Gaming with Your Kids: Mario Party Edition
by Matthew AjajFebruary 2, 2022
Video games really do not get enough credit. You can purchase a museum ticket and view Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, cozy up in an armchair and read Moby Dick, and purchase a big bag of popcorn and sit down in the cinema to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—and yet, as amazing as these works may be, you have no capability to influence them. You cannot stroll along the little starlit village, you cannot navigate the high seas to chase the white whale, and you cannot traverse the ethereal perils of the sacred temple that holds the Holy Grail. Video games offer the audience to be much more than a viewer: they transport the player into an alternate reality in which they themselves get to do the strolling and navigating and traversing of a carefully crafted world. Video games are the only art form in which the viewer is able to control, manipulate, and live within the experience and—in a sense—become like an artist themselves.
We here at Well On Your Way think video games are cool and surely many of you do too. True gamers understand that gaming runs in the blood, so it only makes sense that your children are imbued with the gamer gene, too. In this inaugural edition of “Gaming with Your Kids”, we will be talking about everyone’s favorite party games: the Mario Party series!
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Mario Party is all the fun of a party but without the alcohol, awkward conversations, and questionable behavior—so really it’s better than a party. The gameplay is rather straightforward: it’s a board game plastered onto your TV screen, in which four players compete to become the “Superstar” by rolling dice to move around the board while playing mini-games and collecting coins and acquiring “Stars” along the way. The player with the most Stars at the end of the game is declared the Superstar!
There are three key elements to winning a Mario Party match. The first is skill. Most mini-games involve some sort of savvy, and the winner of each mini-game earns coins. The second is smarts. Navigating the gameboard involves war general-like decision-making: should I take the path toward the Star, or figure another player will reach it first and move elsewhere? will my Golden Mushroom’s three dice blocks be enough to reach the Star, or should I save it for later? would it be worth it to work together with my sibling to steal dad’s Stars, or will they throw me under the bus? The strategic elements are demanding but workable for players of any age.
That leaves just the third element, and it is what makes Mario Party truly special: the sheer cruelty of luck. You may have won the most mini-games with your outstanding skills, and maneuvered around the board with your formidable wits, but Donkey Kong just stumbled upon the Chance Time space…and now all your Stars are his. This type of disheartening, soul-crushing event happens every game to varying degrees—so why would you want to subject your children to such brutality?
The beauty of a Mario Party is that it is a reflection of the human experience. Life is a wonderful gift that we should strive to make the most of and seek to mitigate suffering, but we also have to be prepared to face the hardships that we can hardly expect and the inevitable injustices of our imperfect society. Your daughter losing 20 coins to Bowser is akin to getting a percentage docked off of her first minimum wage paycheck for taxes that will never come back to benefit her. Your son getting a hard-earned Star stolen by Boo is like getting his bike pilfered from the rack at that park. And your children teaming up to make sure you lose every mini-game? That’s the two hours of construction traffic on your way home and arriving to a broken water heater after a long, sweaty day at work.
Life happens—that’s the Mario Party motto. Your children will probably have a blast playing Mario Party, but there is also a good chance they might be crying by the end. It is not exactly the greatest endorsement on paper, but it is a truly thrilling game and—regardless of the results—you should make an effort to talk to your children about the game after it is over. Your son may have had the most skill, your daughter may have had the most wit, but in the end they lost to mom because she had the luck—and that is just the way of life sometimes. And while it can be a bummer, it is the recovering and overcoming of our losses that makes us stronger people. Usually it is the more competent player that wins the game, just as competency and hard work and intelligence usually brings us benefits, but we still have to be ready to endure our strokes of bad luck.
A match of Mario Party is unrivaled in its thrills and agonies, its righteous rewards and wicked inequities, and its triumphs and defeats. It is a reflection of our convoluted reality, where we may do everything right but still experience seemingly futile suffering. But there’s always the next day, and there’s always another game to be played. The true winners of the Mario Party are those who can pick up their scattered coins and give the dice another roll, as the deserving will get their just dues when all’s said and done. It’s a howling hootenanny, a captivating and calculating wargame, and a warped compendium of life lessons—it’s Mario Party. Have fun, kids!
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The Mario Party series has over a dozen titles in its repertoire, so here are some personal recommendations:
· Mario Party 2 (Nintendo 64) – The franchise’s first sequel features a classic collection of fun mini-games as well as themed character costume sets that are tailored for each gameboard.
· Mario Party 6 (Nintendo Gamecube) – This series entry brought some variety to the gameplay with unique board gimmicks and a cool new day-night feature.
· Mario Party Superstars (Nintendo Switch) – The series’ latest entry showcases the best mini-games and boards from parties’ past. It’s the perfect starting point for your kid’s first foray into Mario Party amusement and mayhem.