History ThatOneLevel / MarioParty

* In Bowser Party, things are typically somewhat slanted in Bowser's favor, but none quite like in the last level. After Team Mario hits the Homestretch, Bowser suddenly opts to combine all his dice into one. If he rolls his face on that dice, he instantly catches up with Team Mario and a Bowser Minigame commences. Team Mario will need to be very, ''very'' good at the mini-games if they don't want to be eliminated in a hurry. Oh and making it to the end does not guarantee Team Mario winning; they have to win a luck-based minigame first.

* ''Coin Shower Flower'', another 1 vs. 3 mini-game, has the lone player standing on the flower while the other 3 are in boats below it. The lone player gets the opportunity to collect a bunch of coins falling from the sky, while the 3 players have to fight over any that the lone player misses. Often, the lone player barely misses any coins, or even none at all, which is extremely unfair for the other 3 players. It's possible for the lone player to rack up over 30 coins. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, if the lone player falls off the flower, rather than letting the three players actually have a decent chance of collecting something, the mini-game immediately ends. Oh, and each of the trio players has their own coin count. This might as well have been a 1 player min-igame.

* ''Skateboard Scamper'' is easy to understand. Just press B to skate and A to jump over obstacles... except once you clear them all, you'd better ''mash the hell'' out of that B button beyond anything human if you want to guarantee a win. The winner is almost always completely based on the computer's whims, so if it doesn't want you to win, you're screwed. Also even on Easy, the AI rarely dies to falling in the lava to make matters worse.

* ''Bumper Balls''. This 4-player minigame is notorious among ''Mario Party'' players for how difficult it is to finish the minigame with anything other than a draw. The four players ride on top of circus balls and must bump other players off a ledge, and the last player standing wins. The problem with this minigame is that the knockback delivered by the circus balls is very small, so when only two players remain, it becomes near-impossible for either of them to get knocked off. When more than one player remains when the timer runs out, the game ends in a draw, meaning that [[ShaggyDogStory the survivors win nothing]]. Even competing easy [=AIs=] can drag the minigame on for the whole 60 seconds and have the minigame end in a draw. While in ''Mario Party 2'' this minigame has some new levels to modify the difficulty by having a different platform that could contain ice or hills and rocks, the normal version of the platform is still kept, and the knockback is still not increased (although the ice platform often never ends in a draw due to its physics, thankfully). Averted in ''The Top 100'', where this minigame decreases the average time by reducing the platform size and increasing the knockback when hit, however the result is that the minigame will usually end in only around 10 seconds instead.

