Video Game / Mario Party: Star Rush

Mario Party: Star Rush is a video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS in 2016. It's the fourth handheld installment in the Mario Party series, and the second for the 3DS.

Following Mario Party: Island Tour on 3DS and Mario Party 10 on Wii U, which both took the Mario Party series in different directions, Star Rush once again shakes up the Mario Party formula with its main board game mode, Toad Scramble. Each player plays as a different colored Toad, and the goal is to collect more stars than anyone else by winning boss minigames and collecting coins. Each board has a set number of boss minigames that must be activated by one of the players landing on their designated space, and the game ends once all the boss minigames have been completed. What makes Toad Scramble unique is how the players move around the game board. Compared to previous games, where players could only move in one direction at a time, the boards are grid-based and allow the players to move around in any direction they want. Additionally, all four players roll their dice and move at the same time instead of taking turns. Once all of the bosses have been defeated, the game ends, and the extra coins that the players have collected will be automatically traded for Stars at ten coins apiece. The player who collected the most stars will be named the Super Star.

Toad Scramble introduces the Ally system, where the Toads can collect other playable characters that appear on the board to join their team. Once a player has some allies, they can switch which character on the team is the leader between turns. Allies come with special Dice Blocks that have different numbers from the normal Dice Block, and they can also interact with character-specific items around the board to earn extra coins, allowing for different strategies. Extra allies can help with smaller dice rolls that add to the player’s own, and they also appear during boss minigames to play along and help score points for their team. The ally system would return in Super Mario Party with many of the same mechanics.

Aside from Toad Scramble, the game features a variety of other side modes that are unlocked as the player plays through the game. These include the Coinathlon, a racing game where players take part in a rotating series of mini-games where they collect coins as quickly as possible, and each coin they collect allows them to move one space on the racing board, Balloon Bash, which takes some of Toad Scramble’s mechanics and applies them to a modified version of the original Mario Party board game system, and Mario Shuffle, a two-player board game in which players must race to be the first to move three characters to their opponent’s side of a linear board.

This game is compatible with amiibo, with the second wave of the Super Mario amiibo line launching the same week. This wave introduced new figures of Wario, Waluigi, Daisy, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Rosalina, and Boo. All amiibo figures of Mario series characters are compatible with the game and can be used to unlock different exclusive perks for the various game modes, such as starting with that character as an ally in Toad Scramble, or access to better Dice Blocks in other modes.

There is a free version of the game called Mario Party Star Rush - Party Guest downloadable from the Nintendo 3DS eShop. The mode contains a few minigames for single player play, but its main purpose is to connect to other players that have a copy of the full game for full multiplayer options. If the player buys the full game after playing Party Guest, they can transfer their save data to the full game.

With only 53 minigames, this game has the second-lowest collection of minigames in the series, with only the original Mario Party having fewer (50).

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This game provides examples of:

• A Day in the Limelight: The main mode of this game places the spotlight on the different colored Toads who serve as the default playable characters, and are treated as the leaders of their teams at the end of each game.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If a computer player is prompted to choose a minigame to play, they will never pick the luck based minigames, which are "Fruit or Foe", "Conkdor de Force", and "Greedy Eats". The latter two minigames rely on the I Know You Know I Know strategy, which become luck based when playing against computer players.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Much like other 3DS games, if the game is played for long enough, a notification will appear after the player returns to the Party Plaza that reads "If you need to, take a little break. The party's not going anywhere!", accompanied by an image of Yoshi sleeping.
• Artificial Stupidity: In Toad Scramble, computer players will always switch their lead character to the most recent ally they have recruited from the board. While most of the characters have Dice Blocks that are balanced enough for such a decision to be reasonable, Daisy and Rosalina have Dice Blocks that are only useful under certain conditions, so the computer could potentially find themselves using worse Dice Blocks if those conditions aren't met.
• Astral Finale: The final board of each world in Toad Scramble always ends with a boss fight against Bowser, and all three of his fights take place in space, with Bowser attacking from a flying saucer that transforms into a Bowser mecha, and the player characters moving around atop floating space stations.
