Parents' Guide to Mario Party: The Top 100

Strange as it might sound, this game's noble intentions of compiling 100 of the series' most popular mini-games falls short with a surprising lack of content and shelf life. For starters, Mario Party: The Top 100 is lacking for modes: There's one base board (meaning a deceptive lack of variety), a miniscule character roster, and a clunky way of creating "playlists" of mini-games. On that last point, you have to manually select mini-games a la carte -- which is a lot of work. It's odd to gripe about these shortcomings given the generous amount of mini-games on offer, but they just don't come together in a way that makes you want to play them at length.

But with 100 games, you're sure to find a few favorites and a few you know you'll want to practice at and get better. It's commendable that the game is multiplayer via Download Play (meaning only one player needs to own a copy of the game), but there's an obvious jarring clash in bringing back some of the series' older offerings from other consoles. For example, mini-games from the Wii (bowling, another where you have to tilt the 3DS to steer a car) simply don't work on the handheld format. Nobody does fun like Nintendo, and there are definitely some gems in this collection (a standout is a reversal on Whac-A-Mole, where players compete to keep their heads above ground the longest before being bopped), but these moments are simply too short-lived and too few and far between to make the overall package worthwhile.