Mario Party 8

Mario Party 8
Welcome to the Star Carnival!
Genre(s): Party Rating(s): ESRB: E Platform(s): Wii Release Date: NA: May 29, 2007 BEL/NETH: June 20, 2007 EU/GER: June 22, 2007 AU: July 19, 2007 JP: July 26, 2007 UK: August 3, 2007 SAF: February 1, 2008 HK/ROC: July 12, 2008 KOR: November 6, 2008 Developer(s): Hudson Soft Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: United States Series: Mario Party Predecessor: Mario Party 7 Successor: Mario Party 9

Mario Party 8 is a 2007 party game for the Wii. It was developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo. It is the eighth entry (not counting handheld entries) in the long-running Mario Party series. This was the last console Mario Party game to be developed by Hudson Soft, before NDcube took over the Mario Party series' development, starting with Mario Party 9.

Good Qualities

1. The carnival theme of this game works very well with a series like Mario Party.
2. Fun and fast-paced minigames.
3. 14 playable characters. You can play as a Blooper and a Hammer Bro! You can even play as your Mii in certain Minigames.
   • Plus, in Free-Play mode, your Miis that you created on the console will appear in the background in various minigames.
4. The Candy mechanic is fun to use, some can transform you into things like a ball and a vampire.
5. Memorable boards such as Shy Guy Express and Koopa's Tycoon Town.
6. Awesome and catchy music.
7. Star Battle Arena is intense and very fun.
8. Fun side modes like Test for the Best and Flip-Out Frenzy.
9. Neat little references to games like Super Mario 64 and Luigi's Mansion.
10. You can tease your opponents by shaking the Wii Remote and your character's voice will come out of the Remote's speaker.
11. There are some fun extra minigames such as Moped Mayhem and Canyon Crusaders.
12. Funny character animations such as Waluigi's victory pose where he pulls out a rose.

Bad Qualities

1. The story is rather bland and simple. All you do is win the first five boards against certain characters, including the sixth and final board (where you play against Blooper/Hammer Bro) with the final battle being rather anti-climactic, as all you do is shake the Wii Remote to build up energy and hit Bowser with it and that's it.
2. Toad's voice can get annoying, as well as MC Ballyhoo and BigTop. Every time you boot up the game, he will always greet you and say some random piece of advice that you'll probably already know.
3. The game mostly displays only in 4:3 despite most Wii games supporting 16:9. Only the menus are in 16:9. Early copies of the game had blue graphical borders on the sides. But these borders caused screen burn-in. They were later replaced by standard black borders.
4. The game boards and bazaar are rendered at 30 frames per second rather than 60 frames per second like the rest of the game.
5. Some bad minigames such as Cut from the Team, Rudder Madness, and Bob-omb Blast.
6. The motion controls can be hit or miss. They can be unresponsive at times.
   • On top of that, Motion controls can be used at completely unnecessary moments. You have to flick the Wii Remote up to hit the dice block. Previous games in the series had you simply press a button.
7. The AI can be very idiotic at times, such as in 2 vs 2 minigames.
   • However, sometimes, the AI can be very aggressive, such as in Grabby Gridiron.
8. Bowser is barely a threat in this game, as he doesn't do anything that negative. If a player approaches him without any stars on some boards, He will give the player coins instead of taking coins away unlike in other games. That doesn't make any sense.
   • The only time where Bowser does something negative is on his board, Bowser's Warped Orbit, where if a player lands in his space, the player will lose a star. Aside from that, on King Boo's Haunted Hideaway, landing on his space and then reaching him subsequently will cause the player to lose the star; the same can be said for Shy Guy's Perplex Express.
9. Some candies are very overpowered and broken, such as the Bullet Candy and Thwomp Candy.

Trivia

• This game had a talking hat called BigTop. The idea of a talking hat in the Mario series would later be revisited 10 years later with Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey.
• There are a few fully functional unused minigames hidden in the game's code.
• The game caused controversy and almost got banned in the United Kingdom due to a scene of the board Shy Guy's Perplex Express where Kamek casts a spell to switch train cars, being "Magikoopa magic! Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!" The game was eventually rereleased, replacing the word spastic with erratic.

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