* The 1 vs. 3 minigames ''Bash 'n' Cash'', ''Crane Game'', and ''Bowl Over'': The former if you are the solo player, the latter two if you are one of the other three, as in all three cases you can only '''lose''' coins (and at the very best, lose nothing). The latter is even worse if you have the most coins and the solo player is an AI, as you will always be their target (unless you have less than 30 coins, forcing the AI to aim for the 10-coin chest instead). It's extremely hard to grab or break free from an AI player in Crane Game, even if you're good at mashing buttons. Even worse, in the Mini Game Island mode you HAVE to snatch a computer player to clear the game (not even the chest is "good enough"), and in Bowl Over you HAVE to knock over ALL THREE computer players to clear the game, in just one shot. Thankfully, both of these games were made easier in ''Mario Party 2'' (you get two rolls in Bowl Over to knock over all three players, which is now required for a win, and Crane Game gives you a time limit and stopwatches that extend the time, but removes the stealing factor and awards a flat 10 coins to the crane for getting all three rivals, or 10 coins to them if one of them is still there when the timer runs out). Bash 'n' Cash can become even worse if you get Bowser's version of it (by landing on a Bowser Space, of course). It's the same objective, only this time every coin stolen from the solo player goes straight to Bowser, instead of the other three. Worse, if the solo player manages to make it through the whole 30 seconds without losing a single coin, [[spoiler:[[ShaggyDogStory Bowser will steal 15 coins from him/her anyways]].]] The best thing you can possibly do if you're stuck in the Bowser suit during the Bowser version is let the AI hit you exactly ONCE, and no more than that. Do it right, and you can escape the minigame with minimum (read: five coins) losses, instead of fifteen coins (or more).
* ''Coin Shower Flower'', another 1 vs. 3 minigame, has the lone player standing on the flower while the other 3 are in boats below it. The lone player gets the opportunity to collect a bunch of coins falling from the sky, while the 3 players have to fight over any that the lone player misses. Often, the lone player barely misses any coins, or even none at all, which is extremely unfair for the other 3 players. It's possible for the lone player to rack up over 30 coins. This might as well have been a 1 player minigame.
* ''Shy Guy Says''. In a manner similar to the children's game Simon Says, Shy Guy will raise either a white (A) or red (B) flag, and you have to raise the exact same flag. If you don't, you lose the mini-game. What makes this mini-game so bad is that the AI is very good at this mini-game, and when playing with those on Hard difficulty or experienced human players, this mini-game can last for minutes on end. As well as this, Shy Guy will try to fake you out sometimes, raising both flags, then pulling away a flag... (and sometimes in ''Mario Party 2'', even ''putting it back up again'' while lowering the other one). Also, you only have a short amount of time to raise the flag, otherwise it's game over. It doesn't help that, on the ''Mario Party 1'' version at least, the AI will eventually tap the correct button so fast that you have no hope of beating it. Better pray the CPU isn't determined to win at all costs. It is a bit worse in ''The Top 100'', as Shy Guy's fake outs occur faster, he never raises two flags at once as an indicator of faking out, and he can fake the player out twice before raising the flag for real. Despite that, the weaker AI in ''The Top 100'' makes the minigame more easier to beat in Minigame Island.
* ''Running Of The Bulb''. It's one of the very few "group" mini-games and has the four players all walking down a long walkway with one of the four players holding a light bulb and having to place it in the socket at the end of it to light up the room and the other three having to protect the bulb-carrier...''from a endless supply of Boos hoping to possess you and your teammates.'' Also, behind all four of them is a [[GiantMook giant, transparent, creepy-faced Boo]] that slowly chases them and will suck up any player who is not fast enough to keep up with their team, causing the individual(s) to be taken out of the game. In addition to this craziness, if you are not successful in fighting off the Boos, you end up possessed and the only way for you to no longer be this way is for an undamaged teammate to knock you to your senses. ''And'' while you are possessed, your goal is to possess the bulb-carrier and unwillingly walk into the creepy-faced Boo behind you and lose the game, but if the person carrying the bulb ends up possessed and walks into the Big Boo, the game ends in a complete loss for everyone. Winning the game will earn each surviving member 10 coins and losing costs everyone 5 coins.

* ''Quilt For Speed'' is a terribly-unbalanced 1 vs. 3 minigame that's comically one-sided in favor of the solo player most of the time. One player has to guide their machine to the finish line by simply pressing directional inputs on a slot machine (which moves slow and predictable enough to be timed), while the team of three have to work together and combine their directional inputs to move theirs. The thing is that, for the team of three, absolute synchronization is required here because the order of inputs from left to right matters, and more often then not, many players will screw up here either by miscommunication, poor timing, or failing to plan ahead by not noticing an obstacle in their path. The result is the solo player getting a [[CurbStompBattle free win]] with minimal effort. In the rare event that the three players are in sync, however, and the script gets flipped entirely and they automatically win because they can move three hops per input as opposed to the solo player's one hop per input.

* ''Balloon Busters'' is a 4-player mic minigame that operates on a similar principle to ''Balloon of Doom'' from ''Mario Party 4'', except here, the roles have been reversed. Instead of only one player being in danger of the balloon popping, now three players are in danger, with one player taking cover behind a wall that'll guarantee their win if they're lucky enough. Each player takes turns pumping air through mic commands into the balloon up to a maximum of five times each, and after their turn, the player then moves behind the wall until another player finishes their turn pumping the balloon. The positions shift constantly and the maximum number of pumps needed to pop the balloon is inconsistent (ranging from as low as 20 to as high as 30), meaning there's a lot of uncertainty over who gets to take cover and win. This results in the minigame becoming dependent on luck and frustrating to the three players who're unfortunate enough to be near the balloon when it pops.

