The game with the largest number of NS players, the sequel is coming!

2024-08-18

For a game console that is about to die, the NS game lineup in the second half of this year can definitely be called "luxurious". As many friends said, it is a grand funeral!

In addition to the new 2DZelda》 and "Mario RPG", two works that fans have been looking forward to for many years, there is another game that is equally anticipated, that is "Super Mario Party All-Time Big Bang".

Before this, NS already had two "Mario Party" games, namely "Super Mario Party" and "Mario Party Superstar".

The former is not only the first large-scale party game on NS, but the game's somatosensory operation also greatly lowers the threshold. So far, it has sold 20.84 million sets.

Although it is only ranked 8th in sales, since it is a party game, most players buy it to play with several people, and they may play with different friends each time. Therefore, the number of players who have actually played this game is probably many times the sales volume. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the game with the largest number of players on NS.

In contrast, many players did not buy Super Mario because they did not have somatosensory functions. The good news is that the upcoming new game Super Mario Party: Extravaganza will return to the somatosensory gameplay, which is definitely a must-buy game for party players.

However, Nintendo has not officially started promoting this game yet, so there is not much information. Before that, let's review the birth of this series and its tortuous development path to see what surprises there will be in the future.

Perhaps earlier than many players imagined, the first "Mario Party" was released on December 18, 1998, and was launched on the N64 console, which had already shown signs of decline in the console war at the time.

It was less than a month since the release of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", and the huge sensation brought by "Ocarina of Time" is far from over. Even so, with the help of the Christmas holiday at the end of the year, "Mario Party" still achieved good sales.

This game was not developed by Nintendo's development team, but by a company called Hudson Soft.

I believe that most players who have played old games of that era know this company. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you must have seen this little bee at the beginning of many games:

Hudson is one of the oldest game developers in Japan and one of the first third-party publishers for Nintendo FC.

Hudson was on par with Capcom, Namco, Taito, KONAMI, and Jaleco at the time, and was called the "Six Major Game Software Providers" by the Japanese industry at the time. You must have heard of the game IPs under this company, including "Bomberman", "Takahashi Meijin's Adventure Island", and the "Momotaro Dentetsu" series.

These works are not only a symbol of an era, but games like "Momotaro Dentetsu" are still one of the top game IPs in Japan today.

As a company that Nintendo has cooperated with since it first entered the gaming industry, it is reasonable for Nintendo to hand over the development of "Mario Party" to Hudson.

In addition to the home console version developed by Hudson, "Mario Party" actually also has an arcade version, which is developed and produced by Capcom, but the arcade version is not our focus today.

Although Mario Party had good sales from the beginning, the game's reputation was not overwhelmingly positive. Many mainstream media and magazines gave the game only mediocre reviews.

However, as a party game, media reviews are often far from the actual experience, and this is still the case today.

The simple and easy-to-learn gameplay of "Mario Party" quickly captured the hearts of countless family players, especially children.

This game is aimed at the end-of-year market from the beginning. It may not be popular in China. During the Chinese New Year, families often choose to play mahjong, KTV and other activities, but Western players often spend time with their families in front of the TV, so games have become a must-have entertainment for many families.

If you can enjoy this game together as a family during the end-of-year holidays, then this is already a 10/10 game, and this joy is irreplaceable.

However, although the players had a lot of fun, they went a little too far and a series of negative reports began to appear.

In the first generation of "Mario Party", there is a mini-game that requires players to turn the joystick as fast as possible. In order to turn the joystick as fast as possible, many players do not use their fingers to control it, but use their entire palm to turn the joystick.

This caused many players to have blisters or cuts on their hands. So much so that Nintendo of America later spent $800,000 to distribute protective gaming gloves to players. Although this $800,000 may not be a big deal compared to the revenue generated by the game, it has become a part that Nintendo will pay attention to during the game development process in the future.

With the release of a new game every year for three consecutive years on the N64, the series has grown smoothly. Nintendo and Hudson have also continued to work on making it an annual product. In the first 10 years of its birth, it basically maintained a rhythm of one game per year, and it was basically released at the end of the year. Later, this annual year-end product became thePokémon》。

You see, everything makes sense, right? There is no "Pokemon" this year, so "Pocket Monsters" comes up again to fill the spot. Nintendo's arrangements always make sense!

However, after the release of Mario Party 8 on the Wii in 2007, the series came to an abrupt end. In 2008, 2009, 2010, Mario Party, which was released almost every year in the past, seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Behind this is the turning point in the fate of Hudson.

Although Hudson and KONAMI were both top game manufacturers in the FC era, the two companies' subsequent developments were indeed very different. As KONAMI grew stronger in various industries, the company, which is now like a rat crossing the street, began to gradually acquire Hudson's shares.

By 2005, KONAMI had become Hudson's largest shareholder. Although Hudson still maintained independent development, the cooperation between it and KONAMI became increasingly close.

Nintendo obviously realized this, and seeing that its former partner was gradually being swallowed up by KONAMI, Nintendo could no longer sit still.

So after the release of "Mario Party 8" in 2007, Nintendo stopped planning to let Hudson continue to develop sequels to the series and turned its attention to another company, NDcube.

NDcube is a joint venture between Nintendo and Dentsu, which was established as early as 2000.

However, in 2006, many NDcube employees went directly to Nintendo headquarters or left for companies such as SE, which resulted in NDcube not producing any games for a long time afterwards.

So before Hudson was finally acquired by KONAMI, Nintendo played a trick in 2010 to "cut off the source of funds" and poached a large number of Hudson developers, especially the core developers of "Mario Party", to NDcube.

In 2021, Hudson was fully acquired by KONAMI, and the series they created, such as "Bomberman" and "Momotaro Dentetsu", also became KONAMI's IP. In 2014, the Hudson brand came to an end, ending its 40-year glorious gaming journey.

After poaching Hudson's core members to NDcube, everything was settled and Nintendo finally handed "Mario Party" over to NDcube. Five years later, in 2012, Nintendo officially launched the new authentic game in the series "Mario Party 9" on the Wii platform.

As the series has developed to this point, Nintendo has begun to no longer pursue the annual release of "Mario Party".

So after Mario Party 9, the series has maintained a release rhythm of one game every three years. Mario Party 9 in 2012, Mario Party 10 in 2015, Super Mario Party for Nintendo Switch in 2018, Mario Party Superstar in 2021, and Super Mario Party Extravaganza which will be released on October 17.

Although no more new information has been revealed at present, based on the official display of the super large new map and new mechanism, "Super Mario Party: Extravaganza" should be the culmination of this series. Various excellent designs from the past will form a large collection at the end of this generation of NS.

In addition, this game also has a 20-player online chicken-eating mode similar to "Fall Guys", where players adventure through levels, compete in mini-games, and ultimately win, allowing players who cannot organize themselves offline to also enjoy the fun of this game.

Although this game certainly cannot compare to its predecessor in terms of sales, as its name "Unprecedented Party" suggests, it may be the most interesting party game in history.

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The game with the largest number of NS players, the sequel is coming!

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