Mario Party Advance (GBA) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
181A playthrough of Nintendo's 2005 game for the Game Boy Advance, Mario Party Advance.
This video shows full playthrough of the Shroom City mode. I played most of the game as Luigi before switching to Peach and Yoshi to finish the last couple of quests. I then finish the final quest against Bowser with Mario for the ending.
Mario Party Advance was the eighth official game in the Hudson Soft-developed series, released shortly before Mario Party 7 on the GameCube. It was also the first handheld installment in the series, and it is the only game to feature a single-player campaign for its main gameplay mode.
Because the experience is no longer centered around a group of friends battling for stars, Mario Party Advance marks a huge departure from the N64 and GameCube games. It doesn't really feel like a Mario Party game at all, but in this case, that's not a bad thing.
Bowser, douchebag that he is, has decided to inconvenience everybody by messing up the castle and flinging all of its minigames and Dr. E. Gadd's "gaddgets" across the Mushroom Kingdom. There are fifty in total, and the Shroom City mode focuses on getting all of these back.
The entire game takes place on a single map, and each townsperson that you come across has one of the items you need, and to get these items, you'll need to do various favors for them.
These favors, or "quests," will usually require you with to "duel" through minigames, to run back-and-forth doing fetch quests, or investigating and solving crimes.
Most of it is just as shallow as you'd expect from any Mario Party title, but the characters and the writing give it all a much needed shot of personality, and there are a lot of callbacks to Mario characters that aren't usually shown much love. One of my favorite examples has to be how Flutter (from SMW2: Yoshi's Island) is in love with a laser-shooting eyeball (from Mario 64), and is crushed when she learns that Mr. I is already totally smitten with Princess Peach. It's weird and ridiculous, but that's what gives it most of its appeal.
The minigames themselves are fine. They're varied enough to get the job done without being dull, but since they're so simple, they can start to feel like busywork toward the end of the game... especially the mushroom challenges that constantly interrupt you at unwelcome times. That being said, there's a nice range of challenges on display - you'll go sledding, run from a wall of lava, whack opponents with giant mallets... it's all typical Mario Party fare.
The graphics and sound are really nice for a GBA game. The character sprites look great and there are a ton of funny animations, and the music is energetic and catchy, and the sound quality is pretty good considering the platform.
Mario Party Advance might disappoint if you're looking for a console-style Mario Party experience, but if the idea of some light-hearted Mario fan-service sounds good to you, you'll appreciate what this one has to offer.
*Recorded using an LCD shader in Retroarch to mimic the look of the original hardware.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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