• Auto-Scrolling Level:
  • In Acornucopia, the screen moves forward constantly, and the players walk down a dirt path while carrying a plate of five acorns over their heads. The players must avoid wandering Goombrats that charge at them, as getting hit will cause them to lose one of their acorns. When the players reach the end of the path, the player with the most remaining acorns wins.
  • Bowser's Fire Hazard slowly moves to the right automatically, as the platforms closer to the left side of the screen fall, potentially taking players that fail to keep up with them. Players must move to the right to survive, all the while avoiding the fire stream attack from Bowser's Clown Car.
• Ballistic Bone: In Mega Dry Bones' Femur Fever, Dry Bones attacks by throwing giant bones at the players. The bones travel in a boomerang motion, starting at either the left or right side of the screen before flying to the other side, passing all the player characters along the way. Players must time their jump so they clear the bone in order to avoid damage.
• Banana Peel: In Bowser's Shocking Slipup, if players hit the Roulette Blocks at the wrong time, instead of shocking Bowser with lightning, the blocks will instead dispense banana peels that cause any characters that step on them to slip and fall.
• Big Boo's Haunt:
  • The World 2 boards in Toad Scramble take place inside a dark haunted mansion illuminated by candlelight. These boards are inhabited by ghostly Peepas that take on the appearance of ally characters, and haunt any players unlucky enough to recruit them.
  • Haunted Hallways challenges players to navigate the maze-like halls of a haunted mansion and locate the goal before anyone else. The layout of the mansion is random every time the minigame is played, as is the location of the room containing the goal. Players must also take care to avoid Boos, as they will take them back to start if they get caught.
• Boring, but Practical: Toadette's Cutie Dice Block cannot roll higher than 4, but is guaranteed to roll at least 3. It's very useful for moving consistently each turn, but will never let the user move very far.
• Breath Weapon: In Bowser's Fire Hazard, Bowser attacks the players using a stream of fire that his Clown Car fires from a cannon coming out of its mouth. Players must jump over it while also avoiding falling off the platforms as they crumble below their feet.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Players that have purchased amiibo can use them to unlock special perks in certain modes.
  • Toad Scramble allows players to use amiibo to start with the chosen character as an ally right out of the gate.
  • In Coinathlon, amiibo can be used to double all items the player collects.
  • In Balloon Bash, amiibo can be used to grant players more powerful Dice blocks.
  • In Mario Shuffle, amiibo will give the selected character a limited-use special Dice Block to influence their roll. Additionally, if the amiibo has save data for Mario Party 10, they can get better regular Dice Blocks.
  • In Challenge Tower, if the player makes a mistake, they can use an amiibo to switch to another character and pick up where they left off instead of starting over.
• Button Mashing:
  • In Toad Scramble, any players who didn't make it to the Boss space before a Boss Minigame can mash the A button to join the battle sooner.
  • The boss minigame Bowser's Hit or Missile Mania requires the players to mash the A button to charge up power to fire missiles at Bowser.
• Call-Back: Cheep Cheep reach features the players using a fishing rod with a white gloved hand on the hook, looking very similar to the ones used in Cast Aways from Mario Party
• Camera Abuse:
  • In Rolls For Moles, if a player manages to hit every Monty Mole with their ball and score a Perfect, one of the Monty Moles will collide with the screen.
  • In Bowser's Fence Fury, any players that get with one of Bowser's attacks will be launched into the screen and leave a crack before falling off.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: The main player characters in Toad Scramble are different colored Toads, with each Toad's color corresponding to their player number: red for Player 1, blue for Player 2, green for Player 3, and yellow for Player 4.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • When only one boss is left in Toad Scramble, the player in last place will be given a chance to pick a card to get a special item.
  • Rosalina's Wondrous Dice Block is similar to a regular Dice Block, except the 1, 2, 3, and 4 faces are replaced with a number that matches the user's current placement. If used by a player in last place, they are guaranteed to roll at least a 4, but it gets weaker as they rise through the ranks.
