Bowser's Warped Orbit

"Beyond space! Beyond time! And beyond decency! We're in the blackest hole of all. Bowser's Warped Orbit! It's seriously sick and twisted!"

- MC Ballyhoo

Bowser's Warped Orbit is Bowser's board in Mario Party 8. In order to have it playable in Party Mode, the player must unlock it by completing the Star Battle Arena once.

This board is a space station set in outer space. However, it still goes by the laws being a "lava" board, as it is located above the sun. Another difference is that Magikoopas and Toadies work here, and not the usual underlings like Goombas and Koopa Kids. The objective here is to steal Stars, with each player starting out with five (ten Stars for each team on Tag Battle Mode).

Instead of Chain Chomps that were utilized in Snowflake Lake from Mario Party 6 and Pyramid Park from Mario Party 7, players must use special Candy to steal from their opponents: Bowser Candy and Bullet Candy, both of which are found only on this board.

Landing on a DK Space causes Donkey Kong to appear on a steel keg satellite, and give the player a free Star (a piece of Candy in Star Battle Arena). Landing on the Bowser Space causes Bowser to come down from his observation tower to steal a Star from the player (although if the player has no Stars, Bowser will give them ten Coins instead). Everyone is gifted a total of twenty stars (5 for each player in Battle Royale; 10 for both teams on Tag Battle); or dependent with the handicaps as it increases the number of stars in play if any player has a handicap. However, when a player lands on the DK Space, additional stars can be added, or in the case of a Bowser Space, additional stars can be taken away.

The DK Spaces and Bowser Spaces is different in Star Battle Arena. Because when a player lands on a DK Space, Donkey Kong gives the player a free piece of candy. If the player lands on a Bowser Space, Bowser steals a star; taking it completely out of play and there only are less stars (five stars instead of six) as the star which Bowser stole is gone permanently. This is because both the player and their opponent start with three stars. That means the winning condition is to steal stars from their opponent with candy until their opponent has zero stars.

Landing on the Lucky Space takes the player to Shy Guy's Space Buffet, which has a path of Blue Spaces, each one with three coins, and the player can also get three free pieces of candy, Bullet Candy or Bowser Candy.

One of the ? Spaces on the board causes Bowser to come down and chase the player all around the board in a complete loop. Anyone that is in their path will also get chased down (this essentially just moves all the players involved to the same space). The ? Space next to Kamek makes him use his magic to shuffle everyone's Candies around, just like he did back in Mario Party 5. The ? Spaces (arrow spaces in Duel mode) next to the warp tube (underneath the observation tower) causes players to travel through the tube and reach to the other side of the board, always collecting twenty Coins along the way (but nothing in Star Battle Arena because the tube is part of the board's path, not a shortcut). All the other ? Spaces make Bowser reverse the direction of the flow of the board.

In Star Battle Arena, the winning conditions are to steal Stars from their opponent via the Bowser and Bullet Candies until their opponent has zero Stars. Players start with three Stars each. During the Star Battle Arena, if the player defeats Blooper or Hammer Bro, they will get to fight Bowser in a void-like arena. Also, the player will unlock Hammer Bro or Blooper, depending on who they fought. The opponent is random unless the player is using one of those two characters, in which case the other one will forcibly be the opponent. The player must complete Star Battle Arena with the first unlockable character in order to unlock the second one.

The change of direction in this board resembles the gimmick of Backtrack, a duel board in Mario Party 3.

Trivia

 * This is the only board in this game where the Lucky Space area does not lead the player to a free star. Instead, landing on a Lucky Space on this board leads the player to get three free pieces of Candy (which turn out to be Bullet Candy and Bowser Candy) obtained by Candy Spaces on the Lucky Space area.
 * Bowser Station from Mario Party 9 is similar to this board, mostly because both boards are space stations, and both are Bowser's boards.
 * This is the only board in the entire series with a fixed and limited number of stars to steal. On the other two boards in the series that focuses on star stealing (Snowflake Lake in Mario Party 6 and Pyramid Park in Mario Party 7), more stars can be gotten by landing on a DK Space.