Video Game / Mario Party

Mario Party is a video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 in Japan and 1999 everywhere else. It's the first installment in the Mario Party series.

This is the first game in the series, thus it has codified many of the elements that have since appeared in the sequels. Mario and his friends play by moving across boards during active turns, earn coins by winning minigames at the end of the turns to spend them in the purchase of Stars, and sabotage each other in many different ways. Across the boards' paths, players will find tiles with unique effects, ranging from simply giving or taking coins, going through triggering a special event (which, depending on the case, may be benefitial or detrimental), suffering from a one of Bowser's mischiefs, to performing a critical action capable of deviating or turning the tides. After all turns pass, the character with the most Stars (and, in case of a tie, the most coins) is declared the winner.

Being the first game in the Mario Party subseries, there's no overarching theme or premise, other than the characters simply having fun and solving a problem or mystery that is specific to the board where they are. Toad serves as the host.

This game was never released on the Virtual Console likely due to legal issues surrounding some of its minigames requiring the control stick to spun rapidly. However, in November 2022, this game finally saw its first ever re-release as a part of Nintendo Switch Online’s library of Nintendo 64 games.

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This game provides examples of:

• Advancing Wall of Doom: The minigame Running of the Bulb has the players collaborate to get a lightbulb to the end of the level without Boo catching up to all four of them.
• All Balloons Have Helium: Happens in the Balloon Burst mini-game, in which the Bowser balloons float up simply from inflating them with hand-operated air pumps. The four players have to inflate it by rapidly pulling and pushing the pumps, and whoever manages to make their balloon burst first wins.
• Alliterative Name: The minigames Musical Mushroom, Crazy Cutters, Balloon Burst, Skateboard Scamper, Platform Peril, Mushroom Mix-Up, Bumper Balls, Tipsy Tourney, Tightrope Treachery, Piranha's Pursuit, Desert Dash, Handcar Havoc, Memory Match, Ghost Guess, Pedal Power, and Teetering Towers. There's also the board (Bowser's) Magma Mountain.
• All or Nothing: In the Crane Game minigame, a player is only given one chance to grab another player to drop them in the pipe. If the grabbed player is dropped, the minigame ends.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: For Ground Pound, the AI always gets one wrong for every one that it gets right. However, at the beginning of the game, you can see and memorize which posts are right and wrong before the butterflies land on them.
• Artificial Stupidity: Intentionally done in Mini-Game Island with regard to the four-player cooperative mini-games. You're paired up with your chosen partner character as well as two others, but the chosen partner is programmed to play better than the other two, encouraging the player to cooperate specifically with that partner.
• Aside Glance:
  • On the Rainbow Castle board, when Bowser sells you the useless black star for 40 coins, the character turns around and looks into the camera. As expressed in this video. Mario's expression just says "Can you believe this shit?".
  • It also happens in Luigi's Engine Room, when Bowser activates his "Make As Many Coins As You Want Mecha" to create a coin for the player (at the cost of 20 coins).
• Big Fancy Castle: Mario's Rainbow Castle. This board has a straight path that leads to the castle's turret. You have to get to the turret with 20 coins when Toad is present in order to get a Star. If you get to the turret when Bowser is present, he will charge you 40 coins for a fake Star. Toad and Bowser switch places after someone comes to see them, or when someone lands on one of the Happening Spaces.
• Big "OMG!": In the Japanese version, Wario and Luigi say "Oh my God!" whenever they get a bad result. This was changed in the international version to Luigi simply letting out a moan and Wario saying "So ein Mist!" (often misheard as "D'oh, I missed!").
• Biting the Handkerchief: The game has the players in first and last place play a victory or losing animation. DK's losing animation has him doing this with his tie.
• Blackout Basement: In the minigame Pedal Power, the solo player is in a dark basement mounting a pedaling gizmo while Big Boo is behind. The player has to grant energy to the generator in order to lighten up the room and drive Big Boo away.
• Bowdlerise: In the Japanese version of the game, Wario and Luigi both cry "Oh my God!" whenever they suffer from a bad event. In the English version of the game, Luigi just groans and Wario says "So ein mist!"^Translation "What a bummer!" due to Nintendo of America and Europe forbidding the use of religious figures and phrases in their games at the time.
