Mario Party Advance (Game Boy Advance) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

GBA owners have been flooding message boards for years now with requests for a handheld version of Mario Party. A variety of outings have appeared on the N64 and GameCube for some time now and the very fact that it's managed to get to the sixth version must surely be some indication of it's undying popularity. After some years of waiting and a few 'experimental' outings on the e-Reader we finally have the game we've all been waiting: Mario Party in handheld form. Thankfully Nintendo veterans Hudson are taking on the development duties and with a back catalogue of GBA hits it's fair to say that we're expecting something a little special and worthy of the wait. Has every one got their party hats on.... ?

Gameplay

While there many ways to play Mario Party Advance you're almost forced to play the single player story mode first in order to unlock the various mini-games. This requires you to travel around a board in order to visit a variety of challenges given to you by the Townsfolk. These really do cover almost every subject you can think of and can range from pressing a button at the correct moment to much more involved challenges. Unfortunately not only are many of the games unoriginal they're also pretty bland and you'll have to play though a great deal of average sections before you reach the truely enjoyable ones. In additaion to the mini-games there's also a generous amount of gadgets to unearth and while these can be as useless as a Love Generator (whatever that is) they also include full games such as darts and pinball.

The multiplayer, or 'Party' section is a bit of a strange one really. For starters some of these mini-games are played with a single GBA and gamers in charge of different buttons. I've no need to tell you just how crowded this becomes and given that the SP is far more compact than the original GBA it can become a little irritating. That said, just wait until you see the Gameboy Micro. Other games take the more traditional route of simply allowing two players to go head to head with a single copy of the game and a link cable which, in an ideal world, should be how all these mini-challenges are presented. Finally, and just as frustarting as the first mode, some multiplayer games require two copies of the game to compete with one another. Obviousley we're all well aware that this 'single cart play' hasn't been adopted as much as gamers had wished but this is a Multiplayer game by design and the decision to this is an incredibly poor one.

Controls

There's very little complicated here and unlike other titles you'll never require the controls to be faster than light or the sprites to process perfect collision detection. Instead it's an incredibly simple affair and even with that in mind each of the mini-games is proceeded with a short instructional intro instructing you just what you need to do and what buttons you should be pressing.

Graphics

Unusually for a Hudson produced title the graphics are actually quite bland and show little of the visual flair that they've demonstrated in previous GBA titles. In fact some of the visuals, especially in the mini-games and board section could easily of been produced for the Gameboy Color which is probably deemed highly critical given the amount of time developers have had to get to grips with the GBA's strengths and weaknesses.

Sound

While this is certainly better than the visuals most of it has been sourced from the original 8 and 16 bit outing which do little to utilise the GBA's enhanced sound capabilities. Thankfully this was all well composed all those years ago and is still pretty good by todays standards especially when you consider just how irritating a bad soundtrack is. These tunes are complimented by the odd mumbeling from the main characters but you'll have to listen out for these or you may just miss them.

Final comments

Before I even comment on wether Mario Party Advance is good, bad or indifferent, strangely the whole experience appears to be geared towards a single player experience making it a party for one really. I only mention this because if you've ever encountered any of the console versions you'll be well aware that they're pretty oridinary games when experienced from a single player point of view. In addition to this the whole package suffers from bland design in almost every department and while the visuals and animation can be forgiven to a certain extent the same is not true of the mini-games some of which are completley pointless. On the plusside you're getting a great deal of gameplay for your money here and there are some incredibly fun elements to the whole package thanks to the odd stand out mini-game. Not quite what gamers had hoped for then but certainly worth a look and great for when you only have 5 minutes to spare.

Pro: Loads Of Mini-Games (As You'd Expect)
Con: Poorly Executed Single Player Mode
Final score: 6.7

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