Mario Party is the first in a series of board game style video games for Nintendo platforms, featuring popular characters from the Mario series. It was released on the Nintendo 64 in Japan on December 18 1998, followed by a North American release on February 8 1999, and a European release on March 9 1999. The game has spawned seven console sequels with Mario Party 8 being the most recent one; there have also been Arcade, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and e-Reader versions, making a total of twelve games in the series.