It’s time for the next Mario Party title! The series has definitely come a long way and it’s always fun to take a trip down nostalgia lane with the older ones. Back in the day I played a lot of Mario Party 2 but 3 was sort of the odd man out. Now I could really go through it and see how it stacked up. It’s a fun game as are all of the parties but I would say that it’s not quite at the elite level of some of the latter ones like Mario Party 4 and Mario Party 5. In particular I think there are too many event spaces which do have a tendency to slow up the game somewhat.

I played a classic party match on the snow level. The gimmick here is that there is a snowman who throws a snowball at you and if you don’t time your jump perfectly then you will be sent flying and may even go right past the star you were hoping to be at. It’s a pretty tough one to deal with because the timing does have to be absolutely precise on every level. Mess it up by even the smallest amount and the stage will definitely make you regret it. Also there are a ton of event spaces littered about the stage so no matter what you really end up bumping into them. In my match the space was probably landed on at least 10 times.

It would be nice if the cutscene could be skipped after the first time but I guess because of the jumping that wouldn’t really be possible. As always I do have to say that the computer is incredibly skilled. It’s like you never really stood a chance against that guy. He wins just about all of the minigames and has incredible luck. I’m glad that Nintendo didn’t hold back here but man is it a different feeling than the A.I. nowadays. Although maybe I’m speaking too soon and I’m about to get clobbered when I try Super Mario Party soon. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility right?

The graphics have aged very well if you ask me. Yeah they’re certainly a bit blockier and more pixelated as you would expect since it has been many years but the art style is magnificent so it just doesn’t matter. There’s one minigame where the characters are in their vehicles so you just see their giant heads popping out and it works extremely well. Meanwhile the soundtrack and sound effects are on point as well.

I haven’t talked much about the gameplay because it’s pretty self explanatory but I will say the most impressive thing here is really just that the game is a lot of fun. At no point are you bored or anything and the flow is pretty good. The minigames have a lot of variety as well. I should warn you that the Z button doesn’t appear to be configured/mapped with the GC controller. Not sure if there’s a way to fix that in the settings but if not there are definitely some unwinnable minigames here so I would keep that in mind. You basically just end up losing which boosts the CPU’s chances of winning matches even more as a result.

There are quite a number of maps in the game, each with their own little quirks so that adds a lot of replay value to the title. It’s also fun unlocking so many new minigames each time. I do think that it could get a little tricky eventually when you’re down to the last ones to unlock with RNG but that is always the case. Just means you have to get in there and keep on playing matches until you’ve obtained them all. A 20 turn match seems to take close to an hour so I wonder how long doing the 50 turn party they suggest would take. I feel like I did get to try that once in Party 4 or 5 but that was so many years ago that I just don’t remember.

Obviously the game has tons of replay value with minigame mode, and all of the other ways to play. You could really keep playing this game forever which is by design and Nintendo definitely aced it there. I would say it does beat Mario Party 1 with ease although to me Mario Party 2 seemed to have the better selection of minigames. I would also take it over a lot of the modern titles that really messed with the rules, these traditional settings are definitely the best way to go.

Overall, Mario Party 3 is definitely a pretty good game. I had fun with it and while you can definitely see some areas that could use a bit of work like all of the interruptions within the party stage and all, it’s still a positive experience in the end. The minigames themselves are a lot of fun and there’s also such a large variety of them. Even party games that would come out many years later like Sonic and the Secret Rings had far less minigames. So this one showed what was possible on a much smaller budget and made it look easy. Nintendo was definitely ahead of the curve. So I would say playing Party 4 is the better bet but if you have the Switch Online then you definitely owe it to yourself to give it a shot. No reason not to play it when you’ve got it in the collection right?

Overall 7/10