The original Mario Party contains eight boards. Six are the main character-themed boards available in the game, while two additional boards can be unlocked later through gameplay.
Each board presents a different route, theme, and set of events, but all use the same central objective: players move by rolling dice, collect coins, play minigames, and try to purchase more stars than their rivals. The six initial boards are associated with the game’s playable characters, including Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, and Donkey Kong.
The number is sometimes reported incorrectly as six because that is the number of character-themed boards described in the core gameplay section. However, counting the two unlockable boards gives the complete total of eight. The original Mario Party was released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 in Japan and in 1999 in other major regions, making its eight-board lineup the foundation for the series’ later board collections.