The Choicest Voice

You get handed a random character on screen, the mic icon lights up, and you have maybe a few seconds to decide whether you’re actually going to commit to the impression or just mumble through it. That hesitation is basically the whole game. The Choicest Voice is an Extra minigame in Mario Party: Island Tour, and unlike most minigames in the series that reward reflexes or dice luck, this one rewards nerve.

How Scoring Works in The Choicest Voice

Each round, the game assigns you a character voice line to imitate. Once you record your attempt, five judges weigh in: Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Shy Guy, Birdo, and Dry Bones. If a four-player session is running, Toad joins as a sixth judge, which changes the math on what a “good” score even looks like that session. Every judge who approves of your take holds up a sign, and each sign is worth ten points.

In single-player, you need at least ninety points across the three rounds to clear the minigame. That number matters more than it sounds — with five judges and ten points each, a maxed single round only gets you fifty points, so you can’t coast on one great performance and phone in the rest. You need consistency, not one lucky reading.

Multiplayer changes the win condition entirely. Instead of hitting a fixed threshold, whoever has the most total points after three rounds wins, which turns it into a direct read on the room rather than a personal benchmark.

What New Players Get Wrong About The Choicest Voice

The most common mistake is treating the judges as one unit. They’re not. Birdo and Shy Guy tend to respond differently to exaggerated pitch shifts than Dry Bones does, and players who only optimize for volume tend to plateau around three or four signs per round instead of sweeping the panel. Loud isn’t the same as convincing here.

Another issue is timing. The game gives you a set window to record, and players who spend that window deciding what voice to do instead of just doing it usually get cut off mid-attempt. The read has to start almost immediately.

People who’ve done actual impression work before — the type who mess around doing voices for friends — tend to pick this minigame up fast, since the skill transfer is direct. Meanwhile players who are more comfortable with the reflex-based minigames in Island Tour often underestimate how much commitment matters more than precision.

The Utter Nonsense Connection

The Choicest Voice is built directly on top of Utter Nonsense, an earlier minigame using the same mic-recording judge panel. This one stretches the format into three full rounds instead of a single pass, and the extended length is exactly why the scoring threshold sits at ninety rather than something lower. Players who remember Utter Nonsense from previous entries will recognize the judging rhythm immediately, even if the specific voice lines are new.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many points do you need to win The Choicest Voice in single player?

You need a total of ninety points or more across all three rounds. Since each of the five judges awards ten points per sign, and a sixth judge (Toad) only appears in four-player games, solo play caps your maximum per round at fifty points, making consistent judge approval more valuable than one standout round.

Why does Toad only show up sometimes as a judge?

Toad joins the panel specifically when four players are competing in the same session, bringing the judge count from five up to six. In one, two, or three-player sessions, the panel stays at the standard five: Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Shy Guy, Birdo, and Dry Bones.

Is The Choicest Voice the same as Utter Nonsense?

They share the same core mic-and-judges structure, but The Choicest Voice extends it into three full rounds rather than a single recording, and it appears specifically as an Extra minigame in Mario Party: Island Tour rather than the base minigame roster.

What sticks with most people after a session of The Choicest Voice isn’t the score screen, it’s the moment right before recording starts, when you’re staring at a character you weren’t expecting and have to decide whether you’re actually going to sell it to Dry Bones and the rest of the panel. That split-second commitment, more than any strategy around sign-counting, is what separates a scraped-by ninety from a round the whole table remembers.