Nintendo prepares the jelly and ice cream for Mario Party DS

Eleven games in total, including ten in the last eight years, suggests that everyone enjoys a Mario Party.

Still, it's not the most obvious title to bring onto DS. As we found out with the GBA version of the series, parties work best when you have plenty of people in your living room. Not when you're playing mini-games on your own.

Of course, the trick for Mario Party DS will be how it implements multiplayer gaming using the DS's wireless connectivity. We'd bet the game will use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to enable you to hook up with friends around the world, although that's only conjecture at the moment.

Indeed with little information about the specifics of the game available, all we have is guesswork.

Presumably Mario Party DS will follow the boardgame-based design of previous games. In these you had roll an in-game dice and then move around spaces on the board collecting stars and coins as you go. Each space has different tasks and events that can be triggered. And once everyone has taken their turn, you all pile into a mini-game, which can be co-operative, team-based or a free-for-all, for more coins and stars.

Sure enough, the first five screenshots to be released for Mario Party DS show characters such as Mario, Princess Peach, Toad, Wario, and Yoshi moving around an oversized board.

There's little in terms of mini-game action, however, apart from what looks like a button-bashing race and a weird event using coloured pens and possibly the DS microphone.

We're sure much more will be revealed as the game's release draws closer. Mario Party DS is due to be available on November 19th.