So while Mario Party Superstars doesn’t necessarily break massively new ground, it’s so good at replaying the classics that it will probably be my new go-to for Mario Party fun moving forward. And it revives a lot of what I’ve liked about past Mario Party games, from higher-cost Stars to interesting board mechanics like the plants on Peach’s birthday cake. I’ve found myself revisiting this on a whim much more than I did with Super Mario Party, and most of my time has been single-player too, as there’s a surprising amount of fun to find even if you don’t have a party going.

It is absolutely a retread, with its innovations coming in the visual tune-ups and clever repackaging of content. Games also took a pretty long time to close out.Ĭontrast this with Mario Party Superstars, which uses the benefit of its own legacy to launch right out with the classic Mario Party its fans fell for in the first place. Character dice were cool but made it easy to stay ahead, in my experience, and the board offering was less than stellar. There were some interesting stabs taken at what a co-op Mario Party experience might look like, though the main Mario Party formula wasn’t so great. I think some of them were interesting, and I especially dug the mode that sent four players hurtling down a river in a raft together.

The latter was a new game, and it tried a lot of new ideas. What’s been most notable to me is the contrast between Mario Party Superstars and Super Mario Party, the previous Mario Party go-to on the Nintendo Switch. I’ve heard anecdotal cases of players dropping when they get too far behind, but like a game of Monopoly, sometimes you can’t help but have a few walk-offs. Unlike its predecessor, Mario Party Superstars has online play right out of the gate, and in my experience, it’s worked fairly well. While there are local options available for Mario Party play, in both the board game and minigame areas, another big draw is online play.

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