Mario Party: The Top 100 is a video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS on November 2017 in North America, and later in December everywhere else. It's the fifth handheld installment in the Mario Party series, and the third to be released for the aforementioned system.
Uniquely among all games in the series, including both traditional and experimental, The Top 100 stands out for not featuring board-based gameplay except for a specific mode (Minigame Match, which only features one board). Instead, the game is conceived as a celebration of the Mario Party series, having a collection of the 100 best minigames scooped from the 10 numbered, home console games; the rules and mechanics for the majority of them remain intact, but the visuals and sound have been updated, and some of them had their control schemes modified (for example, some may make use of the touch screen, the microphone or the gyroscope).
The primary mode is Minigame Island, where a players selects a character of their liking and guides them across a series of maps featuring minigames where the goal is to win, working similarly to modes like Mini-Game Coaster from Mario Party 2 or King of the River from Mario Party 7. Toad and Toadette serve as the hosts, but non-Toad hosts from the previous console games make cameos. Much like Mario Party: Star Rush, the game is compatible with amiibo functionality.
The number of minigames per references game isn't uniform. Out of the 100 minigames available, there are 6 from the first game, 13 from the second, 12 from the third, 14 from the fourth, 17 from the fifth, 9 from the sixth, 12 from the seventh, 3 from the eighth, 10 from the ninth and 4 from the tenth. There's also a Collection menu that shows brief descriptions on the aforementioned games and some of the hosts that appeared respectively in them.
This is not only the last Mario Party game released for the Nintendo 3DS (and by extension the last game overall by Nd Cube for said system), but also the last experimental game developed before the arrival of Super Mario Party in 2018, which aimed to bring back the traditional gameplay format (though the idea of replicating minigames from past games was revisited with Mario Party Superstars, which otherwise continued the back-to-basics trend started by Super).
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: The minigame Toadstool Titan returns from Mario Party 3 under the new name of "Mush Pit". This name would be used again when the minigame returned in Mario Party Superstars.
- Asset Actor: Since Koopa Kid has been gone from the series since Mario Party 7, Bowser Jr. takes his role as Bowser's sidekick during The Final Battle.
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: 12 of the 1-on-3 minigames from previous games return in this game, and have a dedicated minigame Pack in Minigame Match mode.
- Boss-Only Level: World 3-4 in Minigame Island consists of only one minigame, Slot Car Derby, and is the only time in the game where Toad takes part in a minigame as one of your opponents.
- Breaking Old Trends: Not counting Mario Party Advance (which actually reduced the usual cast of playable characters to only 4), this is the first game since Mario Party 2 that doesn't introduce any new playable characters.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory:
- If the player has access to any Super Mario series amiibo, they can tap them at certain points during Minigame Island to earn extra coins. Each amiibo is only usable once per day. If the player is on a space featuring either a Goomba or Koopa Troopa, they can use an amiibo of that character to obtain a greater reward.
- If the player runs out of lives in Minigame Island mode, they can use an amiibo of any Super Mario series character to gain a free extra life without losing any progress.
- Button Mashing: Certain minigames from previous games that involved players pressing certain buttons as quickly as possible return, and are grouped within the Action category. They even have a dedicated minigame pack, the Masher Pack.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Any mini-game that has changed controls and/or objectives:
- "Face Lift" uses the touch screen instead of the buttons.
- "Shy Guy Says" uses L and R instead of A and B.
- In "Cake Factory", you have to press A twice to both grab and place your ingredient, instead of holding A to hold onto the ingredient.
- "Dizzy Dancing", "Hexagon Heat" and "Tidal Toss" are affected by the overall change of ground-pounding controls from A>Z to A>Anote . "Bounce 'n' Trounce" changes the soin attack controls from Z to B. Additionally, the victory conditions for "Dizzy Dancing" change from being the player being the first player to catch the note (which ended the game) into being the player who catches the most notes.
- "Kareening Koopas" and "Crate and Peril" have you tilt the screen instead of using an analog stick.
- The controls for "Mario Speedwagons" are reversed - that is, A to accelerate and R to shift gears.
- In "Three Throw", you press A twice instead of B to throw. This makes it impossible to throw from the ground.
- "Cage-in Cookin'" and "Dizzy Rotisserie" are affected by the overall change in ranks in mini-games.
- "Balloon Busters" and "Dart Attack" do away with speech-based commands in favour of blowing into the microphone (or pressing L). Additionally, in the former, one player is eliminated at a time.
- The change in camera angle in "Track and Yield".
- Demoted to Extra: After having been playable characters in Mario Party: Star Rush, the previous 3DS Mario Party game, Toad, Toadette, and Donkey Kong are all reduced to non-playable characters, while Diddy Kong is completely absent.
- Toad and Toadette both serve as the game's hosts and appear in certain minigames.
- Donkey Kong only appears as the opponent of the returning Donkey Kong minigames from Mario Party 7.
- Graceful Loser:
- After defeating Toad in a game of Slot Car Derby during Minigame Island, he will cheer you on and thank you for letting him play.
- When the player completes The Final Battle in Minigame Island, Bowser will compliment them for keeping things interesting, and challenge them to come back for a rematch sometime.
- Green Hill Zone: The map for World 1 in Minigame Island resembles a grassland similar to the early stages in many of the 2D Mario platformers. Many of the minigames featured within take place in woodlands or forests.
- Ground Pound: A prevalent move in certain minigames from the Action category, such as Tidal Toss (3, where a solo character pounds the boat they're in to send tidal waves to the rivals to push them away) and Defuse or Lose (5, where pounding over a fuse delays its arrival to the King Bob-omb and avoid its explosion for as long as possible). Interestingly, the minigame The Great Deflate (4) is classified within the Skill category instead.
