Nintendo Announces New Mario Party 3DS

Today at their Nintendo Direct presentation, Nintendo announced the Year of Luigi, a whole year dedicated to games showing off the green capped younger sibling of the Mario Bros. One of these games is the next installment of the Mario Party series, coming soon for the Nintendo 3DS.

The game was announced at the most recent Nintendo Direct event by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata who assures us that the basic Mario Party formula remains the same. Players will roll dice on a variety of game boards in order to try and triumph over their opponents and become the superstar. However, Mario Party 3DS is taking a cue from Mario Party 8 in that each of its game boards will have its own specific rules and objectives.

One game board has players collecting cards from a deck and then using those cards to interact with their opponents in a variety of ways. Another more linear board rewards players with boosts that they can strap on to a space ship, allowing them to multiply their die rolls by huge amounts. Yet another board features a special die that can roll a bullet bill face, causing bullet bills to fire across the map. Players will have to choose between moving as far as they can or stopping their move short to hide in case their opponents trigger a bullet bill shot.

The Nintendo Direct presentation also showed off a variety of different mini-games as well. One appeared to be a shooting gallery while another was sort of a mini Super Mario Galaxy stage. A few other games require you to use specific 3DS features such as the touch pad for drawing or tilt controls. Of course, there are plenty of games that are just luck based as well.

But perhaps the most interesting new addition to Mario Party is the ability to end certain stages early by satisfying a victory condition! No more waiting around for a set number of turns! No more four hour long games! Hoorray!

Mario Party 3DS is scheduled to come out sometime this winter, though Iwata did not give a definite release date.