• Continuity Nod: One minigame is titled "Dodge Fuzzy, Get Dizzy", which is a reference to the infamous "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" level from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
• Cosmetic Award:
  • If the player earns a Star Rush or Super Star Rush on any board, that board will be marked with an icon on the board select screen to show that they did it.
  • Upon reaching the top of the Master Tower in Challenge Tower, the player receives the Tower Cup, a trophy that appears outside the mode's entrance in the Party Plaza.
• Demoted to Extra: After having been playable characters in the previous 3DS installment, Island Tour, Boo and Bowser Jr. only appear as enemies in certain mini-games. They are only playable in Mario Shuffle, and only if the player has access to their amiibo.
• Developer's Foresight: For the boss minigames “Mega Goomba’s Bad Dream”, “Mega Blooper’s Bayside Bop”, and “Bowser Jr.’s Pound for Ground”, the bonus points at the end are titled “Finisher Bonus” instead of “Final Attack”, since you're not directly attacking these bosses, but rather fulfilling a different objective.
• Digital Pinball Tables: The Coin Chaos minigame Pinball Brawl is a straightforward game of pinball. Players use a pair of flippers to launch green Koopa shells at a pair of coin-shaped bumpers that dispense coins when they are hit, then hit the coins with the shells to collect them. Additional targets include Goombas that get in the way and drop coins when hit, and a ? bumper at the back of the table that activates a slot machine that can summon other characters if they match three, such as a Hammer Bro that throws hammers at the bumpers to make coins spill everywhere.
• Ending by Ascending: The final mode that the player unlocks is the Challenge Tower, where the chosen character must climb to the top of a tower while avoiding Amps hidden on certain panels.
• Everyone Has a Special Move: New to this game are Character Dice Blocks. The four main Toads have a Standard Dice Block with the numbers 1 through 6 on it, but all the other characters have Dice Blocks unique to them that have different numbers on the faces, allowing players who obtain allies to use their Blocks for different strategies.
• Excuse Plot: Aside from a vague note at the beginning of each game of Toad Scramble indicating that some Stars have been stolen, the game has no plot to speak of.
• Fishing Minigame: Cheep Cheep Reach is a Coin Chaos minigame where players use a fishing line with a white-gloved hand on the end to catch Cheep Cheeps in a river to earn coins while avoiding the Urchins.
• Gameplay Grading: The player is given a ranking of A, B, or C after completing a song in Rhythm Recital.
• The Generic Guy: The four playable colored Toads in Toad Scramble are defined entirely by their color. The character profile for each in the Character Museum lampshades their lack of any other distinctive traits.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Gold Bullet Bills appear in World 3 of Toad Scramble, and are shinier than their non-gold counterparts. They are fired out of cannons dictated by a roulette at the start of each turn, and chase any players in their path to designated safe zones while leaving behind coins for the players to collect.
• Goomba Stomp: Mario and Luigi have the unique ability to stomp on Goombas they find hiding in tall grass while moving around the boards to earn a few extra coins.
• Green Hill Zone: World 0 of Toad Scramble takes place atop grassy cliffs up in the clouds. These boards have no hazards or gimmicks, and are considered to be the "practice" boards.
• Green Thumb: Peach, Daisy, and Toadette have the ability to make flower buds bloom by landing nearby them. Doing so will earn a handful of coins for their team.
• Grimy Water: Bridgesaw Puzzle tasks the players with crossing a river of poisonous purple water often found in the jungle settings of the Mario platformers. Players accomplish this by selecting a series of tiles with the correct shapes to fit together and build a bridge across.
• Ground Pound: Certain minigames give the players the ability to jump into the air and slam down by pressing the jump button twice.
  • Mega Dry Bones's Femur Fever requires the players to use their Ground Pound ability to power up cannons to fire at Dry Bones.
