Mario Party

Mario Party is a series of party video games created by Hudson Soft and owned by Nintendo. It features characters from the Mario franchise in which up to four local players or computer-controlled characters (called "CPUs") compete in a board game interspersed with minigames. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and directed by Kenji Kikuchi, the games are currently developed by Nintendo Cube and published by Nintendo, being previously developed by Hudson Soft. The series is known for its party game elements, including the often unpredictable multiplayer game modes that allow play with up to four, and sometimes eight, human players or CPUs.

After the development of Mario Party 8, several of Hudson Soft's key designers left to work for Nintendo subsidiary NDcube, developers of Wii Party. Starting in 2012 with Mario Party 9, NDcube has taken over development of the series from Hudson Soft. The first instalment in the series on the Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Party, was released on October 5, 2018.

The series received generally favourable reception in the beginning, but as the series has progressed, the reception became more mixed until the Switch era, where it improved. The series holds the record for the longest-running minigame series. As of March 2025, Nintendo reported cumulative worldwide sales of over 84 million copies in the Mario Party franchise.

Over the course of the Mario Party series, gameplay has changed to suit the technology of the hardware. There are several game modes available in each of the games, each of which provides its own rules and challenges.

Every game in the main series has a standard Party Mode in which up to four players play through a board, trying to collect as many stars as possible. In every turn, each player rolls a die (Dice Block) and progresses on the board, which usually has branching paths. Coins are primarily earned by performing well in a minigame played at the end of each turn. On most boards, players earn stars by reaching a star space and purchasing a star for 20 coins (traditionally). The star space appears randomly on one of several pre-determined locations and moves every time a star is purchased, usually occupying a blue space. On some boards, the star location is fixed.

Every Mario Party game contains at least 50 minigames with a few different types. Four-player games are a free-for-all in which players compete individually. In 2-vs-2 and 1-vs-3 minigames, players compete as two groups, cooperating to win, even though they are still competing individually in the main game. Some minigames in Mario Party are 4-player co-op, even though it doesn't say it. In most situations, winners earn ten coins each.

Battle minigames first appeared in Mario Party 2. These games are like the four-player games, but instead of winners earning ten coins each, each player contributes a randomly selected number of coins (or all coins if the player falls short of the pot amount). The winner of the minigame receives approximately 70% of the pot, the second-place winner receives the other 30%, and a random player occasionally gets coins left over from rounding.

Duel minigames debuted in Mario Party 2, and were omitted in Mario Party 4 (although the story minigames are all duels) but return again in Mario Party 5. Duel games pit two players against each other. In Party Mode, one player initiates the duel, wagering coins or even a star against another player. The winner of the duel receives all coins or stars wagered. Starting with Mario Party 7, the player no longer chooses the wager in a duel, rather, the duel takes place and the prize to the winner, if any, is randomly determined.