Wii Party Preview

Mario had a good run. After nearly a dozen games in the Mario Party series across the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, and Wii, Nintendo's giving the plumber a break and putting its Mii avatars to work for the latest collection of four player mini-games. The Japanese version's been available for a few weeks now, but Wii Party is yet to release in North America & will hit shelves on October 4th.

Wii Party features 13 game modes that utilize approximately 80 different minigames that pit as many as four players against each other in both videogame challenges as well as physical competitions that use the Wii remotes in unique fashion.

Just like Mario Party, Wii Party's core experience is in a board game presentation. Roll the dice, walk the path, land on a space, and compete in a randomly selected mini-game. Unlike Mario Party, however, there's really only one board game map on this island – it resembles WuHu Island from Wii Sports Resort but officially the place has nothing to do with that location. For a little board game variety, there's another mode called Glob Trot where you'll wander around the entire world competing against other opponents instead of just a single volcano-and-dinosaur infested island in the middle of nowhere.