Bowser Time

A shot of the Bowser Gauge at 60% full.

“It's everybody's favorite time, BOWSER TIME!”

—Bowser, Mario Party 7

Bowser Time is an event in the game Mario Party 7, occurring every five turns. It only happens in the Party Cruise mode. The gauge always starts at 0% when the game begins and each turn, after every mini-game, the gauge will increase by 20%. The process repeats until the gauge is at 100%, at which Bowser will show up, do something that hinders a player or group of players, and the gauge resets to 0%. When the game winds down to its last five turns, the gauge will not appear or fill up. Depending on the number of turns in a match, Bowser Time may occur only once, or up to nine times. The gauge on the screen is the symbol on Mario Party 7's Bowser Spaces.

Bowser will do any number of events on different boards. On all the boards except Bowser's Enchanted Inferno, one of the things Bowser can do is take a picture of the players, and make them pay 10 or 20 coins for it. Occasionally, Bowser will "stumble into" the photo, but this does not seem to affect the cost. Either way, Bowser will then leave without giving the players their photograph, which Toadsworth will point out to the dejected group.

On Grand Canal, Pagoda Peak, and Pyramid Park, he may take over one of the two Orb Shops on the boards until a player passes by and forcibly sell an unusable item to him/her for an unfair price. To add insult to injury, Koopa Kid will promptly take whatever the player was forced to purchase.

The other things Bowser does are specific to individual boards, as listed below:

Grand Canal

• He might destroy the bridges on the board and build his own bridges with Bowser Spaces on them, which remain for two turns.

Pagoda Peak

• He might slam the mountain, forcing all the players down a few spaces.
• He might destroy a bridge for one turn so a player has to cut his/her turn short if he/she reaches it.

Pyramid Park

• He might destroy the bridges spanning the two sides of the board, forcing players to stay on one side or the other for three turns.
• He might take a Star from the player in first place and give it to Koopa Kid, who's somewhere on the board. This Star can then be taken by any player using a Chain Chomp, but Koopa Kid periodically moves his location (like how Bandit does in the Solo Cruise).

Neon Heights

• He might steal coins from all the players and put them in the chest already containing twenty coins.
• He might steal a Star from the player in first and put it in the chest already containing a Star.
• He might put a Ztar in a chest.

Windmillville

• He might destroy a windmill (thus erasing any coins the players had invested in it) and build a new "blank" one without any coins.
• He might send a Koopa Kid to rob a windmill.

Bowser's Enchanted Inferno

• He will always sink the island with the Star and, with the exception of the first Bowser Time, raise the island that was previously sunk. Players on the sunken island will be sent back to the start and lose half of their coins.

Trivia

• The Bowser Gauge (or, by extension, Bowser's symbol in this game) could have inspired the Bowser Symbol found in Super Mario Galaxy and other games from that point forward.