Having already attended seven minigame-filled parties you'd think that Mario might consider hanging out with a less game-obsessed posse. When was the last time he was invited to a nice dinner party or a quiet lounge to eat nibbles and discuss the most recent episode of Lost1? For now it's business as usual, only with a literal, motion sensor twist.
Although the full game wasn't playable at Japan's Nintendo World event, a few of the new minigames that'll be destroying your wrists - just as Parties one through to seven killed your thumbs - were introduced to the Ninty mad visitors.
Party pose
As in WarioWare, different challenges require varied remote positions. The water-skiing game employs the horizontally held tilt-and-steer mechanism to collect coins and avoid spiky balls chucked at you by the Shy Guys driving the boat. If they want to stop you why don't they just cut your cord? Typical Mario Party madness. The horizontal tilt function also controls a bizarre mech-suit-like minigame, that has you tilting a platform to roll balls into similarly coloured pipes.
Also shown was a Wild West barrel-lassoing game, spinning your upright-positioned remote to rope in barrels of varying value, and a split-screen shooting gallery that uses the same remote aiming as the Shooting Range game in Wii Play, except the bullseye changes position - calling for a precise aim.
It's looking slightly prettier than the usual Mario Party, with lots of nice incidental details in backgrounds - such as the train chugging past the Lasso challenge. But with so many other titles throwing in equally substantial minigames on top of hefty single player modes, is this party worth attending?