• Bowling for Ratings: One 1 Vs. 3 mini-game that debuts in this game is "Bowl Over". One player is armed with a Koopa shell, and the other three players are turned into sentient bowling pins. The goal of the player with the Koopa shell is to knock down the three players-turned-bowling pins, while the goal of the three players-turned-bowling pins is to avoid being knocked down.
• Brains and Brawn: Invoked in the manual for the game, which describes Luigi as the brains, and Mario as the brawn.
• Cursed with Awesome: Getting diverted to Bowser’s path on Peach’s Birthday Cake can actually be a blessing in the late game as long as you have enough coins to tank the hit from Bowser. For starters, it spits you back out practically right in front of the Star, potentially allowing you to pull ahead if the other players are far enough away. More importantly, however, you avoid all of the Piranha Plant spaces on the main path, which by this point will be laden with plants that will steal your Stars, a far worse alternative than losing a few coins to Bowser.
• The Day the Music Lied: One board has Bowser giving players black stars. At first, it might seem that they count because of the fanfare... then they Let The Air Out Of The Band to let you know you were forced to pay for nothing. And his fake stars cost double (40 coins instead of 20).
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Bowser's Magma Mountain has the main objective of defeating Bowser, which makes it comes off as being the last board. The actual final board, Eternal Star, appears once 100 stars have been collected and the others boards have been played once.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Grab Bag minigame, wherein the contestants pounce on one another from behind in order to extract the coins in the sacks on their backs, and anyone who is grabbed can Button Mash frantically to shake their attackers off.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: If a player is in the Bowser Suit in Bowser's version of the Bash 'n' Cash minigame, it's usually more beneficial to let the other 3 players take one or two coins bags of 5 from you rather than none. Why? Because if you don't lose any coins, then Bowser will take 15 coins from you, just to make you suffer.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The game differs in many ways from subsequent installments in the Mario Party series:
  • It is the only game to reward you for passing the start of the board (with coins given by Koopa Troopa); the concept briefly returned in the Duel Mode boards of 3, where the Millennium Star provides a coin reward when you return to your specific starting area.
  • The game is significantly more aggressive, where the winner of many mini-games is rewarded from the pockets of the losers. Some mini-games have the entire team working together, with no villain other than the stage itself (this concept was brought back later to a greater extent in Super Mario Party). The first game is also the only one to have mini-games involving rotating the control stick, which would cause blisters; the second game excised these as well as coin-losing mini-games, but it also recycled many other mini-games from the first, which the third game (and all those subsequent) would make a point of avoiding.
  • This is the only game with Mushroom spaces. If you land on one, you can either be lucky enough to move a second time, or be unlucky enough to miss the next turn. These effects have not been seen ever since (a similar type of space returns in the GameCube era, but in those games the pertaining effects are granted as applied Mushroom items in the next turn instead of the current one).
  • 1-vs.-3 minigames have a small but significant variety of coin outcomes in the games where the lone player has to steal coins from the other players or vice-versa (unlike in any game afterwards, where they always give 10 coins to each person on the winning team). Additionally, if the lone player loses the minigame, it will result in a "Miss!" declaration from the announcer alongside a defeat jingle instead of announcing the winners like it does in the sequels.
  • In addition to Bowser Spaces in the first game, Bowser himself also appears somewhere on each board, and any player who passes him will surely end up losing coins or sometimes stars if they have any. What's worse is that sometimes you have to pass (or risk passing) him in order to get to the star, or just might not even have a choice in the matter. In Mario Party 2, Koopa Kid replaces him, who may even give out coins if you're lucky (and then throws a tantrum over his Epic Fail), but if a player obtains a Bowser Bomb item or lands on a Bowser Space and gets Bowser's Appearing Act, then at the end of the turn, it causes Koopa Kid to turn into Bowser, who then moves around the board and takes every coin from any player he encounters, before turning back into Koopa Kid. In Mario Party 3, neither Bowser nor Koopa Kid appeared on any boards to take coins or stars, but the Bowser Spaces have remained for all the future installments until Super Mario Party (in which they have been replaced by Bad Luck Spaces as a result of Bowser becoming a playable character).
  • Not counting a few exceptions, the minigames in the first game take place in rather generic areas (for example, there are a handful of minigames that seem to all take place in the middle of the same ocean). Starting from the second game, the areas the minigames take place in are much more varied and lively.
  • There are no usable items to obtain during games. Instead, it's possible to buy items at a shop outside of the boards, and then enable them at the bank, which will allow them to appear at random, usually replacing the normal dice block on a turn.