  • In Bowser Jr.'s Pound For Pound, the arena is covered in flashing buttons that the players must ground pound in order to score points while avoiding Jr.'s attacks. Each button is deactivated once it's been pounded, so players must hit each button once in order to finish the battle.
  • Petey Piranha jumps up into the air and attempts to slam down on the players during his boss fight in Petey Piranha's Shell Smackdown. However, the shock from his ground pounds shakes the surrounding trees so much that it causes Koopa shells to rain down, which the players can throw at him to deal damage.
• Humongous Mecha: All of Bowser's boss minigames involve him riding a giant robot modeled after himself, although the head and limbs don't reveal themselves until he Turns Red.
• Interface Screw: One item that players can use against their opponents in Coinathlon is the Blooper, which covers one of their rival's screens in ink splatters that obstruct their view of the current minigame.
• Lethal Lava Land:
  • World 4 of Toad Scramble is located in and around Bowser's castle, which is flooded with lava. The lava level will periodically go up and down, submerging lower-level sections of the board and preventing the players from accessing them. Players standing on spaces that get submerged when the lava rises will get burned and lose coins.
  • Lava Labyrinth is a minigame where players race down a series of platforms and grates over a lake of lava to grab a gold, silver or bronze treasure chest, each one earning first, second, and third place, respectively. Along the way, Magmaarghs rise from the lava and slowly move over certain spaces of the map, temporarily blocking the way and possibly forcing players to find a faster way around them.
• Level Ate:
  • World 3's boards are located atop giant cakes and cookies. These boards are adorned with all sorts of sweet treats, such as soft-serve ice cream, bon-bons, wafer cookies the size of mountains in the background, and cookies modeled after various characters. Some of the boards contain Gold Bullet Bill cannons, which have their line of fire marked with a trail of sprinkles on the ground in front of them.
  • The minigame Piece of Cake takes place atop a giant cake. Each round begins with the players being shown the inside of a cake, which contains a variety of different placed fruits. After ten seconds, the fruits are hidden, and the players have to cut the cake in the right spot to match the fruits shown on a slice held by a Shy Guy. If the player cuts the right slice, they get a point, and the player with the most after three rounds wins.
• Level in the Clouds: Silver Lining takes place high up in the sky, and the only footing the players have to work with are Bouncy Clouds.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Fruit or Foe. In this minigame, players take turns picking from five different houses in hopes of finding a Shy Guy with a plate of apples. At best, players can get a Shy Guy with five apples. At worst, they can get a Chain Chomp that gives them nothing. There's no way to know where the best Shy Guy is until he's found.
  • Kamek's Card Tricks can become this in Toad Scramble mode if a player goes into it with a team of Allies. It's a memory game where the players are shown a series of cards with both up and down arrows on them, with the objective being to pick cards with down arrows to pull back on a slingshot to launch balls at Kamek to score points. Human players have no control over what cards their computer-controlled allies pick, however, so they might hurt the player by picking up arrows, or worse, the Kamek cards, allowing Kamek to attack the player and cost them points.
  • Two of the three types of ally/coin duels fall under this, with one having the players hit a 1-6 dice block, and the other having them pick a card from 1-5, with the winner being determined by whoever gets the highest number in both duels.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: In Bowser's Hit or Missile Mania, each player's space station comes with a shield that they can raise with the B button to block Bowser's incoming attacks. As long as their shields are raised, they can no longer charge up their own missile attacks, so they will ideally want to keep their shield out for as little time as possible.
• Lucky Seven: Diddy Kong's Triple 7 Dice Block has a 50/50 chance of rolling either a 0 or a 7.
• Magikarp Power: The 1, 2, and 6 faces on Daisy's Friendly Dice Block are replaced with a number matching however many characters are currently on her team. While a team of only Daisy and Toad gives the block a 50/50 chance of rolling a 2, the more teammates she has, the more consistently she will be able to roll higher numbers.
• Marathon Level: The Master Tower in Challenge Tower. The Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert Towers have 30, 50, and 70 floors respectively. The Master Tower has 500 floors. Unlike the other Towers, the game automatically saves a checkpoint every 100 floors.
