Mario Party: The Top 100

Mario Party: The Top 100
The most downright deceptive way of celebrating a gaming franchise's history since 007 Legends.
Genre(s): Party Rating(s): ACB: G CERO: A ESRB: E PEGI: 3 USK: 6 Platform(s): Nintendo 3DS Release: NA: November 10, 2017 PAL: December 22, 2017 JP/HK: December 28, 2017 Developer(s): NDcube Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Mario Party Predecessor: Mario Party: Star Rush Successor: Super Mario Party (by release date) Mario Party Superstars (loose sequel)

Mario Party: The Top 100 is a 2017 party video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It is the third and final Mario Party game released for the 3DS. This game is based on remastering the previous mini-games from the first 10 home console Mario Party games (Mario Party to Mario Party 10).

A game with a similar concept titled Mario Party Superstars, was released on the Nintendo Switch on October 29, 2021.

Why It's In the Bottom 100

1. The entire game is pretty much a reskin of Mario Party: Star Rush, as the same artwork, models, character animation, game engine and even some content were reused for this game, as the only difference from that game is the minigames and different modes, that's it, there isn't any new content that is original and many of the aspects from this game were already used in Star Rush but done a lot better in that game than in this game even though it has mixed reviews.
   • Even the credits are also the exact same as Star Rush's with only a few differences here and there sparkled throughout, as it reuses the same artwork as Star Rush and nothing else and adds the series of the previous home console Mario Party games, which makes the game feel more like Star Rush 2.0 or a trick rather than a celebration of the franchise, which by the way is what this game is supposed to be.
   • At least Mario Party Superstars finally learns its lesson from here as that game on the Nintendo Switch is a proper celebration of the franchise.
   1. • In fact the games also came on the Nintendo 3DS.
2. As with Mario Party Advance, the main concept of the playing on board for coins and stars or even using Mini Stars of all things aren't used, considering this as a poor grasp of source material.
3. Likewise, it solely focuses on the single-player Minigame Island that was from the original Mario Party, and the 100 mini-games from the previous installments, meaning that after completing the Minigame Island on both difficulties, there isn't much to replay over.
4. Due to being released at around Christmas time approximately two months after its announcement, it was likely that this game was rushed to be completed early for the holiday season, especially since it was supposed to come out in 2018. In fact, this game has one of the shortest intervals from announcement to release for a Mario game, just 58 days (or 8 weeks and 2 days). In fact, PAL copies of the game show 2018 in the title screen instead of 2017.
5. The Minigame Island is very short and a lot easier than it was in the first Mario Party game, due to the nature of the new mini-game ranking system used since Mario Party 9. This time, you're required to get any place, but last to clear any four-player mini-game on Easy Mode (instead of being required to win the mini-game with the first place), and because it takes up a good majority of the mini-games, you'll probably clear them all on your first try. It naturally takes only around two hours to clear the Minigame Island on the easiest difficulty.
   • In the Minigame Island in 1998's Mario Party, some mini-games had extra rules included providing an extra challenge to easy mini-games. Here, the mini-game rules are mostly the same as they are normally played. For instance, in Mario Party 1, the "Bombs Away" mini-game required you to survive the whole 30 seconds, but in The Top 100, you must simply outlast your opponents, making it easier to win.
   • In 1 vs. 3 mini-games on Minigame Island, you are always the single-player. In Mario Party 1's Minigame Island and Mario Party 2's mini-game Coaster, some mini-games had you playing with the team of three. You cannot play as the team of three in 1 vs. 3 mini-games on Minigame Island here.
6. Completing the Minigame Island is very unrewarding, as besides just obtaining unlockable mini-games, you only unlock a Hard Mode for the Minigame Island.
7. Speaking of Minigame Island, luck-based mini-games are also present there, meaning that if you're unlucky, you might be forced to lose lives or take tens of tries to get first (and get three stars) in the mini-game, and if this were in hard mode, you are almost guaranteed to get at least one game over unless you grind the easier stages tens of hundreds of times for more lives. MarioPartyTV had to take over 38 tries to complete the Deck Hands mini-game with three stars because of this, and burned about eight lives doing so. Added on the insult that even if Mario Party 2 had luck-based mini-games, it didn't include them on its mini-game Coaster.
   • However, one can do a trick to not lose any lives: press the home button before the game ends, then close and restart the game.
8. This game has some of the dumbest A.I. in the Mario Party series (especially when they play lucky minigames), even comparing to the A.I. of Mario Party DS. Even on Master difficulty, it is very easy to beat the A.I. in practically any mini-game (at least on DS some mini-games are a challenge against Expert difficulty). Due to this, completing Minigame Island is a complete pushover and is hardly a challenge, even on Hard Mode.
9. For some reason, mini-games from the handheld entries: Mario Party Advance, DS, Island Tour, and Star Rush aren't remastered here. While it might be excusable for Advance as it was mostly composed with single-player mini-games, DS and later games at least had four-player mini-games. Though this could be that those games are already playable on the 3DS, so maybe there was no point to remaster mini games that were already playable on the console.
10. Most mini-games aren't really favorites over fans of the series, since there are still infamous mini-games like Tug o' War, mini-games despised by fans such as Piranha's Pursuit, The Beat Goes On, Manic Mallets, Button Mashers, Heat Stroke, and many luck-based mini-games like Bowser's Big Blast (despite being the most fun lucky minigame), Balloon Busters, and Deck Hands in the pack. About more than half of the mini-games are mini-games that are hated by fans or are considered forgettable by fans.
    • Misleading title and False advertising: As mentioned above, the announcer announced that there will be 100 best minigames until there are some bad minigames happen, which should have been "The Top 50, the Average 30, and the Bottom 20" instead.
    • Another false advertising is that the game's website is considered as the "Ultimate" Mario Party, which is false due to its conditions of the game, as well as lacking content, and rushed development.