  • Boo steals coins for free and takes a random number from players. In subsequent games, Boo pays a small fee and players can reduce the total coins taken by quickly pressing the A button.
• Eternal Engine: Luigi's Engine Room is a mechanical board with advanced machinery whose main gimmick revolves around color-coded doors (red and blue) that open and close respectively at the start of every turn or when a character lands on certain Event Spaces, thus requiring the players to work around said doors (with either luck or strategy) to devise the route to the Star's current position. The advanced tech of the board is also lampshaded, as the announcer says "This is the Engine Room, but what kind of Engine Room is it? I have absolutely no idea!"; the mystery of what the machinery is exactly powering up isn't solved until someone becomes the Super Star (it turns out that the engine is powering an airship, kept aloft with wings).
• Evolving Title Screen: The title screen changes its background depending on which character wins the board.
• Excuse Plot: The game doesn't really have an overarching premise that gives a thematic motivation, as it merely has all the Mario characters compete with each other to solve major problems in order to determine who is the "Super Star". And they do so by partying. It eventually ends with you unlocking a secret board and trying to recover the broken pieces of the Eternal Star, with Bowser trying to stop you at all costs with his minions. Bring out the party.
• Fast Tunneling: The minigame Buried Treasure revolves around digging underground until a hidden treasure chest with coins is found. The coins are granted to the first character who reveals (and subsequently opens) the chest.
• Fishing Minigame: In the minigame Cast Aways, the players have to use a fishing rod with a glove as bait to grab the coins, coin bags and treasure chests floating in the sea.
• Foreign Cuss Word: In the western versions of this game and Mario Party 2, Wario exclaims "SO EIN MIST!" (roughly "Oh, Crap!") when something bad happens to him. The Japanese versions simply had him (and Luigi) say "Oh my god!" in the same situations.
• Fungus Humongous: The minigame Mushroom Mix-Up takes place in an area made up of seven large mushrooms that grew from the sea. From a distance, Toad raises a flag whose color will indicate which mushroom the characters have to stand on, as all others will begin to sink; if a character fails to get there in time, they'll end up touching the water and will be disqualified. After a brief period, the sunken platforms will emerge once again and Toad will raise a flag of a different color. As time passes and fewer players remain, Toad will raise the flags more often and the unsafe platforms will sink more quickly. The last player standing on top wins (though if the last two or more players fall into the water at the same time, a draw is declared and nobody will win).
• Ghost Leg Lottery: One of the 1 vs. 3 minigames, Pipe Maze. Here, the screen quickly scrolls up from the player characters at the bottom, briefly showing the turns in the pipes until the treasure chest is revealed at the top. The 1 player of the 1V3 must quickly determine which path leads to them, and select the pipe that would ultimately drop the treasure chest and its coin bounty to them. However, if they select any of the wrong pipes, then one of the other three players wins coins.
• The Ground Is Lava: The 4-player minigame "Mushroom Mix-Up" has Toad raise a colored flag telling the players to head over to the same colored platform while the others sink into the water below. If any of the players touch the water, they're automatically out, and the last one standing wins the minigame.
• Ground Pound: There's a 1-player minigame actually named after this trope. In it, the player has to stomp onto tree trunks with flat tops to win while avoiding the trunks with pointy ones. The catch is that butterflies stand onto these tops, so it's important to remember which trunks can be stomped (the player has a brief time to look at all of them before the butterflies arrive).
• Home Stage: This is the only game in the series to have a different board themed for all of the playable characters. And although not playable, Bowser gets one too with Bowser's Magma Mountain, and the unplayable tutorial board is based on Toad.
• Human Cannonball: In Wario's Battle Canyon, launching oneself from one of the cannons is the only method of transport between areas, since these are disconnected otherwise.
• Jump Rope Blunders: The minigame Hot Rope Jump has players jump over a flaming jump rope. Players who get hit bounce away in reaction to the burn. The minigame also appears in Mario Party 2 and Superstars.
• Jungle Japes: DK's Jungle Adventure is a board that is located within the dense jungle where Donkey Kong lives. It is divided into two major areas connected via two wooden bridges (one heading from west to east in the south and the other heading from east to west in the north; both are one-way only). Some Whomps guard the board's junctions, and will only let a player pass if the latter pays 10 coins. Several monuments shaped like banana bunches can be seen in the north.
• Konami Code: Entering the code with Controller 1 after pausing the game during Player 1's turn with Controller 2 will trigger the debug menu, which can subsequently be opened by pressing C-Left.
