As I reported a while ago, I bought a Wii U a while ago and enjoyed Super Mario World 3D. I have also reported the possibility that the days of Nintendo could be numbered. The thing is, I have had Mario Party 10 for a while, and I have just recently started playing it. I believe it is the Wii U’s niche market.

If you are not familiar with the Mario Party series, it is essentially a board game that you can play on television. The difference is instead of a bored “board”, it is a very active place of play. Sure, you have to shake a controller to do a dice, which is completely unnecessary in a random number generator. As always, the players are characters from the Mario franchise, and the action is part game and part movie.

Mario Party 10 is unique as it is the first of its type for the Wii U. As far as I can tell, the game is really the juvenile type where you just roll a dice and move forward until you get to the end. The issue is the Wii U has that big controller with the touchscreen that probably costs half as much as the console. I’m guessing very few Wii U users have two of these.

Fortunately, Mario Party 10 allows four Wii controllers as well as the big Wii U controller. I had a chance to play it with my family, and it is quite fun. You see, the big controller is used to play Bowser, who goes after the four other players. It’s kind of like a chase, with Mario Party’s trademark Mini-games when Bowser catches up. It is possible for Bowser to take out the players one at a time, and even for him to win.

I have no idea if Mario Party 10 is like any of the others, but I think that perhaps Nintendo is really finding its market with younger players, and those who have families. I guess I’m thinking that is a good niche audience to have, but considering the power of PlayStation and Xbox, I believe that Nintendo will have to do more to compete to stay alive in the console world.