Itza Meee Mario!

I've had to burn off some vacation days before I lose them at the end of the month. I've been using them (including today) to have Mario Parties. What's a Mario Party, pray tell? A Mario Party is when a bunch of kids OR a bunch of adult geeks get together to play Mario Party on GameCube.

Mario Party is like a board game. You roll virtual dice and move your space around the board. The object is to gather as many stars as possible. Depending on the board, you can either buy these stars or steal them from the other players.

After all players complete one turn, everyone plays a "minigame." These games can be free for alls, 1 vs 3 or 2 vs 2. This is where things get competitive. And Ryan (pictured, showing off his new tat) and I have almost come to blows a few times. In fact, the last game tonight I thought he was going to cry. Which made me laugh because he had been winning all day. It served him right.

The minigames have awesome names like, Snow Ride (I always belt out Snow Ride, take it easy), Take Me Ohm (you jump over laser beams), Big Dripper (collect honey that drips from the ceiling), and Mathemortician (you say a number into the microphone and fire a flame at that square). In the games you might battle Cheep Cheeps, Lakitus and Pink Boos. It's all cute but maddeningly difficult.

Currently we're playing Mario Party 7. Let me just say I'm not a big fan. Mario Party 4-6 was based on skill. The winner of the game was the person who won the most stars, won the most minigames, won the most coins and landed on the most "what's happening" spaces. Mario Party 7 awards stars for random things (like buying orbs) and other things. And it's all random. So you could have won the most stars, won the most games and have the most coins and still lose the game. This has put me at an unfair advantage. Ryan won 2 of the 3 games we played (I finally won the last game).

I consistently won at Mario Party 4, 5, and 6 because of my mad gaming skills. This new one is all luck. Regardless, I still had fun. Here are some pictures of today's Mario Party. We'll be having another one next Thursday.

JP kept trying to mess up Ryan during the microphone games

Despite it being their first Mario Party, JP and Jeffy were quite relaxed

Ryan tried to screw me up and ended up losing!