Mario Party DS

Mario Party DS is the eleventh installment in the Mario Party series (thirteenth in Japan), the second for the handheld consoles (the first being Mario Party Advance for the Game Boy Advance), and the only one for the Nintendo DS. It was released in Japan on November 8, 2007, in the United States on November 19, 2007, in Europe on November 23, 2007, and in Australia on December 6, 2007. This Mario Party game is unique for having the characters be shrunken down to microscopic size and competing in a "mega world" for the majority of the game. It includes more than seventy new minigames and five new game boards. Its functions include touch control, microphone control and dual-screen challenges. It is possible for up to four players to play in wireless mode.

Story
The story begins with a night in the Mushroom Kingdom, where five shining objects in the sky fall to the land. One falls near Mario, who discusses it with his friends the next day. Kamek flies overhead the gang, spreading invitations as he rides by. The sender of them turns out to be Bowser, who states in the invitations he is inviting them to his castle for a big feast, as apology for his misbehavior. Unintentionally, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong get invitations as well.

Curious, the crew sets off for the castle, but upon their arrival, find it was a trick as Bowser and Bowser Jr. trap Mario and friends in a cage when they enter. With the group trapped, Bowser uses a magic wand called the Minimizer to shrink them all down to the size of chess pieces, and they are thrown out to a distant location by Kamek. This leaves Bowser to look for the five shining objects, the Sky Crystals, in peace. Displeased by the outcome, the gang decides to head for the castle to settle the score with Bowser. The desire to be the one Superstar that defeats Bowser and his cronies causes Mario and his other seven friends to pit themselves against each other for the title along the way.

At the beginning of their journey, Wiggler begs the crew for help, as a Piranha Plant has infested his garden. The Piranha Plant is eventually defeated by the character who becomes the Superstar, leading to Wiggler rewarding them with a Sky Crystal that landed in his garden.

Soon after, Toadette finds and requests the group to defeat a Hammer Bro that was abusing her instruments in her music room. The Hammer Bro is defeated in a drum-off by the Superstar, Toadette giving a Sky Crystal she found to the gang as her thanks.

Afterwards, they set off for the jungle, where they find Diddy Kong, who shows the heroes that Donkey Kong was turned to stone by a Dry Bones. The Superstar manages to defeat Dry Bones in his arena, leading to Donkey Kong's restoration and Diddy Kong rewarding them with a Sky Crystal he found. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong quickly recall the free food promised at Bowser's Castle, and eagerly head off towards the castle.

Upon nearing the castle, the crew find a Koopa Troopa from a library asking for help, as Kamek has trapped his grandfather, Koopa Krag, into one of his library books. The Superstar defeats Kamek at the end of a long hallway, and Koopa Krag is freed from the book, giving them a Sky Crystal as thanks.

Eventually, they reach Bowser's Castle, where they are promptly stuffed in a pinball machine by Bowser and Bowser Jr, the latter using it to mess with them. The one revealed to be the Superstar is taken from the pinball machine to be shrunk again and crushed by Bowser, but Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong arrive, the former unintentionally smashing the Minimizer by knocking it out of Bowser's hands and stepping on it afterwards, the actions reverting the heroes back to their original states.

Reluctant to give up, Bowser reveals one more surprise: the Mega Morph Belt. The device transforms Bowser into Blockhead Bowser, and the aforementioned Superstar does battle with him. Upon Bowser's defeat, Bowser and his son are tied up, Mario taking back the final Sky Crystal he initially found from them. Now in close proximity of each other, they are magically formed together to make a crystal DS, allowing play of Triangle Twisters, the fun challenge mentioned by Bowser, whose desire to have the Sky Crystals being to try the fun challenge. After hearing this, Mario decides to untie the two, and they all play Triangle Twisters together, thus ending the story. Nearby, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong eat the entire feast by themselves, being quite satisfied.

Characters
Mario Party DS has 8 playable characters and 6 board hosts, with a boss for each board. Other characters with little to no role are also present.

Supporting Cast

 * Diddy Kong (Found in DK's Stone Statue)
 * Koopa (Found in Kamek's Library)
 * Koopa Krag (Found in Kamek's Library)
 * Bowser Jr. (Found in Bowser's Pinball Machine)

Minigame Enemies

 * Goomba
 * Scuttle Bug
 * Cheep Cheep
 * Boo
 * Shy Guy
 * Whomp
 * Bob-omb
 * Monty Mole

Team Names
In Tag Team Mode, each combination of playable characters create one unique Team Name. The list of possible results are shown below:

Gameplay
The gameplay in Mario Party DS follows the style of the console games that preceded it. Up to four players take turns to roll six-sided dice, which decide how far players move across board game-style stages, the goal on them being to acquire the most Stars through the conditions decided on each of the boards. After all players have had their turn, a minigame of a varying type will occur and the turn will end afterwards, the process repeating until the set number of turns have passed. The game will end once the set number of turns have passed, and the total number of Stars and coins the players have collected will be tallied, Stars and coins being the primary and secondary deciding factors for the rankings respectively.

