Mario Party 9

To do: Prerelease article. BBL files have development text. There's text for using an SD Card at offset of the main executable 236FD0 (US), along with text to relating to source localization files. English, Spanish, and French text differences between the US and European versions.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this. Specifically: Boxart for JP version indicates a possible title screen and banner difference.

Mario Party returns for one more Wii installment! Hudson Soft, however, does not.

The game changes up the typical Mario Party gameplay a bit: coins can't be collected, you collect Mini Stars instead of Stars, and everyone moves around in a single vehicle, much like Mario Party Advance.

But it's still got mini-games! Also notable for being thus far the only console Mario Party game to have a attract mode gameplay seen by waiting long enough in the title screen, to feature real-time CPU-only gameplay taking place in random minigames (and they can take place in any of the 44 Free-For-All minigames or any of the 10 1-vs.-Rivals minigames, and they feature 4 CPUs).

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.

Texture name	Early Texture	Final Texture	Early Resolution	Final Resolution	Additional Notes
beanstalk			64x128	128x128	The final version is clearly modeled after the vines found in New Super Mario Bros. The early texture doesn't have a top at all.
bgkinoko			256x64	512x128
bgmountain01			512x256	512x256	Same basic texture, but the final version is much shinier. Some of the colors were swapped around as well.
feeld01			256x256	512x512	Final texture is much brighter and looks like it fits in a Mario game.
flower01			256x256	512x512
grass01			128x128	128x256	Final graphic is in the graphical style of NSMB.
ground02			256x256	256x256	Yet more texture brightening.
kinohouse01			256x128	256x128	The final door is more defined than the early texture's door. The early texture (and level model) also have graphics for blue, green, and yellow Toad Houses. All of the Toad Houses in the final game's level are red.
mountroard01			128x128	512x512	A pretty massive upgrade in texture size and quality of the mountain road texture.
mountwall01			256x256	512x512
rainbow			16x16	16x32	Even this small rainbow texture got an increase in resolution and brightness!
roadside			128x32	256x64	The new texture is transparent at the top.
signboard01			64x128	256x256	Final version has bigger signboard.
sky01			256x128	512x64	The final texture is simpler and doesn't have the sky color as part of the texture.
wall01			256x256	256x256	Completely redone to look more like a Mario game's graphics.
waterfall01			64x128	128x256	Larger waterfall = better waterfall.
windmill01			32x128	32x128	The final texture is silver but is shaded gold by the game's lighting.
windmill02			64x256	512x128	The early texture has graphics for a yellow windmill while the final texture does not.
wood06			128x128	256x256	The tree is bigger and more detailed in the final version.

Unused Graphics#

Unused Spaces#

Large Icons

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

Texture name	Texture	Notes
d_star10		A 10 Mini Ztar space. In the final game these only go up to 5.
l_star10		A 10 Mini Star space. In the final game these only go up to 5.

Mini-Icons

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

Texture name	Texture	Notes
m_jp		A mysterious space that seems to be filled with Mini Ztars. The texture's name suggest it was likely used as a minus Jackpot space.
magma_05		A +5 Magma Space. This would be used in Magma Mine. As it is, only +2, +3, and +4 spaces are used.
p_jp03		A +3 Jackpot space. The mini-icons are +3 and +5; the actual icons are +5 and +8. This was likely changed so that the Jackpot Machine would be filled faster.
red		An ordinary red space with no other features. Used in the previous games, but here a generic red space is pointless.

Other Graphics#

Early Stop Space

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

Mini-icon	In-game Icon

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.

Early Side-by-Side Zone

Early	Final

Within the .lz file of the captain event tutorial images for the Bob-Omb Factory board, an early image of the zone is leftover, revealing that the board was going to have an entirely different look. The mini-star count is also different, being much less than in the final version.

Early Heart Star Colony

Early	Final

Another early snapshot of a captain event can be found in the .lz file of the captain event tutorial images for Bowser Station. The heart zone underwent major changes, as the heart rocks, platform, arch, and crystals are either not present, or overhauled to a more sci-fi aesthetic.

Early Bingo Colony

Early	Final

An early snapshot of the Bingo Colony can also be found in the same .lz file. The early version had a hazier purple background, with the planets being aligned differently. The board itself had brighter numbers, and the solar arrays were smaller. UI is also visible in the early snapshot, which is not in the final.

Early Speed Star Colony

Early	Final

The Speed Star Colony also underwent some changes as well. The surface of it was green instead of purple in the earlier version. For the spaces, the longest and shortest paths were one space longer than in the final version. There are also reverse spaces present, which are replaced by dash spaces in the final version. Another difference is that there are blue Mini Star spaces present, which aren't in the final version.

Dummy & Placeholders#

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. The Japanese says "Miss".

A very basic placeholder model of a penguin, found in the "Polar Extreme" minigame files. Has no animations assigned.

A balloon with the word dummy crudely written on it found in locale_us/en/mgm/layout/mgm_roulette_lc.lz/dummy.tpl in the USA version of this game.

Another balloon with the word mask crudely written on it found in locale_us/en/mgm01/layout/mgselect_lc.lz/dum_f.tpl in the USA version of this game.

Unused Animations#

To do: Rip gifs of the animations.

Bowser Jr. has unused animations for using a vehicle. These may have either been for testing or he was going to be playable at some point.

Unseen Details#

Mario's model on the title screen has a full head of hair underneath the hat, which is never seen in-game.

Internal Project Name#

The game is internally titled 9Stars given by the sound archive name and message project name, ns, likely short for the latter.