• Match-Three Game:
  • Tiles and Tribulations challenges the players to move tiles around a grid depicting different enemies to line up three in a row to earn coins. The players use a square-shaped cursor to rotate four pieces in a clockwise motion.
  • Boo's Block Party is a side mode where blocks with the numbers 1 through 4 rise from the bottom of the screen. Players can move their cursor around to select blocks and rotate them through the four numbers to match three in either a horizontal or vertical line to eliminate them and score points. The objective is to go as long as possible without letting the blocks rise to the top of the screen.
• The Maze: House Of Boos places players in a maze where they must run around to collect coins. However, there are also Boos chasing after them, and the Boos can phase through walls without adhering to the maze's layout.
• The Millstone: The World 2 boards have Peepas that disguise themselves as ally characters, and they appear at the same time as the actual character. You won't know if the ally you're collecting is real until after you do so, and if you accidentally recruit a Peepa, their Cursed Dice Block roll will deduct from your roll instead of adding to it for as long as they're following you.
• Model Museum: The Character Museum allows players to view models of any characters they've seen throughout the game. The player can show some of their animations by pressing the X button, and unlock stamps for any characters that they have access to amiibo figures of.
• Old Save Bonus: If the player uses an amiibo with save data from Mario Party 10 in certain game modes, they can unlock special perks, including more powerful Dice Blocks.
• Paintball Episode: Splat a Stamp sees each player using a slingshot to fire paintballs onto a giant stamp of an enemy character such as a Shy Guy or Bullet Bill, with the goal of covering as much of the stamp with their color as possible. The game is similar to Flinger Painting from Mario Party 9, but instead of covering a blank canvas, in this game, only paint that lands on the parts of the stamp that make up the character shape will count toward the players' scores.
• Palette Swap: The main playable characters in Toad Scramble are four Toads, who are only distinguishable based on their color.
• Palmtree Panic: The World 1 boards take place on a series of tropical islands. 1-1 is three small islands with a wooden bridge connecting them all, 1-2 is a single large island in the shape of a star, and 1-3 has a series of wooden boardwalks the players can navigate.
• The Place: The minigame Haunted Hallways takes place in the haunted hallways.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: Only the player that lands on a Boss Space will be in the boss minigame at first; the others have to wait until their character reaches the boss space before they can join, with the length they must wait depending on how many spaces away they were. Players can mash the A button to reach the boss space sooner, but the computer players will never make use of this, so players can easily reach the boss first, even if their computer rivals were technically closer.
• Pop Quiz: One minigame fittingly shares its name with this trope. The minigame is divided into three rounds, and in each, four hatches will open and show the players four enemy characters doing different actions before they are hidden again. Once the enemies are hidden, the players will be asked a question based on what they just saw, and must choose whichever one of the four hatches contains the enemy that the question asked for.
• Promoted to Playable: Diddy Kong makes his playable Mario Party debut after being a board host in DS and hosting a bonus minigame in 9.
• Pun-Based Title: One minigame is titled Tiles and Tribulations, which is a reference to the phrase "trials and tribulations".
• Racing Minigame:
  • In Corkscrew Climb, four players run around a spiral path on the outside of a tower in a single file line. The catch is that Amps appear throughout the path, and the players closer to the front of the line will have less time to react to their appearances. If a player gets hit by an Amp, they will fall off the tower before reappearing at the back of the line. Once the players reach the top of the tower, placements are decided by the order in which they reach the top.
  • Blowboat Battle challenges the players to guide a small toy sailboat to the end of a course before anyone else. Players blow into the 3DS microphone to use an air pump to blow wind that pushes their boat forward, and they use the Circle Pad to change the wind's direction to steer around floating beach balls and toy Cheep Cheeps that get in their way.
  • In Jump to Conclusion, players race to be the first to jump to the top of a 45-step staircase. They can jump either one or two steps at a time, but there are Piranha Creepers that inhabit certain steps that will stun any players that jump on them.
