Frightmare

Frightmare
Appears in	Mario Party 5
Type	Boss mini-game
Time limit	60 seconds to destroy the Mechakoopas 30 seconds to avoid Bowser's fire rings
Music track	Final Test (during first three phases) Big Bowser Battle (during final phase)
Music sample First three phases: Final phase:

Frightmare is a boss minigame in Mario Party 5 and the last minigame in the game's Story Mode. Its name is a portmanteau of "fright" and "nightmare."

Introduction

The introduction shows the player's character lying down in the middle of the arena. They eventually get up and turn around to see Bowser on a floating screen welcoming them to the battle, after which the minigame starts.

Gameplay

In this minigame, the player must complete a series of challenges, avoiding obstacles and without losing hearts to eventually defeat Bowser. The player starts with ten hearts for Easy and Normal difficulty, eight hearts for Hard difficulty, and six hearts for Intense difficulty, which serve as their Health Meter. Each time the player gets hurt, they lose a heart. If the player loses all their hearts, they lose the minigame.

The minigame has four phases. First, fire-breathing Mechakoopas appear. They need to be destroyed by either stomping on their heads or throwing them within 60 seconds. If they are breathing fire, they hurt the player if they attempt to stomp them or pick them up, but they can be stomped or picked up if they are charging up. If even one remains after the 60 seconds elapse, the player automatically loses.

After the Mechakoopas are destroyed, Bowser sends three fire rings, and the player must avoid them for 30 seconds. The rings change their size and can even overlap each other. If the player is successful in dodging the rings, Bowser enters the arena to fight the player.

Bowser can charge at the player, breathe fire while walking around, and try to stomp the player. To dodge this, the player must get out of the way when he jumps through the air. When he lands, he cracks a tile. After a tile cracks three times, both characters are sent plummeting to the final area. When Bowser first jumps to the stage, the middle tile gets cracked, so this tile needs to be landed on only twice. Bowser then drinks a potion and grows to ten times his normal size, but this makes the floor collapse beneath him, causing him to be wedged due to the building's structure.

The final phase of the fight

After commenting that he is stuck and taunting the player, Bowser throws fiery red orbs (which unleash small waves of lava after they hit the ground and leave a small black core behind), breathes a huge stream of fire, and then sends out a purple electric orb, which gives off a shockwave that can destroy the orbs leftover from the first attack. When the orbs are heated up by his breath, they turn into spheres of light, and the player has to pick one up and hit Bowser's face with it to damage him. After Bowser is hit five times, he breaks through the structure and gets sucked into the background vortex, rendering him defeated. If the player does not defeat him within five minutes, the player automatically loses.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Japanese	さいごのゆめ[?] Saigo no yume	The Final Dream
French	Ultimate Combat[?]	Final Battle
German	Der letzte Traum[?]	The Last Dream
Italian	Il ring del terrore[?]	The ring of terror
Spanish	Pesadilla[?]	Nightmare

Trivia

• The concept of destroying fire-breathing Mechakoopas is reused in Tunnel of Lava!, a Bowser minigame in Mario Party 7.