Mario Party 5 retains the fundamental gameplay featured in previous installments, which is based upon a themed board game played by characters of the Mario series. The player's objective is to obtain the most stars by the end of the board game, which are purchased for twenty coins when passing the designated star space on the game board.[2] There are 77 minigames, through which most coins are earned. A randomly-chosen minigame is played after all players have rolled the die. "Party Mode" is the main multiplayer mode,[3] and involves four characters competing in a standard board game either independently or in opposing pairs. As with its predecessors, players can adjust the number of turns in a game by multiples of 5 up to 50 and determine the difficulty of artificial intelligence opponents, among others.[citation needed]
Mario Party 5 features ten playable characters, including three additional characters to the series: Toad, Boo, and Koopa Kid. Hudson omitted Donkey Kong as a playable character from the series in this installment, instead featuring him in the "DK space", which initiates an event granting the possibility of a star or coins whenever landed on.[4] Like previous installments, blue and red spaces add or deduct three coins from players when they land on them. "Bowser spaces" return from Mario Party 4. While the series' predecessors used item shops as a means to obtain items, Mario Party 5 introduces the capsule system. Capsules are containers that hold a single item which are acquired when passing the "Capsule Machine" on the board. The items contained within them serve a variety of purposes, from increasing the range of the Dice Block and thus movement, to deducting ten coins from an opponent.[5] The capsules can only be thrown up to ten spaces ahead of the current position. During a game, the gameplay is altered for the last five turns with the options selected randomly via a roulette wheel; such changes include tripling the coin benefit or deficit from coloured spaces.[6]
The game's boards incorporate the theme of the Dream Depot, with each having "Dream" at the end of the board's title, except for the "Bowser's Nightmare" board. Themes of the boards include dreams of toys and treasure hunting, among others. Each board consists of multiple types of spaces, some of which grant special types of minigames that cannot be accessed regularly. Some spaces, specifically "happening" spaces, will incorporate the relevant theme; for example, a giant robot resembling Mecha Bowser will shoot any character back to the start when landing on its "happening" space in the Toy Dream board.[citation needed]
Players can choose to play minigames separate from the board game context via "Minigame Mode". The minigames are categorized by their character structure with "4-player", "1 vs. 3", and "2 vs. 2" available.[7] Besides these standard versions, there are also the "DK" and "Bowser" minigames, which are themed to reflect their titular character; "Battle" minigames are retained from the previous three Mario Party games. "Duel" minigames, which involve two players competing against each other, are re-introduced. The set of minigames are available without a structure ("Free play") in this mode, but can be formatted into tournaments and separate objectives like in "Mini-game circuit", involving the characters winning minigames to reach the finish line first. A total of 75 minigames can be played, but they all must be unlocked via "Party mode" and "Story mode" before they can be played in "Minigame Mode". In "Bonus Mode", a set of three larger games that do not appear in usual play can be accessed; this involves a card-based board game ("Card party"), as well as beach volleyball and ice hockey.[8]
Mario Party 5 introduced the "Super-Duel Mode", a game involving the player assembling and controlling a combat vehicle. Each component of the vehicle can be bought separately; these do not necessarily have to fit with other parts stylistically, and contribute to the vehicle's general statistics regarding fields such as health and speed.[9] Once the vehicle is assembled and named, it can engage AI or human opponents in a single match or in tournaments. Variants of this are available, including a capture the flag mode and another requiring the player to shoot mechanical rabbits.[10]
The story mode in Mario Party 5 is completely different from the story modes of Mario Party 3 and 4. Players face the Koopa Kid trio (red, green, and blue). The only way to defeat them and clear the board is to take all their coins away, mostly by beating them in minigames. Players must take all coins from a Koopa Kid to defeat him. If players lose all of the coins or don't defeat the Koopa Kids within fifteen turns, the game is over. After players win five boards, they face Bowser in a final stage mini-game called "Frightmare", which is a 1-on-1 mini-game with Bowser. There are four parts to the battle. First, players go against Mechakoopas (robotic versions of Koopa Troopas). Next, players have to move and jump around to avoid three rings of fire for a short time. Then players face Bowser directly; they must make him jump onto a tile three times to clear the third part. The final part of the minigame is the final battle, where Bowser grows. After throwing fireballs and hitting Bowser with them five times, the game is cleared and the final board is unlocked. Also, just like in Mario Party 3, the new playable characters are unplayable in this mode.