Modes

 * Story Mode (1 Player) - In this mode, the story is progressed as mentioned. As players make their way to Bowser’s castle, they must win first place on each game board, then beat the Boss Minigame for each board.
 * Party Mode (1-4 Players) - Compete against players or system-controlled players on a party board in a Battle Royale, Tag Battle or Duel Battle.
 * Minigame Mode (1-4 Players) - Play six games that draw upon the pool of all minigames for challenges that don’t take place on the game boards: Free Play, Step It Up, Battle Cup, Score Scuffle, Boss Bash and Rocket Rascals.
 * Puzzle Mode (1-2 Players) - Play six puzzle-action games, which include five classics from previous Mario Party games. This mode also includes the new touch-controlled Triangle Twisters, which has two play modes. In Frenzy Mode, players clear the field by twisting triangles so they connect with those of the same color. In Focus Mode, they twist them to build complex shapes, like turtles and pinwheels. The music in this mode during a minigame is a fusion of puzzle minigame music from the previous Mario Parties.
 * Multiplayer (2-4 Players) - Using one game card, players can wirelessly share Party Mode and Minigame Mode (2-4 players), plus Puzzle Mode (2 players) and the download-only Extras Mode with nearby friends who have a Nintendo DS.
 * Extras Mode - Includes games that are designed for two-player gaming: cooperative Pen Pals and competitive Desert Duel.
 * Gallery - Includes over 120 collectibles that can be viewed at the player's discretion when unlocked. This mode also allows them to listen to the game's music and watch the cutscenes seen in Story Mode when viewed at least once in it.

Spaces

 * Blue Space
 * Red Space
 * ? Space
 * Friend Space
 * Duel Space
 * Bowser Space
 * Star Space

Items
Mario Party DS introduces two types of items that are used during board gameplay: Normal items and new items called Hexes. The normal items are those that the players may use on themselves, to gain an advantage; they can only be bought at an Item Shop. Alternatively, Hexes can only be found at Hex Areas and are placed on the board to trip up another player for the gain of the one who set it. The Hex the player obtains when passing a Hex Area is determined at random. Each player may only carry three items/hexes at one time.

Items
Mario Party DS is the first Mario Party game in the series to have standard items since Mario Party 4, as Mario Party 5-7 have orbs, and Mario Party 8 uses candy.

Hexes
Hexes are items placed on spaces to either help or hinder players. If a character lands on their own hex, they receive 5 coins, much like landing on their own character space in other games. If the player lands on a Coin Block or Star Block they placed, they will still receive the benefit of it. Unlike character spaces, hexes go away after being landed on.



Minigames
Mario Party DS features 106 minigames from 7 different categories. There are 32 4-player minigames, 12 1-vs-3 minigames, 13 2-vs-2 minigames, 33 Duel minigames, 5 Battle minigames, 5 Boss minigames and 6 Puzzle minigames. Of these, 69 are unique and 4 are minigames with the goal of collecting coins.

An example of each minigame from their respective categories are as follows:

Staff
Mario Party DS was worked on by both Hudson Soft and Group No. 4 of the Nintendo SPD. Its game, planning, program, visual, sound and senior directors were Kouji Matsuura, Yuka Sasaki, Hideki Nishmoto, Akhiro Shibata, Ichiro Shimakura and Kenji Kikuchi respectively. Satoru Iwata and Hidetoshi Endo were the game's executive producers.

During the credits the eight playable characters run into view periodically. The player can tap on the characters once they've run into full view on the Touch Screen with the stylus to make the tapped character jump, and can continue to do so for the remainder of the credits.

Collection
Mario Party DS features a wide variety of collectible items. These range between figurines of the many characters in the game, features of the five boards played on in the game, trophies related to the bosses defeated in the game and various badges one of which the player being allowed to equip. There are 30, 71, 25 and 30 of these respectively, each particular collectible with a different requirement to unlock.

An example of each collectible type respectively are as follows:

Beta Elements
In Mario Party DS, Wiggler's Garden was originally going to be called Petey's Greenhouse, where Petey Piranha would need help as a member of his army, a Piranha Plant, had betrayed him and begun to destroy his greenhouse. Toadsworth was also originally planned to appear as the owner of the item houses, but was replaced by a Monty Mole, although Toadsworth was still mentioned in some collectibles' descriptions in the Gallery.

Trivia

 * This is the first Mario Party since Mario Party 5 to not have any Donkey Kong Spaces.
 * The manual has a mistake on Page 26. It states that during a 2 Player game (the player vs a CPU opponent or another player), only Battle or Boss minigames can be chosen. In reality, during a 4 Player match (the player vs 3 CPU opponents or human players), 4 Player, 1 vs 3, 2 vs 2, Duel and Boss minigames can be chosen.
 * The title screen to the game also has a mistake. It is supposed to have a registered trademark, but not the regular trademark.
 * This is the only Mario Party game in which there are no Bonus Stars given out in the Story Mode.