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Mario Party and Mario Party 2 were both released on the Nintendo 64 system and contained six characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario and Donkey Kong. Mario Party 3 was the last Mario Party released on the Nintendo 64 system. A total of eight characters were available to choose from: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong and the new Waluigi and Princess Daisy.
Mario Party 4 was the first Mario Party that was released on the Nintendo GameCube. This game featured the same eight playable characters as Mario Party 3, which are Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Princess Daisy, Donkey Kong, Wario and Waluigi, and it featured Toad, Goomba, Bowser, and several others.
Mario Party 5 came out in November 2003, and had three new playable characters; Boo, Koopa Kid, and Toad. However, Donkey Kong was not playable in the new version. Instead, there were new DK spaces which had a variety of bonuses that could happen for players who landed on them. Also, in this version for the GameCube, Capsules replaced items, which could be thrown up to ten spaces ahead to create new board spaces. When a player landed on the space you threw it on a certain event would happen depending on what kind of Capsule it was. In the one player game, you now played against three Koopa Kids, who take their turns simultaneously and try to deplete your coins, while you try to do the same to them.
Mario Party 6 is currently set to be released on December 6th, 2004. According to Nintendo, it will be the first game to make use of a new microphone peripheral for the Nintendo GameCube, which will be packaged with the game.
After the release of Mario Party, the game was investigated by the Office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, over claims that the subgames that involved joystick rotation caused blisters and other hand injuries. In March 2000, Nintendo reached an agreement wherein it would provide up to four padded gloves to each owner.
Subsequent versions of the Mario Party series did not include the stick rotation games.