control stick and several buttons. There are extra minigames which the player must purchase in-game to unlock. Another new addition to this game is "Bowser Time!". This is an event that only occurs every five turns during a Party Cruise match. After each minigame, the meter on the screen will increase by 20% and when the meter is full, Bowser will appear and hinders the players depending on which board that the characters are currently playing. Based on the board, Bowser may destroy bridges, take stars from players, or change star locations. On almost every board at some time, Bowser may take a photo as a "memento" of the vacation and take the players' coins. At other times, he may open a shop that sells the players useless and expensive items, which are then taken by Koopa Kid. "Bowser Time!" may only occur once, or up to nine times, depending on the number of turns played. This was also the first game in the Mario Party series to have removed the autoplay capability in Party mode (where all players can be manually set to AI, thus enabling the game to "play itself" without any human player). The game will not allow there to be less than one active human player at any time, unless a code is used. Plot Toadsworth has invited Mario and all of his friends to go on a luxury cruise around the world due to all the hard work; however, Bowser was not invited. Furious at being omitted, King Koopa vows revenge. When the cruise ship arrives at its first destination, the passengers discover that Bowser has turned their vacation paradise into a stress-filled madhouse. Mario tries to gain as many stars as possible to end this. Reception The game received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of two eights and two sevens for a total of 30 out of 40. IGN gave the game a 7 out of 10, stating solely it was "a slumber party". The game sold 1.86 million copies worldwide. References External links Official Japanese website 2005 video games Mario Party Party video games GameCube games GameCube-only games GameCube microphone games Microphone-controlled computer games Video games developed in Japan Multiplayer and single-player video games de:Mario Party#Mario Party 7