• Lethal Lava Land: Bowser's Magma Mountain. To unlock it, the player must pay 980 coins and play all standard boards^note which excludes Eternal Star at least once each. It takes place in the summit of a large volcano, and the path goes through a zigzag pattern. There are junctions that can be crossed, but only if the players pay 10 Coins and get a Star by hitting a roulette block (if they get Bowser's face instead, they won't be able to cross that path and no refund will be given).
• Letting the Air out of the Band: This happens when you get a Ztar in Mario's Rainbow Castle. The usual "You Got A Star!" fanfare is played in a less graceful manner.
• Level in the Clouds: Mario's Rainbow Castle is a board located in an idyllic cloudy city made up of Solid Clouds, castle rooftops, and a rotating turret where Toad and Bowser are. Whoever is seen on-screen takes control: Toad gives a Star to any character who pays 20 coins, while Bowser gives a Ztar (a bogus item that doesn't increase the number of Stars, though at least it won't reduce it either) and charges 40 coins to any unlucky player who reaches him; their positions can also be swapped by landing onto an Event space. Among the minigames, there's Platform Peril, an obstacle course in the skies where the characters have to jump across floating platforms while the screen scrolls, and whoever reaches the goal first wins.
• Level Ate: Peach's Birthday Cake is a board that takes place at the topmost layer of a gigantic, double-layered pink cake adorned with figurines in the borders made of fondant and modeled after the playable characters; next to the cake is a round custard puddin that is also part of the playable board. No Boo inhabits this board.
• Locked Door: In the minigame Key-pa-Way, all four players have to team up to take a key into a large lock to open a door guarding a big loot; and while they do so, they have to avoid being caught by a team of mechanical Koopas (not Mechakoopas, as those don't have spiky shells). Winning this minigame rewards all players with 10 coins each.
• Lottery of Doom: Peach's Birthday Cake has the Flower Lottery, which determines whether players will visit Toad or Bowser whenever they reach the junction. Players are forced to pay ten coins^note the fee is waived if the player doesn't have enough coins to partake in the Flower Lottery, where they must pick from a group of four seeds. As a Goomba is running the lottery, he'll claim that the three "loser" seeds are the ones that send players to Toad, while the "winner" sends a player to Bowser. It's completely random as to which seed will be the "winner". The Goomba will only refresh the seeds once all four have been sold, meaning that if the "winner" is not picked last, the other seeds will invariably be safe. Likewise, if only the "winner" is left, too bad for whoever's stuck with it.
• Luck-Based Mission: Buried Treasure is heavily luck-based, despite looking like a skill game on the surface. Players need to dig through the earth, racing to find a randomly-located treasure chest. If a player starts close to where the chest happened to spawn, there's a pretty good chance they'll win unless they're an idiotic AI. God help you if the chest spawned far from your character's starting point.
• Memory Match Mini-Game: "Memory Match" is a single-player mini-game where you ground-pound panels to reveal them and try to find all the matching pairs within 45 seconds. There's also a non-matching Bowser panel that stuns you if you hit it.
• Minecart Madness: In the minigame Handcart Havoc, two teams of players have to drive a handcar across a railway track installed above a sea of lava; as they do so, they must make sure to lean the handcar in the curves to avoid derailing and thus falling down. The team that makes it into the goal first wins; but if both teams fall, the minigame will end in a draw.
• Money Multiplier: The game has two alternate boxes to store your coins: The Casino Box will either double or halve the number that's actually deposited and the Lucky Box will add 10% more coins to those that you earned.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: The Nintendo Switch Online version of this game begins with a warning that appears at the top of the screen each time the game is loaded, advising you not to use your palm to spin the control stick, which was a popular technique for certain minigames that resulted in people injuring their hands and taking legal action against Nintendo following the game's original release.
• Overdrive: The minigame Slot Car Derby punishes players who maintain the maximum speed for too long on tight turns by making the car spin around for a second and have to accelerate from zero again. A common strategy is to ease off on the analog stick just before this happens, watching for the puffs of smoke that serve as a warning, then pump it back to maximum the very next second. "Slot Car Derby" returns in the second game, which also has "Filet Relay", where players dressed as penguins can mash the A button to move faster, but will wobble and fall over if they go too fast.
