Mario Party 9

Mario Party is back! Hudson Soft is not.

So this game has a lot of changes to the Mario Party gameplay. Coins can't be collected. Stars? No, go collect Mini Stars. Plus everyone moves around in a single vehicle like Mario Party Advance.

But it's still got mini-games!

Early Toad Road Stage
An early Toad Road stage can be found on the disc in the folder /common/bd00.

Note that unlike the final version's course maps, this is all loaded in one chunk. The final game's boards have separate chunks for each "section" of the level.



One of the most obvious features is that there's only one branching path in the stage -- the fork in the road by the large star in the west portion of the map.



The start of the board. The star marker at the start was changed in the final game to look like it's growing out of the dirt instead of just being slapped on.

A ditch where a bridge would be is replaced by two tree stumps in the final game.



The prototype version of Toad Road has three mountains, not two. The third mountain (where the vine grows) was replaced with a hill surrounded by a spiraling "staircase". The bog standard bridge was replaced with lily pad platforms.



These ruins don't appear in the final game at all! What's more, they're part of the main path. In the final game, this was replaced with a small island that's completely separate from the main area.



The lower-left corner of the map is where a special Mini-Star filled area can be found. In the final this is on an island that's in the center of the main path, but this early version is completely removed from the main path and is landlocked.

The strange mushroom platforms (which aren't scaled correctly) leading to the boss room are completely absent from the final game, as is the space ditch where a bridge would be.



A picture of Wiggler marks where the Boss Gate is found in the final game. It seems that even in this early model, Wiggler was intended to be the boss of this board. Of course, the actual Bowser Gate isn't present at all in the early model. The image used for Wiggler is the official artwork from Super Mario World.

Early Textures
Texture difference between the prototype and final level models.

Large Icons
Textures are stored in the file /common/board/pictures/mass.brres.lz

Mini-Icons
Textures are stored in the file /common/board/pictures/mass_mini.brres.lz

Other Graphics


A temporary event icon graphic found in the bd00 model file.

The "stop" texture is blue (helpful) in the mini-icon model file and green (event) in the final icon file.

Given the texture name compared to what it does in the final (Captain Event space) it's clear that the actual purpose of this space was changed.



A placeholder card icon for the Dry Bones boss mini-game from mg9603/map.brres.lz.



Similar dummy textures exist for the Toad House and Lakitu boss mini-games.



A placeholder basic representation of the Bumpty enemies, found in the "Polar Extreme" minigame files. Has no animations assigned.