Mario Party 6

Mario Party 6 is the sixth title in the Mario Party sub-series made for the Nintendo GameCube and the third installment for that console. This game is developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo. The game is the first in the series that features an installment of voice controlled minigames using a packaged microphone, which makes an all new mode, Speak Up, which is microphone-oriented. The main focus of this game is collecting Stars to stop the conflict going on with the sun and the moon to fill the Star Bank. Mario Party 6 is followed by Mario Party 7.

Story
Story from Instruction Booklet Brighton and Twila – the sun and the moon – watch over Mario Party World from the sky and host the best parties. The two celestial party animals have always been good friends. That is, until the day Brighton asked Twila, "Who's more impressive, you or me?" Brighton and Twila argued furiously over who was more popular and impressive. The sky thundered with the fury of their cataclysmic squabble! Mario and his party-hearty friends tried to get them to make up, but nothing they said could settle their spat in the sky. That's when Mario came up with a brilliant plan to harness the power of the Stars to end the feud! They decided to throw a massive Mario Party to collect Stars and fill the great Star Bank! Determined to end Brighton and Twila's feud, they started partying right away. ...But will the power of the Stars be enough to end the furious feud?

Brighton and Twila, the hosts of Mario Party 6, watched over the Mario Party world from the sky. They had always been good friends until one day, when Brighton asked Twila which of the duo is better. This resulted in Twila retorting back saying that she was the most impressive, and they both got into a feud that made the sky frantically changing. This bothered Mario and his friends, so they tried saying anything they could to stop the quarrel, but nothing seemed to work. However, Mario comes up with the idea to throw a Mario Party, collecting Stars to fill the Star Bank to end their hosts' dispute.

By collecting Stars, Mario and friends are able to obtain pages to the Miracle Book. After collecting all the pages of the book, Brighton and Twila see the Star Bank, filled with Stars. Noting how hard Mario and friends had worked to obtain the Stars, Brighton and Twila apologize to them for the hassle their quarrel had caused, and make up. To show their appreciation for the effort, the hosts send the Stars flying into the sky. The ending goes on to state that Brighton and Twila "watched over Mario Party world until the end of time," and that "everyone got back to partying as usual[.]"

Team Names
In Mario Party 5, two players could compete with another pair in tag-team parties. This feature returns in Mario Party 6. Another feature that returns with this is the inclusion of team names. Here is a table containing all possible team names.

Gameplay
In Mario Party 6, up to four players take turns rolling Dice Blocks with numbers 1-10 to move on board game-style stages, often playing multiplayer minigames to earn coins and stars. While the object of the game is to amass the most Stars before completing a set number of turns, the focus is on the competition itself more than the outcome. There is also a change in the game's Solo Mode: The player can only roll a Dice Block that shows numbers from 1-6.

Orbs
Orbs are special items players can either collect on the board or buy. They can be used in many ways to give a player an advantage, such as setting traps on spaces to steal coins from rivals, to hamper a rival's progress, or to quickly obtain stars.

Green Orbs
All of these orbs affect the player or the dice the player is using when the player uses them.

Red Orbs
These Orbs will take effect when either the opponent passes or lands on it. The player who lands on it will still have the effects of a Blue or Red space. The orb will also disappear once it has been activated.

Yellow Orbs
These orbs have an effect on a player who lands on the space. If the owner lands on the space, they will receive five coins. During the last five turn events, they may receive 15 coins if the coin's ×3 roulette was chosen. The orb will also stay on the board as long as no one replaces the orb.

Blue Orbs
These orbs protect the player from attacks such as Boo and Chain Chomp. They can only be found in specific boards such as Snowflake Lake. They cannot be thrown on a space or used. Instead, they are used automatically. They can be disposed at any time if the players chooses to, though.

Day & Night
On multiplayer boards, the sun will periodically set or rise (every three turns), producing different effects. Changes include spaces moving, different characters appearing, DK spaces transforming to Bowser spaces, and changes to minigames. This is reflected in two new characters, Brighton and Twila. This day and night system is a reminiscent of Horror Land from Mario Party 2.

Solo Mode
In Mario Party 6, Solo Mode is a game mode hosted by Brighton. It is for one player only, and it has the character playing minigames against the Koopa Kids.

