Bowser's Warped Orbit



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

This is Bowser's most unique board in the entire series, for it is a space station 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. 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.

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 Duel Mode). Landing on the Bowser Space causes Bowser to come down from his observation tower to steal a Star from the player.

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 got 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 candy 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 Duel Mode 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 Duel mode, the winning conditions are to steal all of the Stars from the opponent via the Bowser and Bullet candies. Players started with three Stars each. During the Star Battle Arena, if the player defeats Blooper or Hammer Brother, they will get to fight Bowser in a void-like arena.

The change of direction in this board is similiar to Backtrack, a duel board in Mario Party 3.