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 mini-games 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.

Story
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 if who was better, him or her. This resulted in Twila retorting back saying that she was the more impressive, and they both got into a feud that made the sky frantically changing which bothered Mario and his friends. They tried saying anything they could to stop the quarrel, but nothing seemed to work.

Mario then came up with an idea. He suggested that he and his friends should collect Stars and make a Star Bank to end the fight. As they collected more stars by partying, they could get more pages of the Miracle Book. Once the pages were completed, the Stars could fly up make a beautiful night sky. This made Brighton and Twila realize how hard Mario and friends worked and how pretty the sky was. This made the feud subside and Brighton and Twila became good friends again.

Returning Characters

 * Mario -  Red 
 * Luigi -  Blue 
 * Peach -  Pink 
 * Yoshi -  Green 
 * Wario -  Purple 
 * Daisy -  Yellow 
 * Waluigi - Black
 * Toad -  Light Red 
 * Boo -  Light Blue 
 * Koopa Kid -  Orange 

Unlockable Character

 * Toadette -  Magenta  (Unlocked after purchasing her for 30 Stars in the Star Bank)

Gameplay
In Mario Party 6, up to four players take turns moving on board game-style stages, often playing multiplayer mini-games 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.

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 mini-games. 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 Mini-games against the Koopa Kids.

There are three boards in Solo Mode:
 * Astro Avenue, a space-themed board;
 * Infernal Tower, a Bowser-themed board.
 * Thirsty Gulch, a desert-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 Mini-games. 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 will conclude the game and grant the player one of the Rare Mini-games: (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 they have 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 the player 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 the player from walking past the Rare space.

At the end of the mode, the player receives any Mini-games that were played during the mode if they aren't unlocked previously. In addition, they receive bonuses at the end of the game for meeting certain criteria, such as playing ten Mini-games 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), and adjust Microphone settings.

4-Player minigames

 * Catch You Letter is a pun on the phrase "Catch you later".
 * Mowtown is a pun on Motown.
 * Blooper Scooper is a pun on pooper scooper.
 * Trap Ease Artist is a pun on trapeze artist.
 * What Goes Up... is a reference to the phrase "What goes up must come down." This is reflected in the game because, during the day, the objective is to reach the highest altitude, and at night, the player must descend the fastest.
 * Circuit Maximus is a pun on a real place, Circus Maximus.
 * Snow Whirled is a pun on snow world.

1 vs. 3 minigames

 * Snow Brawl is a pun on snowball.
 * Surge and Destroy is a pun on the phrase "search and destroy".
 * Conveyor Bolt is a pun on conveyor belt.
 * Ray of Fright is a pun on "ray of light".
 * Dust 'til Dawn is a pun on the phrase "From dusk 'til dawn".
 * Ball Dozers is a pun on a bulldozer.

2 vs. 2 minigames

 * Pixel Perfect is a pun on the phrase "picture perfect".
 * Burnstile is a pun on turnstile.
 * Cashapult is a pun on catapult.
 * Mole-it! is a pun on mullet.

Battle minigames

 * Stamp by Me is a pun on the song and movie Stand By Me.
 * Strawberry Shortfuse is a pun on Strawberry Shortcake.
 * Control Schtick is a pun on control stick.
 * Insectiride is a pun on insecticide.

Duel minigames

 * O-Zone is a pun on ozone.
 * Trick or Tree is a pun on the phrase "trick-or-treat".
 * Pitifall is a pun on the words "pitiful" and "Pitfall!", the vine-swinging arcade game.
 * Lunar-tics is a pun on "lunatic".
 * Asteroad Rage is a combination of "asteroid" and "road rage".
 * Boonanza is a pun on the term "bonanza".
 * Light Up My Night is a pun on the song "Light Up My Room".

DK minigames

 * Pier Factor is a pun on the term fear factor.

Rare Minigames

 * Seer Terror is a pun on the phrase "sheer terror".
 * Lab Brats is a pun on lab rats.
 * Block Star is a combination of rock star and blocks.

Mic Minigames

 * Talkie Walkie is walkie talkie backwards.
 * Fruit Talktail is a pun on fruit cocktail.

Trivia

 * Mario Party 6 is the last Mario Party game to feature Koopa Kid as a playable character. In Mario Party 7, he got his own space like Bowser and DK did. Later in Mario Party 8, Koopa Kid mysteriously disappeared from the Mario Party series.
 * For unknown reasons, Waluigi and the Lakitu were removed from the American Boxart of Mario Party 6 (see alternate boxart above). Their render was instead on the back of the box and in the game's title screen.