If GoldenEye is where young gamers learned their potential, Mario Party is where they fulfilled it. It goes even beyond that. Mario Party is where things become straight up malicious. Remember how in some scenarios everyone is a dick and it's fine? Forget all that, because in Mario Party, everyone is a dick, and it's most certainly not okay. Mario Party games are virtual boardgames where you move around the map and compete in minigames to earn coins that buy stars and other items. Whoever has the most stars after a certain number of turns wins. It turns your living room into a Lord of the Flies-type situation with human nature revealing its ugly head and shoving it in your face. It's always a downward spiral. One minigame you're on a team with someone, stoked about the camaraderie; the next one, they're the reason you lose. The game constantly switches between making you team up with someone and then having you all go at it at once. Who wouldn't want to screw over their friends after having all three of them against you in one game? The ultimate dick move is when you land on a 'Boo' space, giving you the ability to steal coins or stars. Watch as your friends turn on each other, frantically hoping not to get picked like putty in your hands. Things get straight up desperate. Combine all of this betrayal with a bunch of minigames that frequently have shoddy controls or instructions that don't seem too healthy for your controller. And then on top of all that there's the general boardgame annoyance caused by waiting for players to finish their turn. It's like there's always something going on, picking at your psyche, creating layer after layer of irritation. At what point do you realise you're a dick? When someone throws a controller at a wall? When someone finally gets up, shuts the system off and leaves? Mario Party is like some sort of sick and twisted social experiment; it's probably responsible for turning children into nihilists. All of this evil, hidden under Nintendo's smooth, family-friendly gloss; lying beneath the kaleidoscopic cover art and Mario's empty smile.
