"Mario Party 5" features ten playable characters, including three additional characters to the series: Toad, Boo, and Koopa Kid. Hudson omitted Donkey Kong as a playable character from the series in this installment, instead featuring him in the "DK space", which initiates an event granting the possibility of a star or coins whenever landed on. Like previous installments, blue and red spaces add or deduct 3 coins from players when they land on them. "Bowser spaces" return from "Mario Party 4". While the series' predecessors used item shops as a means to obtain items, "Mario Party 5" introduces the capsule system. Capsules are containers that hold a single item which are acquired when passing the "Capsule Machine" on the board. The items contained within them serve a variety of purposes, from increasing the range of the Dice Block and thus movement, to deducting ten coins from an opponent. The capsules can only be thrown up to ten spaces ahead of the current position. During a game, the gameplay is altered for the last five turns with the options selected randomly via a roulette wheel; such changes include tripling the coin benefit or deficit from coloured spaces.