  • Dodge Fuzzy, Get Dizzy places each player atop a lift powered by a screw, and they must use the touch screen to spin the screw to raise the lift to the top as fast as possible, while avoiding Fuzzies that get in the way.
  • The boss minigame Bowser's Space Race has players pilot hover scooters carrying a bomb, and they race down a series of tracks to reach Bowser to toss the bomb at him to damage him and score points, all the while dodging a variety of attacks he sends their way. The players want to get to the end of the track as fast as they can, as the first person to reach the end will have a chance to grab a Mega Mushroom that lets their bomb do more damage and score more points.
• Rhythm Game: Rhythm Recital is a side mode where up to four players select a song from various classic Mario games, select one of four instruments, and then play the song. Notes fly towards each player at different times depending on their instrument of choice, and they must either press A or tap the touch screen with the right timing to hit as many notes as possible. At the end of the song, they will receive a grade based on their performance.
• Ring Out:
  • In Roller Revenge, the players must avoid falling from a platform atop a large structure. Players can try to push their opponents off the edge. Complicating this are four Spikes that throw Spike Bars that roll across the platform that cause anyone who touches them to get sent flying. While this minigame gives each player three "lives", once time expires, ties will be broken by whoever has the most.
  • Bowser's Power Bomb places players atop a platform floating in the sky, and challenges them to stay atop it without falling off. They can punch their opponents to try and push them off, but the real trouble comes from Bowser, who throws Bob-ombs onto the platform that explode and cause it to violently rock in different directions. Any players that fail to last through the 30-second timer will lose, and if the minigame shows up during a Coinathlon, they will lose some of their progress on the track.
• Secret Character: There are four playable characters that can be unlocked by collecting enough party points to reach certain levels. After being unlocked, the characters will start appearing randomly in Toad Scramble, and will be available from the character select in the other modes. Players unlock Toadette at level 4, Rosalina at level 6, Donkey Kong at level 8, and Diddy Kong at level 11. However, all but Toadette can be unlocked early if the player has access to their respective amiibo figures.
• Shooting Gallery:
  • Piranha Plantemonium places each of the four players on one side of a square grid of 25 Warp Pipes, with Piranha Plants that pop out of them. Each player has a cannon that they can move left and right, and they fire cannonballs at the plants to score points. Gold Piranha Plants are worth three points, and the giant Gold Piranhas will award ten points to the player that gets the final shot on them. Players can also temporarily stun the opponent on the opposite side of them if they hit them with a cannonball.
  • In Block Busters, each player is given a gun that fires balls, and take aim at a tower of blocks of different colors and shapes. The players fire balls at the individual blocks of the tower to knock them out. Each player must remove all the blocks that match their player color before anyone else in order to win.
  • The Coin Chaos minigame Goomba Gold Rush places each player in a minecart on a track, with a cannon built into it. Players can move their cart left and right, and use the A button to fire cannonballs at Goombas that wander around to score coins.
• Shout-Out: One of the Coin Chaos minigames is called Steal Diver, and it has the players control a submarine to collect coins. The name is a reference to the Steel Diver series of 3DS games, which also involved submarines.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: Mega Blooper's Bayside Bop is an unusual boss minigame in that the players don't attack Mega Blooper at all. Each "round" begins with a group of Bloopers bouncing a beach ball from one side of the screen to the other, with one Blooper for each character currently present. The Bloopers bounce the ball at different heights, creating different amounts of delay between each bounce. Once the Bloopers finish the sequence, the player characters must bounce the ball with the same timing that they were shown, with each character getting one chance to bounce the ball. If they press the A button with the correct timing, they will score points. If they miss the timing, they will stumble and get no points. This keeps going until the bar on the right fills up, at which point the minigame ends.
• Sleepy Enemy: The Mega Goomba in Mega Goomba's Bad Dream spends the first half of the minigame snoozing, leaving wandering regular Goombas as the only thing hindering the players from stealing the apples surrounding it. Once the players collect 25, however, the Goomba does awaken and start actively attacking players that get close to it.
