is the sixth installment in the Mario Party series of board game-style party video games by Nintendo and is the third game in the series made for the GameCube and was released in Japan on November 18, 2004; in North America on December 6, 2004; in Europe on March 18, 2005; and in Australia on September 15, 2005. It is the first GameCube game to make use of a microphone add-on. Mario Party 6 received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the day-and-night system, boards, and minigames, but was criticized for the microphone feature and its perceived lack of originality. Mario Party 6 is followed by Mario Party Advance and Mario Party 7. Gameplay In Mario Party 6, up to 4 players take turns moving on board game-style stages, often playing multiplayer minigames to earn coins and stars. The object of the game is to amass the most coins and stars before completing a set number of turns. This is the first game to take out the coin bonus star, replacing it with the Orb star, which is awarded to the player that used the most Orbs. On multiplayer boards, the sun will periodically set or rise (every three turns), producing different effects. Changes include spaces moving, different characters appearing, and changes to minigames. This is reflected in two new characters, Brighton and Twila, representing the sun and moon respectively. All 10 playable characters from Mario Party 5 return in this game: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Princess Daisy, Wario, Waluigi, Toad, Yoshi, Koopa Kid, and Boo. Toadette is also playable as a newcomer. There are 82 minigames in total. Brighton and Twila, the sun and the moon who watch over the Mario Party world, argue over who is more popular. Mario suggests they collect as many Stars as they can to end this. This was the last game in the Mario Party series to have 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). Every Mario Party game after this will not allow there to be less than one active human player at any time, unless a code is used. Orbs Orbs are special items players can either collect on the board or buy with coins at the Orb Hut. They can be used in many ways to give a player an