- Law of 100: In Minigame Island mode, players will receive an extra life for every 100 coins they collect.
- Legacy Boss Battle: The Final Battle from Mario Party 4, which was originally the last Story Mode minigame of that game and settled the fight between the player's character and Bowser, serves as the final minigame in Minigame Island. The fight remains the same aside from some tweaks and changes, but is now presented in a different context from its original game's premise.
- Lethal Lava Land: World 4-3 in Minigame Island is designed to resemble Bowser's usual domain. Fittingly, all of the minigames here feature lava and fire, such as Bumper Balls, Hexagon Heat, Magma Mayhem, and Heat Stroke.
- Level Ate: All the minigames in the Chow Down pack prominently feature food.
- Luck-Based Mission: Some of the revisited minigames are reliant on luck instead of skill or reflexes, and the game acknowledges this by classifying them within the Lucky category. The most notorious one is Deck Hands, from 7.
- Marathon Level: World 3 of Minigame Island. Not only does it have the most minigames of any world with 30, but the player is also required to make detours back to Worlds 1 and 2 before they can complete it.
- Match-Three Game: The minigames classified within the Puzzler category, namely Block Star (6), Stick 'n' Spin (7), and Jewel Drop (10). The mechanics are different in each, but all of them involve connecting incoming objects or entities of the same color to make them disappear and earn points.
- Megamix Game: As its name implies, this game features one hundred minigames taken from the ten numbered installments of the series, with redone graphics and sometimes different controls.
- New Game Plus: Once the player completes Minigame Island, they unlock the ability to play through the mode again on Hard mode. In Hard mode, the player is required to come in first in each minigame in order to progress, and they can no longer use amiibo to avoid getting Game Over.
- Nostalgia Level: In addition to bringing back 100 minigames from past installments in the Mario Party series, this game also features modes hailing from said installments. Minigame Island revolves around the player completing minigames one by one as they pass by them in a world map, just like in the original Mario Party and equivalents modes from other games (like Mini-Game Coaster from Mario Party 2 and King of the River in Mario Party 7). Minigame Match revisits the mechanics from Balloon Bash, a mode introduced in Mario Party: Star Rush. Decathlon, in which four players play various minigames and earn points based on their performances, hails from Mario Party 5 and the similarly-named Decathlon Castle in 7. Lastly, Championship Mode is based on the idea of winning a certain number of minigames before the other players do that appeared in multiple games from 2 onward.
- Oddball in the Series: Even among the handheld games in the series, which (save for Mario Party DS) have been the most experimental with the core formula (even in comparison to the ninth and tenth numbered games), The Top 100 sets itself apart from all of them due to eschewing almost completely the board gameplay in favor of showcasing the minigames in various special modes. The main mode is Minigame Island, which is exclusive to single-player and plays more in line with similar progression-based modes from past games that were only conceived as side content.
- Palmtree Panic: The Beach Fun Pack contains minigames that all take place on a tropical coast, or out in the ocean.
- Plot Coupon: In Minigame Match, the objective is to buy Stars like in the older Mario Party games, being available for 10 coins apiece, and whoever has the most by the end is the winner. However, instead of being found in Star spaces, they're encased within Star Balloons (of Mario Party: Star Rush fame). The numbers of Stars found in each Balloon varies, and the player who passes by them can buy more than one as long as they can afford them.
- Racing Minigame: This being one of the most recurring types of minigames in the series, The Top 100 brings back several of them. Thanks to this, the game features a dedicated mode called Racing Pack, which consists entirely of minigames where the objective is to be the first player to reach a goal.
- Recurring Boss: Donkey Kong and Bowser both appear at multiple points during Minigame Island to challenge the player to minigames. While Donkey Kong's minigames feature him as the opponent, the player never gets a chance to fight back against Bowser until The Final Battle.
- The Rival: Because he doesn't appear in the board game mode to serve as a friendly NPC, Donkey Kong's only role in this game is to serve as a boss opponent in his minigames.
- Shifting Sand Land: World 2-2 and the later half of World 2-3 in Minigame Island resemble a sandy desert. The minigames featured within take place in similar environments.
- Shooting Gallery: Surprisingly, despite the large amount of target-shooting minigames in the series, The Top 100 only brings back two of them: Dart Attack (7) and Aim of the Game (8). Both of them are part of the Skill category.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: Several minigames of this nature are brought back, and often involve pressing a button or pad/stick direction that is being dictated by someone or something (or, alternatively, avoid pressing that button or direction). There isn't a specific category for these minigames, but most of them are either in Skill (like Shy Guy Says from 1) or Brainy (like The Beat Goes On from 3).
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The later half of World 4-1 in Minigame Island is where all of the minigames taking place in snowy or icy areas are located. Appropriately, the map is designed to resemble a snowy forest. Many of the same minigames are included in the Frosty minigame pack.
- Sphere Factor: In addition to the eponymous Trope Namer from Mario Party 7, other minigames of this type like Bumper Balls (2) and Bounce 'n' Trounce (3) appear. The former one has two teams of characters guiding a large ball through an obstacle course to the goal, and is part of the Racing category; the latter two have the character ride the balls and knock away each other until only one remains, and are part of the Action category.
- Token Non-Human: Yoshi is the only one of the playable cast that isn't human.
- Video-Game Lives: The player has a limited number of tries in Minigame Island mode. They will lose one if they come in last place during a minigame. If the player runs out of lives, they will have to start over from the last checkpoint they reached.
