Having had no experience with any of the previous Mario Party games I honestly don’t know if number 6 is any different., but I’ve been told that the gameplay is similar across all the games. However, I’m going to talk about it as if it is (and if I’m wrong I’m sure I’ll hear from you!).

Basically, the game is a series of mini-games. They’ve added a bit of story to explain why you’re playing the mini-games but the whole purpose is to play 15-second to 3-minute games against your opponents.

You see, apparently Brighton (the Sun) and Twila (the Moon) have gotten into a bit of a tiff. They both find themselves more impressive than their counterpart and won’t stop arguing. Mario and the cast of characters from all of the games over the years, have gotten together to throw a big party and collect stars to end the feud. (No, I have no clue how this will happen but they say it will.) Your job is to “compete” with your friends for stars – and to do this, you play games!

The multi-player party games consist of mazes in the shapes of trees, islands, junkyards, etc with various colored spaces on them. The spaces can give or take away coins – what you use to buy stars. Each player rolls a die to see who goes first, then the four of you (1 person and up to three CPU players) move on the board. The spaces are red, blue and green – green are active spaces that usually allow for duels or someone to come beat you to a pulp or throw you across the board or something fun. The blue and red spaces give and take coins, respectively. Once the four of you have completed a “round” the game will look at the number of people standing on colored squares. This will determine your mini-game. One person on red and three on blue is a 3 vs.1 game. Two blues and two reds is 2 vs.2 – you get the idea.

To say this game has a dizzying array of mini-games is the understatement of the century. I was trying to count them in the manual and gave up at 130 (I had 3 pages to go). What I find interesting is they really don’t repeat the action required for the game very often – meaning rarely are you simply playing the same game on a different background. The games can be something as simple as pick up all the mail you can and give it to the Shy Guy to riding this big black ball-and-chain and throwing bones for him to eat and get him to the end of a track. There are a few luck-based games, but most will require some basic skill. The good news is, they’re SHORT and simple. Even my 5-year-old’s attention span could handle them. The winner(s) of the mini-game receives coins and then the next round begins.

Each multi-player game consists of 20 turns (you can set this higher or lower), with each round consisting of three plays during day, then night. When the time of day changes, so too, does the board. This makes for a bit of strategy when you’re planning the direction you’re heading towards the star. Also, along the way you pick up orbs. Again, there is a dizzying array of orbs and they vary from allowing you to roll more than one die at a time to stealing coins from a player to trading places. There are also options to set handicaps (for younger or…less inebriated players) and to set various competition modes. Then, you choose from approximately 25 Mario characters to represent you. Off you go!

There is a single player mode to Mario Party 6 also. I found this to be particularly fun (and quieter). You, again, have a series of boards you play on with the same type of squares, only now you also have some Bowser and Koopa Kid squares that can make earning stars and coins quite difficult. The key to these games is to earn as many of the mini-games as you can at the varying difficulties. At the end of the game, your number of orbs used (or not) are tallied, same types of games, whether you beat Bowser and whether you finished the board without falling off, are all tallied and your awarded coins – hundreds. These are used to buy stars and sent to the star bank.

Now, about earning all those mini-games in single-player mode... There is a Mini-Game mode. When you go here you can play mini-game bingo, battle bridge -- there was also a bus I haven’t unlocked since you can only play those games and levels you’ve completed.

There is a Mic mode, using the included microphone that plugs into a memory card slot, but to be honest I found this very disappointing. The games were unique and fun, but the microphone was entirely too sensitive to diction. One game had a difficult time telling the difference between the words strawberry, banana, apple and grape. Any type of accent at all and you’ll end up killing everyone. None of the other games really seemed to understand what was being said any better. It’s too bad as this would’ve been a particularly nice addition to the game.

Last but not least is the Star Bank. Now, this is where I’m a tad confused because I thought we were collecting stars to keep Brighton and Twila from fighting but we actually SPEND them. There are new game boards, characters, harder levels of games and a really odd, but amazing pop-up book based on the mini-games that you can buy pages for. The items range from 10-100 stars so you should be prepared to lose your hard-earned stars.

I’d have to say, after playing my first Mario Party (and hearing EVERY night, “Mom I want to play Mario Party 6!”) that I’m rather impressed with all that it is. Having spoken to several very “macho” guys I know that for games night these are the games that keep them playing for 12-hours on end and it’s easy to see why. They’re quick, simple, and quietly competitive and with the luck element thrown in you can’t really get into a brawl over who’s the better player. In summary, it’s just fun.