• Palmtree Panic: Yoshi's Tropical Island is a board set in two exotic islands: A sandy one in the west and a grassy one (with sand borders) in the east. Several giant fruits, such as bananas, pineapples and watermelos grow here; the palm trees have a unique multi-colored pattern in their leaves (green, yellow, red). The bridges that connect both islands are guarded by Thwomps, who won't let anyone pass unless they pay a price (the player can choose how much to pay, but the payment must be at least one coin higher than that of the previous character). To get a Star, you must come to Toad when you have at least 20 coins, but if you get to Bowser, he will charge you 30 coins for a defective Bowser Tube. Toad and Bowser switch places when one of the players lands on one of the Happening Spaces.
• Permanently Missable Content: The game has a rather unusual example in that one of its title screens becomes permanently inaccessible. Normally, the title screen changes to reflect whichever character won the most recently played game board. However, there is a generic title screen that only ever appears the first time you load up the game. It returns after playing Eternal Star once, but beyond that it's gone, and the only way to see it again is to delete your save data.
• Pipe Maze: There's a minigame actually named after this trope (being also named after the Trope Namer from Super Mario Bros. 3). In it, the player has to guide a treasure chest guarding coins through a vertical network of green pipes into themselves; the catch is that, because the whole maze is only shown through a very fast scroll at the start of the minigame, it's very difficult to predict where the chest has to go in order to reach the intended character. If one relies on pure luck, then there's a 75% chance that the chest will go to a different character (who will then claim its coins) instead.
• Poison Mushroom: The Trope Namer appears in the game, preventing the player from walking (or performing any action) in the next turn after receiving it. There's also the Ztar, which downplays the trope (it doesn't reduce the number of Stars, but it's given while Bowser charges a much higher number of coins to the player).
• Racing Minigame:
  • The minigame Slot Car Derby has all characters race through slot cars in a sky-high toy racetrack. The goal is to be the first to finish four laps around the track, but if you go too fast for too long, you'll spin out.
  • The minigame Piranha Pursuit is a unique 1-vs.-3 variant where one player has to flee from a hungry Piranha Plant while riding a skateboard in an obstacle course; the other three players, suspended atop a moving cloud, pour rain onto the Plant (by stomping the cloud) to give it a boost so it can reach its target before the goal line. The more water the Plant receives, the more it'll grow.
  • The minigame Bobsled Run is a 2-vs.-2 sliding race that takes place in an underground icy course. The teams have to reach the goal by driving a sled vehicle. Some parts of the borders are unprotected, so if a team falls down they'll be disqualified (but in that case, the other team still has to reach the goal; if they fall as well, the minigame ends in a draw and nobody wins).
  • In the minigame Desert Dash, two teams race in a straight course while avoiding the stomps of a Thwomp. In each team, one of the players has to move a step by tilting the control stick to the left, while the other does by tilting it to the right (and as they do so, they must take turns, so mutual timing is key to reach the goal quickly).
  • In the minigame Skateboard Scamper, all four players have to skateboard their way to the finish line as quickly as possible while simultaneously outrunning the platforms falling into a pool of lava beneath their feet. They also have to jump over Thwomps in their path, and anyone who's too slow and falls into the lava loses automatically.
• Randomized Title Screen: The game's title screen changes depending on which character wins the board.
• Recurring Riff: The game includes shout-outs to earlier games. The tracks "Slowly, Slowly" and "Dodging Danger" are based on the World 6 and 8 map themes, respectively, from Super Mario Bros. 3. And the Magma Mountain course includes a section based on Bowser's Keep from Super Mario RPG.
• Remilitarized Zone: Wario's Battle Canyon is a board located in the middle of a mountainous battlefield filled with war equipment. The board is divided into five colored plateaus (orange, yellow, green, blue and pale beige), and the ones located in the quadrants have each a functional cannon that takes a player to a different plateau (the segments are physically unconnected). The plateau at the center (which can only be reached by paying a Fly Guy) hosts Bowser, whose cannon isn't used in gameplay (Bowser throws away the caught character on his own, and still forces them to pay a fee).
• Rhyming Names: The minigames Paddle Battle and Ground Pound.
• Ring Out: Bumper Balls, a mini-game that can only be won by forcing opponents off the circular playing field, eliminating them.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: If the Bowser Space variant of Face Lift comes up, Bowser will threaten to take coins from every player who fails to score at least 90 points in the minigame. If all four players manage to score at least 90 points, Bowser will still take coins from the player who landed on his space, simply because, as he puts it, he doesn't like them.
