I own the first game in the Mario Party series for the Nintendo 64 and I really enjoyed playing that game. Actually, I primarily played it by myself, but still had fun. Then through coincidence, irony, or perhaps something greater, I somehow managed to skip entirely over the next eight entries in the series (including the DS version) completely. But here I am playing Mario Party 9 for the Wii. It’s neat to see how far the series has come, and I can report that the game still feels a lot like the original game. The new party games available are fun and creative, and the minigames to play outside of the main game are equally as entertaining as the main mode itself. The game is definitely better with friends though, and Nintendo’s anti-online tendency means you’ll need real buddies to come over to enjoy this one with. Expect a full review to be up next week!