Mario Party 8 Announced and Detailed for Wii

As if we could wait any longer for the next installment in Nintendo's popular boardgame-meets-competitive-minigames series featuring the company's iconic plumber, Mario Party 8 is fully-announced and details provided as to what players can expect this year. Full information follows after the jump.

The world's most popular party video game is getting a lot crazier in Mario Party 8. Whether you're shaking up cola cans or lassoing barrels, you and your friends will be drawn into the action like never before using the Wii Remote.

• Play with motion control: Players row their way through a river race, punch a statue to pieces, steer race cars, mopeds and go-karts and handle a balancing pole while walking a tightrope.
• Play using the Pointer: Shoot at Boos in a haunted house, rag and drop toppings in a cake-decorating competition, select the correct answers in game show challenges.
• Play using the Wii Remote's buttons: Players jump and pummel their way through a football brawl, hop and run across a field of spinning platforms
• Mario Party 8 also includes dozens of new minigames, six new party boards and many new game modes. In a series first, players can transform their characters into many forms, such as player-smashing boulders and coin-sucking vampires. Mario Party 8 also includes "extra-large" minigames like Star Carnival Bowling and Table Menace. One to four players can play Mario Party 8, each with a Wii Remote.

As for the game storyline: In Mario Party 8, a whimsical ringmaster has invited Mario, Peach and the rest of the crew to his carnival, a perfect setting for the dynamic spectacle of the Wii game play. Mario Party 8 keeps the surprises coming with minigames that draw upon the Wii Remote's motion, pointing and button control in a variety of ways. Players always know how to jump into the action by watching an animated tutorial that shows how to use the Wii Remote.

Plaers progress through the game in pure Mario Party tradition, taking the social, strategic game play of board games and adds breaks for quick, action-oriented minigames. In the main mode, players travel across six boards in search of Stars, landing on spaces that are helpful (example: giving coins) or a hindrance (example: sending Bowser in to mess with the player). Several variations for these boards tweak the main goals to enhance game play for solo sessions, two-player games and three- to four-player games.

In addition, Mario Party 8 includes four more minigame-infused kinds of board games, such as Tic-Tac Drop, where players earn the right to put the next mark on the board by winning a minigame.

Mario Party games are a celebration of all things Mario, so you can expect to play as any of 14 classic characters, the widest selection yet for the series, including newcomers Hammer Bro and Blooper. You'll also bump into many old friends and foes that span 20+ years of Mario games.

Special powers/weapons/moves/features: Beyond using the Wii Remote's motion and pointer control, this eighth game in the Mario Party series goes its own way with two major changes:

• Players can transform their character using candy power-ups. Examples: When Peach eats Bowlo Candy, she'll turn into a Peach-faced ball and bowl over characters to get their coins. When Wario eats Vampire Candy, he'll sprout wings and fly off to suck the coins from all other players.
  
• A more engaging view of the action puts the player "on the board" with his traveling character, no longer far above the whole board looking down.

Mario Party 8 is rated E for Everyone. The currently-scheduled U.S. release date is March 5th.