• Slide Level: Leafboard Hoard is a Coin Chaos minigame where players ride atop a leaf down a wooden halfpipe track while collecting coins and avoiding Wigglers and thorny flowers.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: The board's music changes to a frantic remix when the last boss appears.
• Sphere Factor: In Rolling Rumble, each player stands atop a ball on a pedestal in the middle of a circus tent, and Shy Guys appear atop the pedestal rolling around on their own rubber balls. Players must knock the Shy Guys off of the pedestal in order to earn coins.
• Spin Attack: In Petey Piranha's boss fight, he can perform a horizontal spin that can send any green shells near him flying toward his attackers to damage them. The spin can also deflect shells thrown at him.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere:
  • In Parkour War, players must use a series of Mushroom Trampolines to carry three jewels to the top of a small platforming stage before anyone else does. Once the player takes a jewel to the top of the stage, they must then return to the bottom to grab another one, while still uncontrollably bouncing on the trampolines.
  • Silver Lining has the players bounce around a small level covered with Bouncy Clouds where they must collect as many coins as they can.
• Title Drop: The title "Star Rush" refers to a special rank that players can earn if they collect enough stars in a game of Toad Scramble. Depending on how many stars they get, the players can earn a Star Rush or a Super Star Rush.
• Turns Red: As in 9, Island Tour and 10, all of the boss minigames have a second phase that the boss enters once the battle is halfway over. These second phases add in new mechanics to make the minigames more difficult.
  • Mega Goomba's Bad Dream: Mega Goomba awakens from his nap and starts actively attacking the players as they try to steal his apples.
  • King Boo's Light Smite: The spinning platforms the players have to cross start spinning much faster.
  • Mega Monty Mole's in the Hole: More fake Monty Moles will appear in each round.
  • King Bob-omb's Boom D'etat: More bombs will fall from the sky in each round. Some bombs are already flashing as soon as they appear, while other are large and are worth three points instead of one, but slow down anyone who picks them up.
  • Petey Piranha's Shell Smackdown: Petey jumps around and attacks more often, and large green Shells will start to appear, which are worth more points if they hit him.
  • Mega Blooper's Bayside Bop: The music's speed goes up, and the speed of the ball the players bounce goes up in turn.
  • Mega Dry Bones's Femur Fever: The bones that Dry Bones throws are now on fire, and are thrown more frequently.
  • Kamek's Card Tricks: Kamek will start shuffling even more of the cards after they are hidden.
  • Bowser Jr.'s Pound for Pound: Jr. starts using two new attacks, those being rotating around with his Clown Car's arms extended, and spinning around before lunging in one direction.
  • Bowser's Space Race: Bowser starts using new attacks, such as blue fireballs that are faster than the red ones from the first phase, spiked balls that roll around on the track, and an arm attack that take up a large amount of the course.
  • Bowser's Shocking Slipup: Bowser starts attacking with Spiked Balls that roll around the arena and must be jumped over, and lasers that the players must keep moving in order to avoid. The roulettes on the item blocks also moves faster, making it more difficult to time hitting the Lightning Bolts.
  • Bowser's Hit-or-Missile Mania: Bowser starts launching black Spiked Balls that are much faster than his other attacks, and red Spiked balls that fly out of the player's sight, and the only indication that they're closing in is an alarm sound.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: After Bowser is defeated in any of his boss minigames, his mecha will fall into space before exploding, sending the Koopa King flying away and leaving a twinkle in his wake.
• Weakened by the Light: In King Boo's Light Smite, participants have to grab one of the Light Boxes that appears at the starting point, and carry it over a series of spinning platforms to bring it to King Boo and shine it on him to damage him and score points.
• Whack-a-Monster: Mega Monty Mole's in the Hole is a boss minigame where the objective is to hit the Mega Monty Mole with a hammer anytime it pops out of one of the holes in the arena. However, anytime it appears, it appears alongside a bunch of giant bombs that look like it that will do nothing but damage any players that try to hit them instead.

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