Twelve years! Crazy!
If you’re looking for a memorable look at the past decade or a retrospective on the site’s biggest moments, you’re better off going back to our 10th anniversary video or our even our 11th anniversary post. If you haven’t noticed, Mario Party Legacy looks a bit cleaner and sharper than it did before, and that’s what we’ll be talking about this time around.
Outside the increasingly popular PartyPlanner64 and Mario Party 1-3 modding scene, nothing has really happened in the past year on MPL. And this isn’t by accident. Creating this website launched me into the world of games media and has since helped me write and produce content for a number of major publications. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave much room to give MPL the proper attention. But! I still want Mario Party Legacy to live on, not as a consistently updated site, but more of a compendium and haven of Mario Party info and screens.
That’s why in the past month, I’ve put in the time to not only revamp the look of the website and improve a lot of the backend and behind the scenes mechanics, but to also update our main content. So! This post will look at the small and big changes along with what is still to come.
First up! The theme. It’s a brand new theme and the most flexible one I’ve worked with yet. I really thought the previous theme would be the one we stick to and never change, but here we are. The new one is slick, it uses fewer resources, it’s a lot more mobile friendly, and generally is a lot more pleasing to the eye. This will be the final one, I swear!
The old theme was also outdated in terms of security. Some funky stuff was going on and in some cases files seemed to have been tampered with. This is what initially led me to start all these updates as this had to be addressed pronto. Took some time to find the root of the problem and decided it would be best to toss the old theme and start fresh. I’m so glad I did!
To finally match the main website, the Forum also got a new look. It’s still the same theme but the colors and especially the logo now match what you see here. SMF, the forum software we use, is a nightmare to try and mess with and update. But! I got the Forum updated to its latest version to go along with its new coat of paint.
Cleaned out and removed unnecessary and no longer supported plugins, freeing up additional resources for the site. Fixed and improved our ad boxes and Mario Party Legacy is now on the much more secure HTTPS extension.
We have a new comment system! Discord is… kind of a mess. It’s filled with ads and isn’t as intuitive as it used to be. The new one is clean and simple and it’s mostly in place to keep all our legacy comments from throughout the years intact. Plus, it’ll be nice for the occasional post!
Added a merchandise and shop page where I link to Mario Party related products on Amazon. If you buy any of these items or something else after getting to Amazon using our link, I’ll get a small portion of purchase. That’s really it, if you like the site and want to throw some support my way, well, there you go. If the interest is there, I’d love to add a section for things like figurines and collectibles.
Menus have moved around. The game pages are still at the top but we have new sections on the right. The “Essential Links” are our big pages we don’t want you to miss or have to look hard for. “Legacy Content” highlights MPL’s biggest features or pages. If you have any suggestions on what should be here, let me know! The website related pages (About, History, etc) can be found at the bottom of each page.
Now for the big update. I’m completely revamping the Mario Party game pages. When the site originally launched, I wanted to be a big Mario Party encyclopedia where you could find every detail you ever wanted to know about the series. For just one person, or even a small group, this was an incredibly ambitious task. Through the years, I was able to add pages for boards, minigames, items, spaces, modes, and more, but only for the first four games. Needless to say, I never finished, and truthfully, wasn’t even close.
For the revamp, I’m streamlining the amount of content we have. Each Mario Party game will get its own general page, along with a page dedicated to its boards and another page for its minigames. That’s it. Information like spaces and items will get their own spot on the general page.
The Super Mario Wiki is a wonderful resource and has all the info you’ll ever need on any of the Mario Party games. There’s no need to try and compete against that. Instead, I want to offer simpler pages with less information, more images, and a sleek layout. The board and minigame pages will focus on tips instead of directions and rules. Again, all that info can already be found elsewhere, so we want to try and offer something new. These tips will also be user submitted as there is a form at the bottom of each page that lets you share your own secrets and hints. The pages don’t have many tips now, but you can check out our Mario Party 3 minigames page for a few examples.
Right now I’ve gone through and updated Mario Party 1-9 and I’m currently working through Mario Party 10. I’ve been putting in the work! Check out any of the game pages by hitting the number icons at the top of the page.
So what happens next? My plan is to keep working on the rest of the game pages on the side before moving onto the character pages and giving those a much needed face lift. I also think it would be really fun to try and make some “Best of” pages that focus on things like minigames and items with this theme’s cool presentation formats. But we’ll see how it goes with the current reformatting!
Mario Party Legacy is not going back to the day of daily posts, an active comment section, and regular updates. Instead, I’m preparing it to stay current with its legacy content. I want the website I worked so hard to create to stick around and I want it to still be a valuable resource even if it goes silent for a bit. Thank you all, whether you were a regular commenter, a Forum user, or just someone who lurked in the shadows, thank you for making this website what it is today!