10 Frustrating Mario Party Moments That Ruined Friendships

The year is 1999. A Nintendo 64 console lies on the carpet, having been forcefully pulled from the outlet. Broken controllers are scattered all over the room, with four friends engaged in a violet screaming match while standing over the wreckage. What happened?

Not much. Just your typical game of Mario Party.

Nintendo's flagship party franchise, which released its 10th installment earlier this year, is one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time, but it sure did get frustrating. Each one is one large board game, with players rolling the dice, progressing around the board and trying to collect stars. Whoever ends up with the most stars by the end of the game wins.

Sounds simple enough, right?

But in practice, the game seemed designed to baffle and frustrate, leaving players in fits of rage and turning on their friends, like a much more colorful version of The Hunger Games. It was full of ways to gang up on and steal from opponents, so for middle schoolers, as they looked over in shock while their best friend stole all of their stars, the game was like a crash course in betrayal. 

And while every time, we tricked ourselves into thinking the most skilled player would win, the game usually relied on pure luck more than anything else. Leave your sense of justice at the door. This is Mario Party.

Over the course of 17 years of totally unfair minigames and frustrating gameplay mechanics, here are 10 Mario Party moments that completely destroyed friendships. 

Let's get to this one right off the bat, because it was one of the most notoriously frustrating aspects of the game.

So you've gone through 50 turns of Mario Party, which can often take one or two full hours. It's a close game, but through sheer determination and fortitude, you've managed to pull ahead. Your buddies both have three stars, but you've managed to come away with five. You win, right?

If only it was that simple. You've forgotten one thing, one of the most baffling additions to the series.

After the game has ostensibly ended, the powers that be decide to hand out bonus stars for a variety of categories. One is an extra star awarded to whomever won the most minigames. That makes sense, right? The minigames require a level of skill, so that person gets a bonus.

Then there's a star for whoever had the most coins at once. Huh, okay. There's another for whoever landed on the most ? spaces. To be clear, that is completely random, and before that, the ? spaces weren't anything particularly useful. 

And then in some games, there's one for landing on the most red spaces. The red spaces that take away your coins. Yes, you get a bonus for doing something that you're supposed to actively avoid. That's like if Monopoly awarded extra money for going to jail the most.