I should make something fancier here, but having finished it I just want to push it out the door and get away from the computer.

I've assembled some statistics about the recent fifty-turn playthrough of Mario Party 2. The document is probably too long and complex to directly include as a blog post, but you should be able to read and download it from here. Just as a heads-up, it's 40 pages long, with about 30 graphs and tables and 9,700 words.

I only realised mid-way through that the original is a Premium video so if you can't watch it, some of this probably won't make sense. If you can watch it but haven't - you really should.

In lieu of the actual content, here's the table of contents:

Contents

• Contents. 0
  • List of Tables. 0
  • List of Figures. 1
• Background. 2
• Before The Game. 3
  • Game Parameters. 3
  • "Story: The Legend of Mario Land", as told in the official instruction manual 3
  • "Story: The Legend of Mario Land", as told by Dan to the other players 4
• Gameplay. 7
  • Turn Durations. 7
    • Brad’s "Turn of the Game". 9
  • Die Rolls. 9
  • Events. 10
    • Bank Payments. 12
    • Bowser Beam.. 13
    • "Happening" Tiles. 13
  • Star Purchases, Hidden Blocks, and Boo Steals 14
    • Hidden Blocks. 14
    • Boo Thefts. 14
    • Star Acquisition Rate. 15
  • Coins. 16
• Minigames. 17
  • Winners. 17
  • Minigame Randomness. 18
    • "Free-for-all" Minigames. 19
    • 1-v-3 Minigames. 20
    • 2-v-2 Minigames. 21
    • Battle Minigames. 22
  • Minigame Durations. 22
• Turn 51. 27
  • Bonus Stars. 27
    • Mini-Game Star. 27
    • Coin Star. 27
    • Happening Star. 27
  • Official Results. 27
  • Player Ranking. 28
    • "Short Game" Winners. 28
  • Context-free Mario Party 2 opinions, in chronological order 30
  • Mario Party 2 content not experienced during the game (as broadcast) 32
• "Space Land" Board Statistics. 34
• Appendices. 37
  • Appendix A: Data. 37
  • Appendix B: Tools and Methods. 37
    • General Transcriber. 37
    • Path Recorder. 38
    • Data Analysis, Quality Control and Presentation 39
  • Appendix C: References and Further Reading 40

List of Tables

• Table 1: Encounters by player for various event types. 11
• Table 2: Times players were moved due to Happening Tiles. 13
• Table 3: Thefts between players (of any type). 14
• Table 4: Coins stolen by Boo. 15
• Table 5: Total coins gained and lost by each player. 16
• Table 6: Gains and losses in particular events for each player. 16
• Table 7: Times that individual minigames were played. 17
• Table 8: Minigame winners for each player and minigame. 18
• Table 9: Coins collected from minigames. 27
• Table 10: Maximum coins held by each player. 27
• Table 11: Happening tiles landed on by each player. 27
• Table 12: The final score, as calculated by Mario Party 2. 27
• Table 13: Percentage of game at each rank. 28
• Table 14: Possible outcome of a 20-turn "Lite Play" game. 29
• Table 15: Possible star counts of a 35-turn "Standard Play" game. 29
• Table 16: Possible outcome of a 35-turn "Standard Play" game. 29

List of Figures

• Figure 1: Total time of ‘player’ turns during the game. 7
• Figure 2: Duration of overall turns during the game. 8
• Figure 3: Separating time in turns by the player/event responsible. 8
• Figure 4: Die outcomes by player. 9
• Figure 5: Individual player die rolls. 10
• Figure 6: Deposits and Withdrawals by Player. 12
• Figure 7: Bank balance versus game time. 12
• Figure 8: Bowser Beam outcomes. 13
• Figure 9: The origins of each player's Stars. 14
• Figure 10: Total stars versus turn count, excluding Bonus Stars. 15
• Figure 11: Appearances and occurrences of 4-player minigames. 19
• Figure 12: Appearances and occurrences of 1-v-3 minigames. 20
• Figure 13: Times that a player was chosen in 1-vs-3 minigames. 21
• Figure 14: Appearances and occurrences of 2-v-2 minigames. 21
• Figure 15: Appearances and occurrences of Battle minigames. 22
• Figure 16: Example annotated minigame duration graph. 23
• Figure 17: Durations of various repeated minigames. 25
• Figure 18: Evidence of bet fulfilment. 28
• Figure 19: Player ranking by turn. 28
• Figure 20: Diagram of the Mario Party 2 Space Board. 34
• Figure 21: Space board tiles sized proportionally to traversals. 35
• Figure 22: Game board tiles sized proportionally to move-start locations. 35
• Figure 23: Game board tiles sized proportionally to move-end locations. 36
• Figure 24: Screenshot of the main transcribing application, with actual data. 37
• Figure 25: A screenshot of the program used for path recording, with sample data. 39

This is super cool and extensive as hell. Thanks.

Do you do this sort of thing professionally?

You didn't need to do math to take the fun out of Mario Party 2, Mario Party 2 takes the fun out of Mario Party 2 all on it's own.

Dude.... Holy shit. That doc is insane.

You are a crazy person.

Never change!!

@korwin: How can you take something out of a thing, if it wasn't there to begin with?

Dude. WHAT!?

EDIT: I can't tell if this is for the GB community's edification or for a university project or some other thing. There is a page of out of context quotes with one of the GB crew yelling profanities in every other quotation.

