Robin Canfield
Diversions Staff Writer
The first and most entertaining mode is the Party Mode. This is where one through four people can compete against each other on their board of choice. This is also the best mode to play if you do not own a memory card.
Each board slightly resembles a board game in that you roll for the amount of spaces (no more than 10) you will move. Along the various paths around the board the most common spaces are blue spaces, which give the player three coins and mushroom spaces that give the player either a mini mushroom or a mega mushroom.
These mushrooms along with Super Mega Mushrooms and Super Mini Mushrooms are also available in toadstool shaped shops around the board. Pop a mega mushroom to get two rolls and the ability to smash people while stealing 10 coins from them at the same time. Pop a mini mushroom and you can’t roll higher than five but you can use pipes to get to areas of the board that you can’t normally reach.
Other spaces on the board change the places of players, some are “Happening” spaces, some cause a player to lose three coins, others are “Reversal of Fortune” spaces. Some of the best spaces lead to four player battle games, Bowser games, or gambling spaces.
On the Goomba board the “Happening” space causes you to slide down a craps table on a chip while collecting coins. On every board there are lotto shop spaces. On your first time in you get a free lotto ticket with the drawing for the winner being held on one of the last turns. Every time you go into a lotto shop you pay five coins and either pick a scratch-off ticket or turn a crank for a lottery ball. You have about a 3 percent chance of winning, but little kids won’t think of that. They’ll only know that they want to try it for real.
The main goal of every game is to get the most stars. There is only one star on the board at a time, switching to a new space every time one is purchased for the cost of 20 coins.
The main part of the game are the mini games. At the end of every turn and sometimes during a turn all the players get to play in a mini game. There are three-on-one games, two-on-two, and everyone-for themselves games. These games involve shooting, running, swimming, skydiving, and even running through “dank” dungeons.
The Story Mode puts you on the same boards as the Party Mode but allows you to win “Presents” and play a few more mini-games. In the Mini-Game Mode you can play any of the mini-games you’ve opened in the other modes.
If you’ve exhausted all of these options there is still the Bonus Room Mode that lets you play beach volleyball, dig for oil, and even smash Goombas. The best game of all in this mode takes advantage of the rumble feature in the Gamecube controller. You feel the heartbeats of five characters and pick who ate the poison mushroom. Picking the wrong character cues the correct character to keel over and die while the sirens go off.
This game is entertaining and highly addictive. Only for the Nintendo GameCube, it is in stores now.
