Mario Party - the most fun you can have with your friends. While they're dressed

No, there aren’t any guns in it. Or huge, city-destroying robots. But it’s a party and you’re all invited.
Jez Bickham

We know what you're thinking. But before you sneer, or summarily dismiss Mario Party as harmless fluff, sit back and consider the plumber’s credentials. Future Gamer have already blagged their way into his little get together (with some choice name dropping) and can assure you that a blinding time was had by all.

The decision to produce what is, essentially, a board game, starring the plucky Italian, his under-appreciated brother, Princess Peach, Donkey Kong and the rest of the gang may seem like a decision bordering on madness and a disastrous use for all those much-loved characters. However, what could justifiably have been a recipe for tedium turns out to be, against all odds, frenetic, bloodthirsty fun.

Like the best of Nintendo's multiplayer triumphs, Mario Party hides a roiling mass of brutal savagery beneath a deceptively cutesy exterior. Settle down for the evening with three companions and Hudson's latest, and we guarantee that by the end of the night, you'll all be high on an exhilaration that rises above the frayed tempers, shattered friendships and base competitiveness that Mario Party engenders.

And why? Because Mario Party is really a million games in one. Sort of. At the end of each turn all the players compete in one of 56 mini-games, which, bar a couple of clunkers, provide that rarefied, hectic, tense fun so often generated by Nintendo’s finest multiplayers.