Mario Party 3 is now live in the N64 library on the Nintendo Switch Online platform, just in case you have any deteriorating personal relationships you’d like to sever quickly.
The third entry in Nintendo’s long-running party game franchise, Mario Party 3 was the first game in the series to allow players to hold onto three items rather than just one. It also relieved Toad of his hosting duties, replacing him with the Millenium Star. The game included what were then 70 new minigames and marked the series’ first appearances of Daisy and Waluigi. It introduced Duel Boards in which two players fight with partners. It’s the first game in the series to introduce the ability to play with a handicap and the first to introduce a single-player story mode, both of which are series mainstays to this day.
Nintendo announced the launch via its social media accounts.
For those who’ve never played Mario Party 3 or any Mario Party game before, players make their way around a digital board game, usually based on dice rolls. Each square players land on starts a minigame in which players compete for coins, deciding the eventual winner. The mini-games, franchise-wide, are designed to make you hate yourself and everyone you love. Once Mario Party has successfully driven you into a rage, it then concludes each game by upending the playing field and awarding random coin amounts to upset the podium places.
This series is famous for infuriating the player through constant, randomised chaos that obviates any display of skill, large or small. Being good at the mini-games or lucking out on dice rolls couldn’t matter less. It doesn’t matter because you aren’t going to win. The game will wait, sneering, at the finish line, ready to rob you blind no matter what.
It’s infuriating, but some people really love it. I don’t understand why, I assume there’s something wrong with them. But Nintendo wouldn’t keep making Mario Party games if people weren’t playing them.
You can play this one on Nintendo Switch Online if you have an active Expansion Pack subscription.
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