EDIT: I guess it doesn't matter, I'm enjoying reading through this.

This is so bizarre, insane, and awesome. I have no idea why you did this, but it was actually pretty fun to read/skim through. Seeing the out of context quotes scattered throughout this hardcore deluge of statistics and information was fucking hilarious.

This is an act of madness. This is something I fully support.

@bdhurkett:

On page 15 you say

"or that Drew was really bad at pressing the A button."

I know exactly which part of the game you're referring to and if you watch a few seconds after Drew proclaims "DID MY A BUTTON PRESSES MEAN NOTHING?" you see Brad quietly say to Drew "The A button is the blue one." and then Drew subtly look down at the controller and quietly say "Oh." indicating that he was pressing the wrong button, and that's why the ghost stole all his coins.

That's the sort of thing you notice on your 4th viewing.................

I have a problem and that problem is Mario Party Party.

Outstanding work duder.

woah

I read the whole damn thing. Good work!

Holy shit, this is amazing. Awesome work, dude!

Exhaustive detailed analysis. Truly, you've advanced the course of science by several centuries. This paper has set the stage for a golden age of global human happiness and social well-being.

I assume you have a Master's degree in something?

@pyromagnestir: @bushpusherr: @gruebacca: I wish I could get paid for stuff like this.I haven't written this kind of thing since university (and I'm pretty sure my last professor would fail me for the shoddy referencing alone). Just had some free time, wondered how close the race for the bonus stars was, and realised it would make a good bit of practice for some programming. After that, things just snowballed.

If they'd shown the entire detailed results at the end of the video I wouldn't have needed to start it, o I guess that was a good albeit unintentional decision.

@ulquiokani: They're usually related to the content nearby - if only in the context of when they were spoken in the video - but originally they were just to fill up white space instead of fixing the formatting & layout properly and some couldn't quite fit where they belonged.

@cerberus3dog: Wow, I never paid attention to that bit of conversation but you're totally right. (Technically, there's an extra 'oh' from Drew in there as well.) Doesn't change things drastically, but I couldn't find any verifiable information about how the number of coins is chosen, and I didn't care enough to set up an emulator and figure it out myself. Perhaps it's something like 100% - the number of A presses? A question for next time, if there is one. (I doubt I'll do this again for future Mario Parties.)

Oh, and four viewings? I didn't bother counting, but I'm pretty sure I've literally watched this video more times than anybody else on the planet by now!

@bdhurkett: My fourth viewing happened on the day after the video was posted, I'm well past that total by now...

@cerberus3dog: I gotta be honest, even after doing all this I'm tempted to now go and make a supercut of just those lines.

I'm just glad there's an official transcript of Dan trying to explain the plot of this thing.

Modern heroes.

They do exist.

You're insane.

I love you.

This is pretty amazing man.

Awesome work, very cool. I don't care what anyone says, I'm with Dan. Mario Party is a gift from god.

I said, "This is amazing..." out loud when I was scrolling down.

Incredible work.

This is absurd and I love that it exists.

Man, that's incredible.

That's...

Whoa.

Jesus crunchy christ. It just occurred to me. Somebody does this kind of analysis for a living.Voluntary.

Analyse me bdhurkett. Analyse me like one of your french girls.

Good lord. You made a program as well to record all this data.

How did I miss this topic, doc is melting my mind

Well this is incredible.

IN-CRO-YA-BLE.

This is fantastic man! Kudos to you. The quotes at the end were hilarious.

@bdhurkett: Woah! Read the whole thing. I was thinking that you'd done all the data entry directly into excel the whole time! Appendix B was extremely interesting. Maybe next time (if there is a next time) you could add "Swear words used as the game progressed"?

Thanks for your compliments everybody!

@crono: I dare you to - it's not like there are real statistics in there, it's pretty straightforward (and hopefully interesting) stuff.

@beardmcbeard: I was originally considering that, but it wouldn't have worked with the way I ended up doing things (basically just looking at one frame from each second, with no audio). Though, thinking about it now, it'd be pretty easy. If I ever get around to a followup (not planned) that would be on the list.

Edit: THIS IS YOUR FAULT

@bdhurkett: Hahah, nice going. I'd be happy to help out somehow but it seems like you've got it down :)

Why did you write this document?

@driveuplife: Why not, is my counter-question! :)

As I was reading the first 95% of it, I just thought you were obsessive. Then I reached the Appendix where you discussed building a program to tally all the info and I was legitimately scared.

This is really awesome. Thanks for giving me some reading material before work! Data like this always fascinates me.

Oh, and including Dan's attempt at explaining the story, juxtaposed against Nintendo's carefully-constructed story poem, was brilliant.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'd be doing in my spare time if I wasn't so lazy. You, my friend, are a hero, and I'm afraid of you.

I read this thread and thought "I am never going to read through all that."

I then immediately read through all of it.

Taking the fun out of Mario Party 2: aka, playing Mario Party 2.

This is simply amazing. I hope you are aware we now expect one for Mario Party 3!

My god. This is madness in the most amazing way possible.

Holy shit this is insane.

Since you've already coded the software at this point (again insane) any plans to go back and run Mario Party 1 Party through your algorithms?

Wow. @marino you love charts. Check out all these charts... Jesus.

I'm gonna say this here so Mario Party 3 has an item to increase the turn count 5 at a time...

just saw this, this site and its community are borderline insane sometimes. never let it change.

WOW

This is incredible. Great work duder!