Mini games. Mini games were the name of the game in Super Mario Party 4 for the Nintendo Gamecube. Wandering through the digital world of psychedelic Japanese programmers, we were sent off onto little detours. Forced to play games that had nothing to do with our main goal: beating the full game. Most of the time these so called mini games were just a pain in the ass, but we came across one that was just completely pointless. It goes by the name of Domination. It was the one where you faced a never ending line of stone figures, shaped and stacked like domino’s. The only point of this mini game was to smash the A button on your controller as fast as you possibly could in a certain time period, and then it would knock down the corresponding amount of stone domino’s. Highest count of downed stone domino’s wins.

Over and over we smashed the A button as fast as possible with our thumbs. We were increasing our smashes, surpassing the required 100 mark. After several attempts, I figured a non-traditional controller grip was necessary to gain more A button mashing. Laying the controller on the rug, holding it down with my left hand, I used my pointer finger to quickly smash the A button faster and faster. This gained only minimal increases in smashes. Thinking about this dilemma, we decided to find other items that would not have the squishiness feeling that fingers do. A harder, tougher item was necessary to put up with the constant smashing vs. the A button.

We gathered up some items: pen, pencil, ruler, AA battery. The pencil worked so-so, but the pink eraser tip slowed down the gliding feeling of the pencil. This gliding effect was necessary to get a high smash count. Taking the item, and sliding it over the A button from side to side created a smooth, and very fast way of smashing that damn A button. The ruler was a bit better than the pencil, but the harsh 90 degree corner of the ruler was too jagged to provide a smooth sliding surface. Grabbing the AA battery was quite comfortable, and provided a smooth rounded edge which we could slide back and forth over and over the A button. Lastly was the pen. A standard bic pen, with the blue cap and rounded plastic corners. This item worked amazingly. The grip was comfortable, the sliding surface was flawless, and it was durable. Test after test we kept eeking out a couple extra button smashes, but not enough. Getting fed up with this, I kept thinking to myself “what can we do to increase A button smashes??”

A far stretched, but possible idea popped into my head. I ran down the stairs into the basement and came back up with a heavy duty electric drill. I took the blue cap off the ivory white bic pen, and inserted it into the drill bit’s mouth. Clenching down on the top of the pen cap, the little one inch plastic piece that allows you to clip a pen to your pocket, stood by itself. Plugging in the drill, I pulled the trigger very gently. Watching the pen cap rotate, I figured this would be glorious! I instantly wanted to put this idea to the test, with both of my friends confused yet intrigued. We fired up the mini game, and placed the Gamecube controller on the ground. I fired up the drill at full speed and watched the pen cap twirl until it turned in a blur. I slowly lowered the pen cap onto the A button, and heard it tap the A button furiously. This worked amazingly! The pen cap was hitting the A button at such a rapid pace we maxed out the game. Blowing away our previous attempts with every other item, the drill plus pen cap was the ultimate A button smashing combination. We tested this, over and over, shattering records and still maxing the mini game. It got so silly that we were beating the game in about half of the allowable time limit. We found that this mini game was maxed out at 160 permissible smashes. We reached the 160 mark several times in a row to confirm this. Laughing at this, we decided it was time to slow down on the drilling of the A button. Without even noticing it, we wore the button down to a smooth gully, making the sharp “A” disappear all together. A rather small price to pay for destroying the built in limit of this mindless mini game.

Here is a great video of the Mario Party 4 Domination Mini-Game: