Get the Place Jumping!
Written: Mar 07 '00 (Updated Feb 11 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great activity for 4 players that will keep them busy for hours
Cons: A little on the expensive side (even if it is average for Nintendo games)
The Bottom Line: If you liked the original, you'll like this one!
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| gracef's Full Review: Mario Party 2 for Nintendo 64 |
Mario Party 2 picks up where Mario Party left off. In this episode, our friends (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Wario, Yoshi, and Donky Kong) are arguing whether "Mario Land" is a good name for their world. Why Mario? Is he really the Super Star? While they're arguing, something terrible happens. Bowser takes over Mario Land, and it's up to our friends to save it. And Toad, ever the diplomat, says that whoever gets rid of Bowser is the REAL Super Star and should be allowed to name "Mario Land." So off they go!
Mario Party 2 is a game in which 4 players can participate. It plays much like a board game. The advantage, though, is that there are fewer pieces to lose! The computer can become a pretend player if 4 players aren't available.
Mario Party 2 has new lands to be explored, and our friends wear costumes consistent with each world. In Pirate Land, they wear pirate hats and striped shirts. In Western Land, cowboy hats are the rage. In Space Land (my personal favorite), the gang wears space patrol outfits. (The image of DK wearing a space patrol uniform is hilarious!) In Mystery Land, the gang becomes archeologists and wear pith helmets and khaki uniforms. In Horror Land, our friends wear witches hats and wander around through a world where day turns to night and back again.
The play of the game is similar to the original Mario Party. Players take turns "rolling" a dice and moving along the board. The question mark spaces are back, and they do various things depending on the board. The most frustrating are those in Space Land, where players are pushed back a number of spaces. There's also an option for Bonus Play on the game setup that, if used, causes a Ghost to pop up every now and then for the lucky player. The Ghost awards anything from coins to stars. My 6 year old liked this because it gave chances for the younger players to get stars with very little effort. (I hated it because it NEVER popped up for me!!!) The board also has a chance for Mini Games and for meeting up with Bowser. But there are some new things as well. Baby Bowser gets into the act by appearing at the star's previous location and takes 5 coins from anyone who crosses his path. A Bank has been added so that everyone who passes the bank contributes up to 5 coins (depending on available funds) and anyone who lands ON the bank space receives the money that is in the bank. (This is rather like Monopoly meets Mario Party!) There are also items spaces on the board where the player has the chance to win items for use during a later turn. These items can do anything from give extra rolls of the dice at the beginning of turn to causing Bowser to stomp across the board and take all coins from any player in his path.
Mario Party 2 has tons of Mini Games. Some, like Tipsy Tourney, are carried over from the original. Fortunately, it seems that most of the ones from the original Mario Party that required you to spin the stick round and round (thus bruising your palm) have been eliminated. Some of these that have been carried over have been made more difficult. For instance, the Bobsled Run is longer, and Face Lift uses the images of players rather than that of Bowser. There are also many new games. Some are based entirely on skill while others are based on dumb luck. This is nice because the oldest, most coordinated player is not always the winner. Another nice feature that I don't recall from the original is that now players can practice the Mini Games when they appear. This is especially useful for those kids (and their parents) who don't want to spend hours on the Mini Games world before jumping into the game.
One drawback that I saw in the Mini Games is that some of them are extremely predictable when the level of difficulty is set to other than Easy or when computer generated characters are in play. For instance, in Aaarch-rival, a computer-generated character will ALWAYS go for human-controlled characters first, even if it isn't logical for it to do so. It makes more sense to always go for the stationary targets first, but it doesn't do that. Mecha-Marathon and a couple of other Mini Games are impossible to win when computer generated characters are set with a difficulty rating of "normal" or higher. The problem is that the computer-generated characters can repeatedly press a button much faster than a real person can, and no controls were placed on the computer-generated characters to ensure that their reaction times were realistic.
Mario Party 2 also adds a neat new feature called Duels. During the last 5 turns, or when a character uses the Dueling Glove item, two characters bet the coins and then play a game to determine who wins the coins. The games in question are, for the most part, skills of dexterity or intelligence. (Hint: use the second hand of your watch to win the Time Bomb duels in Space Land!) The exception is BowserLand, where the game is all luck with a "rock, scissors, paper" format.
As you can probably tell, Mario Party 2 is a little more complicated than the original. However, my 6 year old really enjoyed this and thought that it was better. I think the main reason is that a number of new features have been added to allow younger or less adept players to win.
Recommended:
Yes
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gracef
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