* ''Balloon Busters'' is a 4-player mic minigame that operates on a similar principle to ''Balloon of Doom'' from ''Mario Party 4'', except here, the roles have been reversed. Instead of only one player being in danger of the balloon popping, now three players are in danger, with one player taking cover behind a wall that'll guarantee their win if they're lucky enough. Each player takes turns pumping air through mic commands into the balloon up to a maximum of five times each, and after their turn, the player then moves behind the wall. The positions shift constantly and the maximum number of pumps needed to pop the balloon is inconsistent (ranging from as low as 20 to as high as 30), meaning there's a lot of uncertainty over who gets to take cover and win. This results in the minigame becoming dependent on luck and frustrating to the three players who're unfortunate enough to be near the balloon when it pops.

* The fight with Wario is notorious in its difficulty. You have to beat him in ''Pull It Together'', which is a button-mashing tug-of-war minigame. The main problem is that Wario is unfairly hard, even on normal difficulty. It doesn't matter how fast you tap, it will not be enough to beat Wario. It has gotten to the point where people have tried cheating by using their knuckle or a pencil to beat Wario since they can't button mash fast enough. Especially galling is the fact that you ''have'' to beat this particular challenge to unlock the last SecretCharacter ([[spoiler:Pom Pom]]).

* The "Lit Potato" challenge in the final area can be this to the point where it borders on LuckBasedMission. What makes this infuriating is that half the time, your CPU teammates [[ArtificialStupidity will get themselves eliminated by not tossing the Bob-Omb in time even if there's someone without one next to them, or if they're the last one against another enemy.]] Much like the first example, you're better off trying to clear it yourself. However, the real kicker is if it's just you and an enemy CPU, where you'll likely wind up a lot, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the CPU will know exactly when to throw the Bob-Omb so you can't throw it back at them]] if you time your toss wrong.

* Koopa's Seaside Soiree: The main central gimmick of this board is the Koopa Kabana, which operates similarly to the Koopa Banks from the N64 titles but without the benefit of gaining everyone's offerings should you land on its surrounding happening spaces. Each time a player passes the adjacent Koopa spaces beside it, Koopa will take a small amount of their coins to build his kabana, with each forced investment gradually increasing its level to a maximum of four. But if any of the players land on one of the six surrounding happening spaces, they'll be forced to pay coins equal to the total amount invested to the kabana which gets promptly destroyed by a tidal wave, resetting the investment cycle and wasting the player's money. At higher levels, this gimmick has the potential to be a very damaging coin sink that can ruin their progress towards buying stars. The board also has the 50/50 Ukiki Banana Peel Junctions, which are luck-based and their outcomes pre-determined beyond the player's control. They cannot be bypassed by normal means with any movement items except for the Bowser Suit (which is rare to obtain to begin with), and it doesn't help that they are paired with Mini-Mushroom gates shortly afterwards, making them difficult to access than any other board (the leftmost junction and gate even guarding Boo). Overall, these gimmicks combined make this board deceptively frustrating.

* Koopa's Seaside Soiree: The main central gimmick of this board is the Koopa Kabana, which operates similarly to the Koopa Banks from the N64 titles but without the benefit of gaining everyone's offerings should you land on its surrounding happening spaces. Each time a player passes the adjacent Koopa spaces beside it, Koopa will take a small amount of their coins to build his kabana, with each forced investment gradually increasing its level to a maximum of four. But if any of the players land on six of the surrounding happening spaces, they'll be forced to pay more coins to the kabana which gets promptly destroyed by a tidal wave, resetting the investment cycle and wasting the player's money. At higher levels, this gimmick has the potential to be a very damaging coin sink that can ruin their progress towards buying stars. The board also has the 50/50 Ukiki Banana Peel Junctions, which are luck-based and their outcomes pre-determined beyond the player's control. They cannot be bypassed by normal means with any movement items except for the Bowser Suit (which is rare to obtain to begin with), and it doesn't help that they are paired with Mini-Mushroom gates shortly afterwards, making them difficult to access than any other board (the leftmost junction and gate even guarding Boo). Overall, these gimmicks combined make this board deceptively frustrating.

* ''Pitifall''. It's just like ''Get a Rope'', but this time both players can get unlucky. If that happens, hope the Fly Guy will pick you up, or you lose.

