In Mario Party 7, eight-player minigames split the players into 4 teams of two.
This was one of the game’s signature additions. Its Deluxe Cruise mode supports eight-player minigames, with two players sharing each controller and cooperating as a pair. The arrangement creates four simultaneous teams rather than the standard four-player free-for-all.
Mario Party 7 was released for the GameCube in 2005 and was the first entry in the series to support minigames involving up to eight players. The game includes 12 eight-player minigames, alongside its conventional four-player, two-versus-two, one-versus-three, Duel, Battle, DK, Bowser, and Rare categories.
The number is easy to confuse with the game’s four-player modes: eight participants divided into pairs produce four teams, not eight teams. The teams also share controllers, an important part of the format’s multiplayer design.