    • Most of the mini-games also requires large amounts of button-mashing, making the mini-games selected rather boring and also a chore to do.
    • Alongside, most mini-games come from Mario Party 2, 5, and 9. Mario Party 9 has ten returning mini-games, 2 has thirteen returning mini-games, and 5 has seventeen returning mini-games (combining the amount of mini-games from each game makes a total of forty returning mini-games). In fact, Mario Party 5 has the largest amount returning mini-games, while Mario Party 8 has the smallest amount of returning mini-games. It should be more balanced for the other games such as ten games from each installment since there are only four returning mini-games from 10, six from 1, three from 8, and nine from 6 (which makes a total of twenty-two mini-games from those four games combined). Not to mention that Mario Party 3 and 7 have twelve returning mini-games each, and 4 has fourteen returning mini-games alone (making a total of thirty-eight mini-games from those three games combined). So in general, 4 & 5 have the most Minigames while the others just have a short list of them (expect for 2 & 9 which as said have both ten and thirteen respectively).
11. While some of the mini-game music is remixed from the original, some of the mini-games use different music from another game from the series, which is showing more than the game was rushed and it shows no faith to the original games. Some mini-game music liked by fans such as Keepin' on the Path, No Copying, or Aim! have been removed as a result of this.
    • The mini-game remixes are largely inferior to the original compositions, especially those from Mario Party to Mario Party 4. The remixes are more dissonant when compared to the original and lacks the pace that the original music had.
    • Additionally, some tracks are misnamed: "Going for the Coins" is called "Take the Coin", "Know What I Mean?" is missing its question mark, all of the tracks from Mario Party 3 are known by unofficial translations of their Japanese names, there is no disambiguation between the two tracks called "Slow and Steady", and "Time It Just Right" is simply known by the name of its mini-game, "Soar to Score".
12. Some mini-games loved by fans such as Dungeon Duos, Bobsled Run, or Manor of Escape didn't make it.
13. At the end of a Mario Party 2 mini-game that shows the position each player came in, the song when more than one player wins a mini-game in Mario Party 2 plays even when the one where only one wins would be more appropriate.
    • Similarly, mini-games from Mario Party 1 use only the "success!" jingle, with the "one winner", "well done!", "multiple winners", and "perfect!" jingles nowhere to be seen, and mini-games from Mario Party 3 use only the jingle for one player winning a non-duel mini-game.
14. Only eight playable characters, which is unacceptable, considering Mario Party: Star Rush, the previous game had twelve (sixteen if you count the colored Toads) playable characters. Even Mario Party: Island Tour had more playable characters than this game, albeit ten playable characters.
15. There's only one board in the entire game, and it just reuses assets from Mario Party: Star Rush, which another reason that the game is rushed.
    • The fact that on that one and only board, a player can start a minigame if they get a balloon, which turns into a Minigame Roulette, picking from the 5 minigame choices, and the choices are spun around, which is basically RNG, instead of starting a minigame by simply finishing a turn shows lack of loyalty to source material from the past Mario Party games.
16. Speaking of that, if a player chooses to drain someone's coins, then a Hammer Bro throws hammers to lose coins and not give it to the player, this also shows that it was rushed.
17. Very little content for a $40 full-priced game.
18. The Menu UI is a tad bit bland when compared to other Mario Party games, as it is square based just like 9 and 10 but unlike 9 and just like 10, it's a lot more simpler and basic since it only offers a few modes and most of them are colored in with simple reds, greens and yellows, as which 9 actually had more variety with the menu and UI which made the menu look clean and sharp (along with the dynamic night sky scenery where the characters are walking or running) which is way better than what this game does.
19. The soundtrack is shockingly rather poor and mediocre at best even for a Mario game, since as mentioned before in this article, the remixes of the Minigame themes are just not very good, and the theme song is shockingly pretty bland and easy to forget, and some of the music was also rehashed from Star Rush which is just downright shockingly lazy at best especially for a Mario game.
20. The game has little to no replay factor at all since it quickly becomes boring after the Minigame Island mode and the other modes due to the mediocre gameplay that is so mind-numbingly easy and repetitive that it quickly gets old fast and won't offer any satisfaction for the player at all due to the lack of content and the fact that it is a reskin of a game that released a year before it's release year as The Top 100 came out in 2017 while Star Rush came out in 2016 which is a year before The Top 100 even came out which explains why the game was so half baked and poorly put together.
21. Some of the minigames were downgraded from their original counterparts, such as Aim of the Game and Dinger Derby which aren't as fun as they used to be in Mario Party 5 or 8 due to being a lot more slower paced than the original: in the former's case, the cards move faster but the player themselves move a lot slower, while in the latter's case, the ball launcher's timing is slower due to being on a handheld console as oppose to 5 or 8 which was on a home console, which makes this version look worse and less fun to play by comparison.
22. Some mini-games are unfaithful and are placed incorrectly to the original series as well for example, Bumper Balls was on the first Mario Party game, not Mario Party 2. It could have been possible that they were referencing their remakes at the time since the earlier games repeated a few mini-games back then. Though, this only happens to the first two Mario Party games and nothing else for the last eight games.
23. Since Superstars came out for the Nintendo Switch, which is an improvement over here, this game has absolutely no purpose to the franchise and rendered this for nothing thanks to the already aforementioned next entry's existence since MPS has 2 more playable characters (Donkey Kong and Birdo), 5 classic N64 boards, new features to the series like customizations, has online features and has a decent amount of content for a title on the Switch, which is what The Top 100 doesn't have at all since it was rushed for the holiday season and was a horrible collection of classic minigames from the series overall.
    • To make things worse, this game ultimately ends the mediocre Mario Party ND Cube games in a sour note until the whole series redeemed when Super Mario Party came out, and it gets better when Mario Party Superstars came out.

