Mario Party 9 out in Australia and New Zealand in just a few weeks

Nintendo Australia has today announced the release date for Mario Party 9. Yes, there is 9 of them now. Mario Party 9 will actually mix up the Mario Party formula and hopefully not be like Mario Party 8 which was rather bland.

While there is, of course, 80 new mini games to play through, the actually core gameplay has been mixed up. Now all of your characters you pick move through the board in one vehicle. You still move around the board by hitting the dice block, but with everyone in the car things are kept for active between turns for other players. There are now also ’Mini Stars’ to collect, Bowser and his gang have stolen them and it’s up to you to get them back.

There are now boss battles in the game too that see you working together, instead of against each other. However you’ll still want to be number one as the person who does the most damage to the boss gets the most mini stars.

The March 8th release date for Mario Party 9 puts us second in line to get the game after Europe who get the game on the 2nd. American gets it a couple days later on the 11th and Japan has to wait until April.