After one night of Mario Party 10, the one thing that struck me the most was how the latest entry in the venerable series manages to merge together different ideas from past titles. Whether you loved the focused, linear design of Mario Party 9 or you crave the original Mario Party style, the new Wii U entry aims to satisfy you.

The main Mario Party mode is almost identical to how Mario Party 9 was structured. The four players all hop in one vehicle and alternate rolling the die to move the vehicle forward on a linear path. Along the way, mini-games randomly pop up and the gang must team up for a mini-boss fight halfway through and a final boss fight at the finish. It’s an elegant, simplified version of Mario Party that cuts out the nonsense that bogged down earlier titles. Without fail, these boards are wrapped up within a half hour. Of course, the one aspect they kept up was the utter nonsense of victory. In one of the games I played, a computer-controlled Waluigi was in last place up until a fortuitous Bowser square that rocketed him up to first place like the scumbag cheater he is.

Classic Mario Party somewhat rears its head in Amiibo Party. This new mode is only accessible by using certain Amiibo (nine are supported right now), but the gameplay functions more like a simpler old-school Mario Party board. Each player moves on their own and the battle is for whoever has the most stars at the end of a set number of turns. If you long for the intricate and complicated Mario Party boards of the past, you won’t get them here, but the same basic gameplay loop from older games is on full display here. By using different Amiibo or tokens, you can even customize the square board to feature elements from different characters.

There is more to Mario Party than just those two modes, including the brand new Bowser Party mode that pits four players against one GamePad-using player, but at face value, Mario Party 10 makes an attempt at appealing to different Mario Party fans. We’ll have a full verdict of this Wii U game on March 16 at 11 a.m. ET.