** And then there was ''Tug o' War'', which is an absolute ''nightmare'' on single-player mode, regardless of which side you're on (the lone one in the Bowser Suit or the other side with the three players). In this minigame, not only do you need to rotate the control stick as far as possible to pull the opposing team into the pit, but the CPU-controlled players on the opposing side ''always'' [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard have a significant advantage]] over the player's side. Yes, even if you're on the side with three players, it still relies on ''you'' to be able to out-spin the computer, which doesn't even need to spin at all. This gets especially egregious when the other two players have the ''[[ArtificialStupidity same]]'' difficulty setting as the opposing player. If that wasn't bad enough, you're always the player in the Bowser Suit on Mini-Game Island.
*** The Bowser version is even worse if it ends in a draw, as LetsPlay/TheRunawayGuys found out the hard way, as Bowser invokes the loser penalty on everyone.

* ''Senseless Census'': take Roll Call from Mario Party 2 where you have to count all of the toads that are on the screen, same principal except that in the Super Mario Party version, there are multiple parts of the train car that you are in that are not covered by the screen, you have to move manually while keeping track of everyone that you saw, and to make matters worse sometimes the toads get in and out of the seats and make you count one or two or more than there really are. If you are playing against someone whether human or computer else who can keep track of everyone, then you could be wrong by 1 and they are exactly right which means you lose.

* ''Candlelight Flight''. Whether you're the Candle holder or the one with the water gun, the AI seems to be gods of some sort. When you're the candle holder, the AI players somehow know how to see in the dark. Are they part cat or something? When it's the other way around, the candle holder can always maneuver to always avoid the water sprays. No matter what happens, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the AI will almost always win]]. It's not much better for the water sprayers during an all-human match.

* ''GOOOOOOOAL!!''. Another 1 vs 3 minigame that is biased towards the solo player. The team of three has to kick soccer balls into the goal with the A button while the solo player moves around and jumps to block their shots. What makes this biased is that the team of three has to make '''ten''' goals in '''only thirty seconds''' to win, something that usually will never happen unless the solo player is bad.
* ''Hide and Go BOOM!'' when against no other human players. It basically plays like Hide and Sneak; without human players, the minigame becomes completely luck based.
* Most mini-games that require you to tap buttons quickly (like Slime Time or Take a Breather) can be won fairly easily against even hard-level computer players, but ''Domination'' is borderline unwinnable. Some controllers can't even register the A button tapping fast enough. [[note]]You may be able to win at this game if you use your index finger instead of your thumb.[[/note]]
* Speaking of ''Take A Breather'', it is one of the hardest mini-games, but is considered one of the "Easy" ones for some reason. You just have to press the L and R buttons back and forth for 5 seconds and hope your character holds their breath underwater for the longest. Against 3 CPU players, you are guaranteed to always lose at this mini-game.
* ''Right Oar Left?''. A 2 vs. 2 minigame in which you peddle Dorrie Boats through a cave, avoiding rocks and flamethrowers. An AI-controlled team will always be in perfect sync while human players straggle behind and inevitably get stuck behind the aforementioned or get burnt, all of which costs valuable time due to having to awkwardly press A and B simultaneously. The boats also turn poorly. The AI will almost always win this one.

* ''Get a Rope''. It's just luck, you pull a rope and hope the ten ton anvil/weight doesn't come smash down on your character's head (the results from worst to best are: the anvil (getting this ensures you'll lose), a little bit of confetti, and a shower of confetti (this guarantees a win). The only controls are selecting a rope to pull, and to make it worse, it's a duel mini game. [[SarcasmMode Yeah, because betting coins or stars on a duel and getting a game with zero skill involved is the fairest thing ever]].

* ''Fish n' Drips''. A 1 vs. 3 minigame where the solo player must input long sequences of button presses to pump water into a Cheep-Cheep-shaped tank while the team of three must relay buckets of water into their own tank by pressing single button prompts instead. Unfortunately for the team of three, they take four animations to relay the water into their tank while the solo player only takes one. The button presses for the pump can be inputted in one rapid, continuous sequence while the team of three has to wait for each animation to finish before they can even receive a single prompt. And that's only for one load of water! The sheer speed advantage the solo player gets ensures that the solo player will win roughly 99% of the time.

* The fight with Wario is notorious in its difficulty. You have to beat him in ''Pull It Together'', which is a button-mashing tug-of-war minigame. The main problem is that Wario is unfairly hard, even on normal difficulty. It doesn't matter how fast you tap, it will not be enough to beat Wario. It has gotten to the point where people have tried cheating by using their knuckle or a pencil to beat Wario since they can't button mash fast enough.

* The 2 vs 2 minigame ''Revers-a-Bomb'' is one that doesn't treat non-CPU players fairly. You have to push buttons to keep Bob-ombs from exploding on your side of the platform, and having all 10 Bob-ombs explode on your side results in your loss. The most baffling part is that this minigame is considered one of the "Easy" ones...

* Ice and snow-related minigames are usually unpopular and ''Snowball Summit'' is no different. While the premise of the game, a snowball fight, has promise, its execution is terrible. Players have sixty seconds to build a large enough snowball to push at their opponents to knock them off a mountaintop, but if the snowball isn't big enough, they are too far away from the edge or aren't directly in your path, you won't be successful. Worst of all, even if you have a boulder-sized snowball and your opponent has something much smaller, if you collide with one another (even accidentally) it ''will'' disintegrate them both and you'll have to start building another all over. Playing the game on the Hard setting is highly likely to end in a draw due the the AI being ''too smart'' to be hit or successful, even with only two players still standing.

* Pagoda Peak played in Solo Mode. You only need one star, ([[spoiler:which is just a T-Shirt in Solo Mode]]) except that it costs an outrageous '''100 coins'''! Good luck trying to get that much, since this board is a one-way path up to the star. There's even a happening space only two spaces away from the top and the star that will make a dragon chomp you and spit you out... back to the start! The Party Cruise version isn't much better as there are happening spaces which can change the price of the star from as low as a cheap 10 coins to a nastily expensive 40 coin price. Bowser will also screw people over during Bowser Time by either breaking a bridge for one turn so that you have to end your turn once you reach the BrokenBridge, or he'll stomp on the mountain to knock players down to a lower area of the board (by the way, those two events are exclusive to this board).
* Neon Heights. This board's gimmick is that there are three chests guarded by Koopa Kids that only require ten coins to open instead of twenty, only one of which contains a star. The other two chests contain either twenty coins or a Bob-omb that will explode and send you back to the start of the board. Which of the three chests contains what is [[LuckBasedMission purely dependent on luck]] and there's also two happening spaces that scramble the location of all the chests. Whatever happens during Bowser Time also puts the hurt on through the following events (other than the memento snapshot taking):

* Windmillville, for its unique mechanic of getting stars. The mechanic here is depositing coins into windmills to buy them and their stars. Unfortunately, if one player happens to deposit more coins than the original owner, then ''they'' earn the windmill and its stars. Even worse, there are several windmills that have more than 1 star (most windmills have only 1 star), which can really turn the tide on the game. Then there's Bowser Time, in which (other than the memento snapshot taking) he'll either:

* Bowser's Enchanted Inferno in Solo Mode. At first, the objective may seem similar to that of Grand Canal (buy a star for 20 coins), but when you get the star, you have to go to one of the few green arrow spaces and confront Bowser in a final showdown (the mini-game itself is in its own section). And not only that, ALL of the Event Spaces can really '''really''' hurt you:

** The Party Cruise version make it even worse with Bowser Time. There's only one Bowser Time event on this board, and it's where Bowser would sink the island containing the star. Happened to be on the island? Then you're REALLY unlucky, because not only are you thrown back to the starting zone, you'll lose half your coins. In Solo Mode, there are specific spaces that also trigger this event (in place of the bird-stealing-the-star event), though it's probably much less common in that mode (compared to Bowser Time which happens '''every five turns''').

* ''Bowser's Lovely Lift''. Your objective is to hit the four dice blocks to move up a set number of floors, hopefully reaching the 100th floor. Sounds easy, right? With Bowser involved, it's not. Bowser has several artillery weapons, including darts and meteors. And once you pass the 50th floor (the halfway point), a Koopa Kid joins, and not only can he and Bowser now fire two obstacles at the same time, they now also acquire laser shots, which are VERY hard to dodge by jumping over them, but can be easy to avoid if both laser shots are moving from each end of the platform and you're in the center. But this doesn't make it any easier. In fact, this mini-game is so hard that in Solo Mode your progress was saved, and the next player up (you or the CPU) would start from where you were knocked out. Hopefully, you weren't on the 99th floor and the CPU comes up next, as that is an almost guaranteed win. However, if you play this in Free Play Sub, you have to make it to the 100th floor all in one go - which can be REALLY frustrating.