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I’ve missed a bit, hold on.

Pirate Ship Dream was the first time I realised that DK’s Jungle Adventure from the first Party is terribly balanced, especially for the first board you’re likely to play. The first half of the board has a boulder trap that you’re very likely to run into which pushes everybody back to a single space. On DK’s board the hazard can be activated by anybody, anywhere, and sends everybody on the two paths it rolls down to a point just before the start of the board. Here, it can only be activated by people who are in its path, can be activated early or late on the road, and sends everybody to a point just after the start, but without even the concession that you can collect some coins for your troubles.

It destroys the back half of the board, basically invalidates one of the capsule machines, if a star goes on that road it effectively locks it for anyone without a mushroom to brute force their way past the actual mechanics of the board, and makes the act of moving around the board itself feel a lot more routine than most boards since there’s just about zero dynamism in where you go. It’s not the kind of board you would want to spend, say, 50 turns on.

If I had to guess, I’d say the way the computer works its way through the Whomp Maze, at least on easy, is by picking the wrong path at first, taking many slow steps to get almost to the end, then going at a relatively brisk pace down the correct path. The sucky thing is that the only correct answer in a game like that, regardless of how the computer does it, is to just follow one step behind where the computer goes and then overtake them once you know you’re at the end. That specific technique will come up in later parties.

The decathlon is cool, I wish more parties had done it so at least everybody could feel a sense of progress and genuinely get a chance to catch up in games they might be stronger at. I would have been pretty annoyed if Michael didn’t win that, honestly; if he had managed to come second when 20% of the games involved are button mashing then he was a cop.

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I actually don’t like how many games are button mashing. It feels like I have an unfair advantage going into this Party. All of the games till now have had button mashing, but it never felt like I had too much of an advantage before. I think back to the skating game in Mario Party 1. Despite how hard I would go, the race always seemed pretty even. And now with the sheer amount of games that rely on it. I’m just guaranteed a win and I don’t really find that fair or interesting. But I digress.

It’s time to get wet behind the ears and dive into the deep end this time! I do like the layout of the Undersea Dream board. It’s not too big or complicated, and does have some areas that are difficult to get to, but not outright necessary. And you always know where the star is based on it’s surroundings. It’s really good. And there’s even a nice way to get across the board if necessary. My only complaint still is there’s not much to look at outside of the board area.

This also means it’s time to vote. Calli, Michael, Computer, other Computer. Who will win? I actually can’t remember right now so it’ll be a surprise for me too!

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I have faith in you, Calli! You can win! Unless you don’t. That’s okay, too.

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I will try not to let you down wolf.

I’m goin’ with Calli this time.

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Just a reminder that part 2 will be up tomorrow so get those votes in.