173. Soreike! Anpanman Minna de Hiking Game (?, Famicom, 1992)

Soreike! Anpanman Minna de Hiking Game ("Let's go Anpanman! Everybody's Hiking Game") is a video board game that uses the characters from the children's manga / anime Anpanman. The game supports up to 3 players who play against each other and a computer-controlled opponent to rack up points while traversing across 8 different maps.

To move around the board, you can roll a 1-5, or instead of a 6 you can summon an alien character who helps you (gives you money, plays you in rock paper scissors to move forward 1 space, etc). The spinner is not quite as fast / random as Mario Party, so it is possible to influence the number with a timed button press. 

Like most video board games, there are plenty of minigames, here triggered by landing on a certain space. As it's an Anpanman game, the minigames are definitely geared towards children, and vary between basic mazes, memory match games, and spot the difference puzzles. 

Thankfully, the board game side of things is a bit more interesting. You are competing with the other character to both rack up as many points as you can and get to the goal as fast as you can. Just about everything earns you points, even moving forward, but minigames generally give you the most points. If you land on a space that another player is occupying, they are forced to give you some of their points. Forests with hidden spaces and multiple paths make things a little more mysterious, and there are even springs that can cause characters to move to the locations of other characters.

When one character reaches the goal, the points are tallied up and the winner is declared, with any spaces you have moved or items you have collected adding to your total score. None of it is as exciting or dramatic as Mario Party, but it is also a game for small children that predates Mario Party by 6 years. 

3/5, a board game for small children, that still manages to have some decent mechanics