Redeeming Qualities

1. This game allows you to play as Daisy or Waluigi on returning Mario Party 1 and Mario Party 2 mini-games, and Rosalina on all returning mini-games before Mario Party 10.
2. At least some mini-games loved by fans such as Booksquirm, Pushy Penguins, Flash Forward, Trace Race, Catch You Letter, The Final Countdown and Hexagon Heat have made it.
3. A few of the mini-games have been improved. Dizzy Dancing for example, now has the players compete for points with reverse controls instead of grabbing a single note.
   • Some of the minigames have been redesigned such as Ice Rink Risk, which features blocky cliffs and the battlefield is now a modern-looking castle.
4. It features the most mini-games out of any installment in the series so far, despite none of them being new, until Mario Party Superstars added 5 more.
5. Its the first game in the series since DS to have to save files implemented like the original Hudson Soft titles from 3 to DS, which is a nice nod to those games and great to see a comeback after being absent in the NDCube games.
6. The graphics at least look very good and nice-looking, almost similar to its predecessor Star Rush.

Reception

Mario Party: The Top 100 received a mixed reception from critics and a mixed-to-negative reception from players. On Metacritic, the game holds a score of 59/100 from critics and a score of 6.7/10 from players. It is often referred to as one of the worst Mario Party games in the series.

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