#mario party-e

[suppermariobroth]

High-resolution version of the play mat included with Mario Party-e, a board game for the Game Boy Advance e-Reader accessory (please zoom in to view details).

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[card-of-the-day]

Today's Card Is: Superstar's Hat

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: ANOTHER CRAB!

Debut: Mario Party-e

Look at it! It’s another crab! I love learning about another crab! I thought that Secret Crab would probably be the last Mario crab I found out about, but nope! Look at this one! It’s perfect! I love it! I love those eyes!

Why didn’t I know about this crab? Because it was from Mario Party-e. Did you know about Mario Party-e? I didn’t. I had an e-Reader and I didn’t know about it! I also didn’t know how to use it, so I never did. It’s a card game AND a Game Boy Advance game at the same time, and I dunno, that sounds like a lot of work to me... but worth it for a lovely crab, I suppose. 

This darling crab appears in the minigame Cast Away Mario!, and the wiki seems to be under the impression that it’s a Sidestepper, but I beg to differ. Sidesteppers have a very distinct look, you know? They nearly always have an angry expression or visible nostrils, for some reason.

Looking at the Sidesteppers from Super Circuit, though... maybe this is one! Maybe they were going through a slight redesign at the time that was later decided against?

Either that, or the ones in Super Circuit aren’t Sidesteppers at all, but a slightly different crab? I dunno. I don’t plan my posts out beforehand, you see! You are watching my thought process about a fake cartoon crab in action! Maybe this is a Sidestepper, maybe not. Whatever its exact identity, the real reason I’m making this post is because its sprite in Mario Party-e is delightful. Why not scroll up and look at it again? You’d be doing yourself a favor.

Anyway, the minigame is about catching fish or a crab for Peach, and this is done with a gloved hand on a fishing rod, which I think is great. I love when gloved hands are used on devices. It may seem rude to just reach in and grab a fish, but... I’d say it’s ruder to stab one in the mouth, you know?

Finally, I also want you to look at this tiny Mario sprite. He’s a funny little guy.

[suppermariobroth]

Daisy’s Rodeo minigame from Mario Party-e.

[donkeykongbongodreams]

Thank you to my friend for proofreading my posts and being like, Skye, you gotta explain some of this stuff, not everybody knows what Mario Party-e is, SO LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MARIO PARTY-E :D cuz it's so delightfully stupid

Mario Party-e is a North American exclusive Mario Party board game from 2003. It is called -e because the main gimmick is its use of the GBA e-reader to play minigames. (The e-reader is a peripheral that plugs into the GBA and scans dot codes on special cards Nintendo released at the time. There's uh, several thousand of them across many series for those asking. Mario Party-e only uses 11 e-reader cards, thankfully!) It is mostly a board/card game though, and in fact you can play it without the e-reader, though that's kinda boring cuz you just do coin flips instead.

Anyhow I think this sort of multimedia video game stuff is totally awesome! I love when games are used to augment an experience and this uses it in a pretty cute way by having you play games during a game :D

If you're interested, you can watch all the minigames here:

Also!! It's entirely possible to emulate and do online multiplayer now because of many amazing people ^^ If you're interested in that, here's how you get it set up

Here's the rulebook, which apparently Nintendo hosts on their site to this day: https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/downloads/mariopartye.pdf

Buy Tabletop Simulator on Steam ($10 not on sale) and in the Workshop tab search and follow "Mario Party Card Game". Start Tabletop Simulator and hit the "create" button, name your server, hit friends only and set your player count. Select Mario Party Card Game from the workshop row and the board and cards will be there! Then in the upper right hand corner hit the plus button and invite your friends over Steam. That's the board part of the game down!

Next, everyone who wants to play should get the emulator mGBA, the rom for the e-reader device, as well as the Mario Party e-reader cards (as .raw files), I got them from the full set that's available online. To play the games, boot up the e-reader in mGBA

and then press A, and then press A on scan card, then go to file then "Scan e-reader dotcodes"

and select from your files the first half of the card, then the second half to play that card's minigame.

I recommend using Discord or something to chat and screenshare during the e-reader parts as it makes it more fun to watch and make fun of your friends' gameplay ^^

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you appreciate this cool part of gaming history as much as I do :) I always love talking about silly gaming stuff ^^

[suppermariobroth]

A piece of official art for Mario Party 4 contains a scene of Waluigi chasing a butterly in the background. Due to the small size of the original picture used on Nintendo’s website, it’s hard to see the details on Waluigi. However, one of the Mario Party e-cards enables us to see the artwork in a higher resolution.