Mario Party 2 is the only Mario Party game in which characters dress according to the board theme.
Released for Nintendo 64, Mario Party 2 presents its boards as themed adventures. The six playable characters—Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, and Donkey Kong—wear different costumes as they travel through settings such as Pirate Land, Western Land, Space Land, and Horror Land.
The costume changes are easy to confuse with character-specific outfits or minigame costumes. They are actually tied to the selected board: the group may appear as pirates, cowboys, space travelers, or wizards. Bowser Land is a notable exception to the themed-costume pattern because the characters generally retain their normal identities there.
The feature fits Mario Party 2’s storybook presentation. Mario and his friends are building a world from their imaginations, so each board functions like a stage in an adventure. Later Mario Party games continued using themed boards, but they did not bring back this board-specific costume system as a standard feature.