• Shell Game: There's a minigame actually called Shell Game, doubling also as a Punny Name. Four Koopa Troopas have each an open treasure chest, in one of which some coins will be put. The Koopa Troopas then close the chests and they get into their turtle shells to begin moving rapidly around the area, and the solo player has to choose the shell where the Koopa with the coin-filled chest is hiding.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: The aptly-named minigame Shy Guy Says. The four players are mounting barrels tied to a pirate ship led by a Shy Guy in the sea. The players are instructed to raise the same colored flag as that raised by the Shy Guy. If a player raises the wrong flag or doesn't raise any, the Shy Guy will cut the rope that ties their barrel with the ship, which leaves them adrift as they move away; if the Shy Guy raises both colored flags, the players must wait until he lowers one, as that means only the other colored flag has to be raised. The minigame continues until only one player remains.
• The Smurfette Principle: Princess Peach is the only playable character that is female.
• Space Zone: Eternal Star is set atop the titular celestial body, which has been broken into pieces and vandalized by Bowser. Due to it having been split, teleporters are used to get between the chunks — but if you run into Bowser, he'll reconfigure the teleporters to lead to different locations. The board can be unlocked after reuniting 100 Stars and playing all other boards at least once each.
• Sphere Factor: In the minigame Bumper Balls, the players are on top of large basketball-like balls; the objective for each character is to push the other three into the water around the island they're situated on.
• Start Screen: The game is notable in that it changes the title screen each time a character beats 1 player mode, with a personal background for each character that won last.
• Suspender Snag: The artwork for Luigi's Engine Room depicts Wario hanging from a crane by the back of his overalls, for which he looks angry at Luigi since he seems to be the one controlling it.
• Teleportation: Eternal Star holds a system of warp machines with each of them connecting to a different spot randomly at the start of a new game.
• Tightrope Walking: The minigame TightRope Treachery. One player is walking a large, thick tightrope to reach the other side; the other three players are boarding naval warships to shoot cannonballs at their solo opponent to attempt to bring them down. Wind currents can also make the solo player fall down, so paying attention to the surroundings will be key. The sailing players must, in turn, be careful not to hit each other with the cannonballs, as the impacted players will lose precious time while they recover. If time runs out or the solo player falls down, then the other three players win; if the solo player reaches the goal, then they win.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: The biggest challenge in the board Luigi's Engine Room comes from the color-coded doors (red and blue) that either obstruct or open paths. In each turn, one colored set of doors will be closed whole the other will be open; but when the turn ends or a character lands on certain Event Spaces, the doors will swap their states, making it so the open ones close and the closed ones open. Cleverness (and, in some cases, also luck) will be important for a player to work around these doors and reach the current position of the Star to buy it.
• Traveling-Pipe Bulge: The game does this in the "Pipe Maze" minigame, with a treasure chest dropped into a pipe.
• Uncommon Time: The music that plays over the board results screen is in 7/4 (divided 4+3).
• Underground Level:
  • The minigame Whack-A-Plant takes a solo player into an underground room with several pipes and trampolines. Piranha Plants pop out of the pipes, and the player gets one coin for every Piranha Plant stomped on.
  • The minigame Ghost Guess takes a solo player into an underground cavern partially lit, and inhabited by Boos. The player has to touch the leading Boo by looking at the distinctive shadow. Success will grant them coins, while failure will deduct coins from them.
• Under the Sea:
  • In the minigame Deep Sea Divers, the characters are split into two teams. In each team, one player dives underwater to reach a treasure chest and tie it with a string to the boat where the other character awaits; next, the character on the boat has to move around the surface to pull the chest into the surface to open it and claim the coins within. The bigger chests are heavier, taking longer to carry to the surface.
  • In the minigame Treasure Divers, players have to swim underwater to grab chests and take them to the surface to claim their coins. Unlike in Deep Sea Divers, the players are on their own, and must avoid the aquatic enemies lurking in the area (namely Bloopers and Sushi); if a character is hit while carrying a chest, they'll end up releasing it, forcing them to grab the chest once again.
• Unique Enemy: The game has strange-looking Spike Koopas, which appear only in the Mini-Game "Key-pa-Way" and nowhere else in the series.
• Wasn't That Fun?: Landing on a Bowser Space and being chosen for the event in which he steals coins from all of the party members ends with him cheerfully asking, "Was that fun or what?"
• Wind-Up Key: The game has a "how many times can you wind up the toy in X seconds" minigame.

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