There are three boards in Solo Mode:
 * Thirsty Gulch, a desert-themed board.
 * Astro Avenue, a space-themed board.
 * Infernal Tower, a Bowser-themed board.

The spaces on Solo Mode are different than those in normal modes of play. There are spaces for 4-player, 2-vs-2 (these are played teamed up with a CPU partner of the player's choice), 1-vs-3 (the human is always the 1 player against 3), Battle, and Duel Minigames. There are also Bowser spaces, which feature (normally 1-vs-3) games played against the Koopa Kids where all the player's coins are lost if they lose; ? spaces, which cause an event to happen; and the goals which are Rare spaces.

Landing on one of these Rare spaces concludes the game and grant the player one of the Rare Minigames: (Dunk Bros., Lab Brats, or Block Star. Seer Terror must be bought from the Star Bank. If the player goes past the Rare space, then they lose everything collected, and the game ends. Players can avert this by selecting to "Call it Quits" and keep everything they have earned so far; however, this ends the mode.

Only two of the game's Orbs appear in this mode. One is the Sluggish 'Shroom Orb, which slows down the dice block so players can easily hit the number they want. The other is the Cursed Mushroom Orb, which makes the dice block only roll one through three. This can prevent players from walking past the Rare space.

At the end of the mode, players receives any minigames that are played during the mode if they are not unlocked previously. In addition, they receive bonuses at the end of the game for meeting certain criteria, such as playing ten minigames during the game, rolling only even Dice Block numbers, or landing on every space on the board, which are paid out in Coins. The Coins are converted into Stars (one Star for every 20 Coins), which are transferred to the Star Bank.

Party Mode Boards
There are 6 boards in Party Mode. Some of the boards in Mario Party 6 have different objectives and goals to earn stars.

Solo Mode Boards
These are the three Solo Mode boards. They differ mostly in length, but they all have the same objective, which is to land on the Rare space located at the end of the board.

Other Features

 * Star Bank: The Star Bank allows players to trade their stars to unlock special in-game bonuses, including unlockable characters, game tips, and Miracle Book pages.
 * Harder Difficulty: 30 Stars
 * Brutal Difficulty: 30 Stars
 * Toadette as a playable character: 30 Stars
 * Clockwork Castle Stage: 100 Stars
 * Credit Roll: 100 Stars
 * Character Taunts: 10 Stars Each
 * Mic Secrets: 10 Stars Each
 * Mini Game Secrets: 10 Stars Each
 * Mushroom Bus: 30 Stars
 * Miracle Book (Includes Page 1): 10 Stars
 * Page 2-6: 10 Stars Each
 * Page 7-13: 20 Stars Each
 * Page 14-20: 30 Stars Each
 * Miracle Book Secret: 10 Stars
 * Miracle Book: The Miracle Book is an in-game pop-up book functioning as a reward for players. Pages in the book are interactive. Buying all of them unlocks the epilogue.
 * Microphone: The microphone is used as a controller device to answer quiz questions in Speak Up and give orders to characters in Mic-specific games
 * Minigame Mode: This mode allows the player to play any minigames that are unlocked or play a set of minigames using a set of rules.
 * Option Mode: In this mode, the player can adjust sound settings, view minigame records and history for previous parties, listen to the sound test (some of the sounds and music must be bought at the Star Bank before available use), adjust Microphone settings, and also view the bonuses earned from the solo mode.

Reception
The game received mostly mixed and positive reviews. GameSpot gave the game 6.9/10, citing great family and multiplayer fun, but the same idea of older Mario Parties. IGN gave the game 7/10. They criticized it's lack of originality and the use of the microphone. 1UP gave the game a C+ rating due to unoriginality and other factors.

Mario Party 6 is the 27th best selling game for the Nintendo GameCube, and about 1 million units of Mario Party 6 were sold as of December 31, 2009.

Trivia

 * Mario Party 6 is the last Mario Party game to feature Koopa Kid as a playable character.
 * The Snow Bunnies from Bomberman 64 and the Paper Mario series make a minor appearance on this game. They appear on the Board Snowflake Lake at day and night.
 * The Mr. Blizzard Orb description refers to whoever lands on it as a female, instead of player.