In 1998, Nintendo made many a get-together with friends a bit more beautiful with the release of the very first Mario Party for the N64, an innovative mix of well-known board games such as Goose Board and Monopoly on the one hand, fun crazy multiplayer minigames and recognizable Mario characters on the other. Unfortunately a year later a sequel appeared that added little or improved compared to the original. And so it went on for a while. Mario Party 2 in 1999, Mario Party 3 in 2000, Mario Party 4 in 2002, Mario Party 5 in 2003, Mario Party 6 in 2004, Mario Party 7 in 2005, Mario Party 8 in 2007…
I was allowed to discuss all those games in the magazines I wrote for at the time, such as Games+ and Power Unlimited, and as a Nintendo fanatic I couldn’t ignore it: Mario Party was just Nintendo’s milking machine, the equivalent of a FIFA or Call of Duty, each Same song year after year, but – in the case of Mario Party – with some new game boards, minigames and characters. Or not even that.
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Parts 9 and 10 (the first two Mario Parties that were not made by Hudson Soft but Nd Cube for Nintendo) finally brought some major innovations, but those were not innovations to hang the garlands for. The fact that you were all in the same vehicle in Mario Party 9 destroyed the game’s rather important racing element, while Mario Party 10’s Bowser Mode and Amiibo Mode were crackingly forced, little fun-added attempts at the Wii’s extra screen. Integrate U controller and amiibo into Mario Party.
Fortunately, Super Mario Party came to Switch in 2018, the first unnumbered entry in the main series – one that definitely deserved the Super prefix, with loads of content and innovations as subtle as they are successful, such as the character-specific dice and possibilities to recruit partners. . This first, and until recently only Mario Party for the Switch, is still regularly started in the Tiersma house for an evening of digital board game fun, and actually I was waiting more for DLC for Super Mario Party than for a whole new Mario Party. But it is there now.
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Let’s start with the good things Mario Party Superstars has to offer. Unlike Super Mario Party (the one from 2018), there are no motion control frills in Superstars and you can control the game with any controller, including that fine Pro-Controller. That’s a big plus for me, and it will be for Switch Lite owners too, since the previous Party wasn’t even playable in handheld mode because of that required separate Joy-Con!
Not surprising either: Superstars offers no fewer than 100 minigames, many of them in different variants, and they are pretty much all fun, to very nice, to perhaps the best in the series. If you want, you can take Toad’s boat to the minigame mountain at the start of the game to dive into the full range of minigames on your own or with (up to) three friends, as individual games or as part of different series and modes .
In any case, the game has a very relaxed setup, with many useful options, of which I would like to mention two: the option to add extra turns during a game board session (provided other players agree, of course) and the option to add extra turns during a game board session. sessions may or may not see other players’ stickers. What stickers are? Aaaah, yeah, that brings us to the things that make Superstars a little less super.
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Those stickers are a kind of collectible emojis that you can – even when other players take their turn – appear on the screen at the touch of a button, including a sound effect (think laughter, wail, or something that sounds like a fart or dying cat). Well, of course, a big part of the traditional Mario Party experience is waiting for other players, so you understand what happens, especially when you’re playing with fucking annoying kids like mine: stickers are being spammed all the time. Including the exasperating sound effects. Really to drive you crazy, and parenting doesn’t help.
In addition to the stickers, you can unlock a kind of postcards, encycloparty pages and music, and that’s about it. So no, you can’t unlock additional game boards or characters either. There are five game boards and ten characters, and you have to deal with that. Okay, that’s one game board more than in Super Mario Party (my main criticism of that game, especially after all these years: really too few game boards), but, um, ten characters? The predecessor had sixteen, and you could unlock another four! And then about those hundred minigames: they are all (renewed versions of) minigames from previous Mario Parties, such as those that appeared for the N64 and GameCube since 1999. Instead of innovation, Superstars mainly brings nostalgia.
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Nothing wrong with nostalgia, but it does come across as a bit cheap; so few characters, next to nothing new and a hundred old minigames. All the more so because Nintendo also released a collection of ‘the 100 best minigames from Mario Party’ for the 3DS in 2017. That feels a bit like Nintendo is trying to sell you a collection of old games for full-price again. Why weren’t those 100 polished minigames or new game boards just added to Super Mario Party as paid DLC?
In the 2000s it might have been justified to charge full price for every collection of new game boards and minigames, but maybe for the future of Mario Party Nintendo should take a closer look at the current possibilities of DLC, as they are presented. at Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons have already been applied so beautifully and effectively. Because imagine, a Super Mario Party, to which you can add a whole bunch of fresh game boards, characters and minigames every year for a tenner or two: that would really be great!
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