Marty Party 8 for the Wii follows in a long line of party games developed in the Super Mario universe, however, this is the first time Mario brings his party hat to the “next-gen” on the Wii. From new mini-games to Wii-mote controls, this game had a lot of potential. But does it hold up? Here is a breakdown of some of the facets of Mario Party 8 for the Wii:

Presentation and Graphics: The presentation of Mario Party 8 seriously confused me. Not so much how it was laid out, which was fairly easy to navigate with the Wii-mote, but more-so why Nintendo did the things they did. First off, the main menu system looks very nice in 480p widescreen. Pretty much a standard for this generation. Imagine my disappointment when I jumped into a game, only to find that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, other than the main menus is not widescreen. You get Xbox Live Arcade style sidebars to frame the picture on a widescreen display. In the HD era, this is very disappointing. Shame on you Nintendo. If you’re going to make one portion of the game support widescreen, you better damn well make sure the rest of the game does too. Once I got past that anger, the game didn’t really look any better than the last couple Mario Party games on the Gamecube. 2 of 5

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