Synopsis:
Calling all superstars! The Mario Party™ series is back with 5 classic boards from the Nintendo 64 Mario Party games. Race to get the most stars (and sabotage your opponents) on boards like the stellar Space Land or the spooky Horror Land! