Product Description

Every good game deserves a sequel, and the addictive, quirky Mario Party 2 certainly fills the bill. This multiplayer party title combines the gameplay of a traditional dice-based board game with several brief action-game segments, including updated versions of 20 of the best offerings from the original Mario Party. There are also 44 entirely new mini-game challenges that pit players against each other as they compete to collect the most stars. Owners of the original Mario Party will be comfortable with this game from the get-go. Each player rolls a virtual die to advance through various board games, including pirate land, western land, space land, mystery land, and horror land. Several hidden adventure boards can be unlocked as players advance through the game. Each player aims to gain the most stars and become a superstar at the end of the game. Various mini-game challenges and booby traps await gamers as they land on some strategically placed spaces on the board.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4057 in Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Released on: 2000-01-24
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Nintendo 64
• Subtitled in: German

Features

• Perfect party game (up to 4 players can play simultaneously
• High replay value

Editorial Review
Every good game deserves a sequel, and the addictive, quirky Mario Party 2 certainly fills the bill. This multiplayer party title combines the gameplay of a traditional dice-based board game with several brief action-game segments, including updated versions of 20 of the best offerings from the original Mario Party. There are also 44 entirely new mini-game challenges that pit players against each other as they compete to collect the most stars.

Owners of the original Mario Party will be comfortable with this game from the get-go. Each player rolls a virtual die to advance through various board games, including pirate land, western land, space land, mystery land, and horror land. Several hidden adventure boards can be unlocked as players advance through the game. Each player aims to gain the most stars and become a superstar at the end of the game. Various mini-game challenges and booby traps await gamers as they land on some strategically placed spaces on the board.

While Mario Party 2 can be played as a single-player game (against three computer opponents), this title really shines in social situations. This is the perfect game to pull out at parties--assuming you have a few extra controllers in the house. --Brett Atwood

Pros:

• Perfect party game (up to 4 players can play simultaneously)
• High replay value

• Solo play suffers
• Multiplayer games can take a long time to complete

GameSpot Review
A year ago, Nintendo began farming out its characters to external developers for use in new games for the N64, which lead to the creation of such titles as HAL's Super Smash Bros., Camelot's Mario Golf, and Hudson's Mario Party. Hudson had been known for great multiplayer party games with its long-running Bomberman series, and while Mario Party didn't quite reach the heights that the Bomberman line had achieved, it was a solid multiplayer game nonetheless. Now comes a sequel that hopes to improve on what players liked about the original and trim back what they didn't. The verdict? A more than partial success. Understand that Mario Party and its successor are the video-game equivalents of board games. You and up to three other human or computer players take turns "rolling dice" to see how many spaces you can move on one of the handful of different boards you can choose from. The object? Gain the greatest number of stars and coins. The boards are spotted with random characters, such as the happy mushroom Toad or Bowser's sort-of-evil henchmen, who either help or hinder you in your quest. To further complicate matters, you can acquire items that you can use for additional rolls of the dice or opening otherwise-locked areas. And then there are the Boos, big-headed cartoon ghosts you can hire to steal coins or stars from your opponents. There are many random elements and huge upsets where the player in the lead ends up in last place and the player in last jumps to first. The crux of Mario Party 2, though, is its minigames, which occur at the end of every round, but also in special cases, such as when you land on designated minigame spaces on the board. The minigames involve such tasks as skateboarding away from a giant Boo, baking cakes, and trying to stay on a wobbling platform while being bombarded by cannon fire. Sometimes you work with another player and sometimes it's three against one, but most often it's every man for himself. The main upgrade to the second Mario Party from the first is that more than forty new minigames have been added, while roughly two dozen of the original ones have returned. Gladly, the most annoying minigames from Mario Party are now gone. Sure, the Slot Car Derby, Platform Peril, and Crane Game still appear, unfortunately, but since there are now more than sixty games total, they don't come up nearly as often. By and large, the new games are a lot more fun than the old ones. Some are simply great, such as the Russian roulette-like Toad in the Box and the tank battle Shell Shocked, but even the less fabulous Move to the Music (a dance game that takes forever to master) and Bob-omb Barrage (a bomb toss that's hard to control) aren't too painful to play through. And that's great news for fans of Mario Party, because herein lies the original's main fault. It had a handful of minigames that you eventually just became utterly sick of, and since they would come up fairly often, you wouldn't want to play the game at all after a certain point. That's far less likely to happen with Mario Party 2, because even the worst of the minigames is endurable. There is a host of minor improvements as well, such as your ability to buy items during gameplay, the addition of duel bouts between two or more players who've landed on the same space, and the fact that you can now overcome some of the more cryptic instructions for the minigames by entering into a practice round before you play the actual game. You can even turn off the bonuses at the end of the game if you find them to be too cheap. Graphically speaking, both the stages and the minigames appear a little sharper and more stylized than before, while the soundtrack is at least on par with the original game's, if not an improvement over it. The greatest betterment is that since you won't get sick of the minigames as you did with the original, there's much more replay value in Mario Party 2, and replay value is the main point of the game. It's a great deal of fun to play with a few friends, even more so than the last. --Joe Fielder
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

great for family play
Far superior to mario party 1. I think my wife and I enjoy playing more than my 6 and 11 year old. Unlike the first Mario party you aren't penalized any coins for losing mini games, which makes it less dissapointing for the kids. The new boards are original and fun to play (with the exception of mystery land which is like running around in circles). Buying the special items adds an entirely new dimension to the game and allows players to really use strategy to win. I also appreciate that no mini games require spinning the joystick. No more unsightly hand indentations

By far the best Nintendo game to date.

Mario Party 2 is the BEST party game ever!
I highly enjoyed Mario Party 2. The minigames are addictive, the boards are interesting, and the minigames you dislike don't turn up a lot. There are also items you can buy, which can help or hinder. There are battle minigames, where you have to put a certain number of coins in a pot, and whoever wins gets those coins, and item minigames, where you can win items. The only bad point is the one player game. It gets boring after a while. I would recommend this game to anyone.

Great game to play with family
I love nintendo and the great games such as Zelda, Madden 2000, WWF Attitide, etc., but my wife hates those games. So we got this game. She loves it because it is not hard and you don't have to memorize some complicated button combination to be good. As a result, this game lets us spend time together and have fun. I agree that this game is not by itself all that great, but the fact that I can enjoy the game with my family makes it a top choice for me.

My son, who is 4, also can play as well and again its a game that the whole family can play together.

In this day and age of advanced games that are often one player and have incredibly complicated button combinations moves, etc, this game brings back the simplicity and excitement that many of us felt when we first played Ataria in the 80s.

If you have young kids ( age 5- 12) and you want to play games with them, this game is a good choice.