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Mario Party fans have eagerly anticipated Mario Party Superstars, releasing on October 29, as it looks to outshine its predecessor, Super Mario Party. The new game brings back a cavalcade of Mario Party‘s greatest hits, including mini-games and boards, overhauled for the Nintendo Switch. This game’s success will be extremely important for the franchise in the future, as its predecessor, Super Mario Party, left a lot to be desired.
Super Mario Party changed a lot about the formula that made Mario Party the game, to its detriment. Instead of focusing on the board game mechanics that made Mario Party a classic, Nintendo split its resources across several different game modes. The division of efforts between game modes led to the main Mario Party mode feeling like an afterthought instead of the game’s main focus. It seems that Mario Party Superstars, though, is offering a course correction by being developed as a love letter to fans new and old of the series.
Back to Basics
Mario Party Superstars is bringing the game back to its basics, quite literally by bringing back classic Mario Party mini-games, boards and mechanics, all redone in HD. The game will feature classic mini-games from Mario Party on the Nintendo 64 up to Mario Party 10 on Wii U. Boards from the Nintendo 64 era make a return in full HD and are bigger than the ones found in Super Mario Party. The HD overhaul is sure to fill old-school fans with nostalgic awe as they make their way through classics like Peach’s Birthday Cake and Horror Land.
There are also five boards to choose from now, up from its predecessor’s four. Dice in Mario Party Superstars can be rolled between one and ten instead of one and six, keeping in line with the original titles. Stars now cost 20 coins instead of 10 coins, keeping in line with the classic rules and making it harder to abuse the golden pipe item (which also has increased in price from 10 coins to 25 coins) to keep collecting stars from becoming too easy.
Goodbye, Motion Controls
Motion control was a huge focus in Super Mario Party. The reliance on motion controls meant that the only way to play the game was with a single joy-con was the controller, which was an unwelcomed restriction. Luckily, that is not the case here. With the return of the classic mini-games, motion control is no longer the main focus of the game’s mechanics, which will offer many benefits for veteran partygoers. Players can now play with whatever controller they want, including a Nintendo Pro controller, two joy-cons, or a single sideways joy-con.
Ditching motion controls will also allow players to focus on skill in mini-games, rather than trying to either figure out or abuse motion control tricks to win mini-games. Motion controls have a hard time feeling precise, especially in a frantic game like Mario Party, so focusing on the joystick and buttons feels like a step up from Super Mario Party‘s misstep.
Online Parties Day One
Super Mario Party launched with no online multiplayer, which in hindsight was a huge mistake. On a modern-day console, a multiplayer-centric game has very few excuses for being unplayable with other players online, let alone unplayable with friends who live far away. Nintendo charging for online services, then not implementing it into one of their most popular multiplayer games seems like a nightmare scenario, but that’s what happened. Furthermore, Nintendo’s hardware doesn’t live up to that of its competition, so it is crucial for games on the system to not only be fun but offer longevity that only comes with enabling players to play with a large player base to ensure the game’s continued success.
Nintendo fixed this by adding online multiplayer recently. However, three years post-launch is too little too late. By including online multiplayer on day one, Nintendo will be starting their newest release on the right foot from the get-go instead of patching in one of the series’ most desired features when the game is at its least relevant.
Mario Party Superstars is looking back to its gaming roots to give fans what they ultimately love about Mario Party without focusing on gimmicks to draw players in. By having bigger boards to roam around, the most popular mini-games, retro mechanics, fewer motion controls and online party modes on day one, Mario Party Superstars offers an intense course correction that will hopefully please classic and modern fans of the series alike.
This situation is reminiscent of Mario Party 10, where fans and critics spoke poorly of the game due to Nintendo mucking up the Mario Party formula. It forced players to all travel together in a cart through every board in the game, and players did not like it. Nintendo is a company known for innovation, and this has worked very well in their marketing and distribution of consoles. Still, for a classic like Mario Party, it seems the best course of action is the heed a classic adage — if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
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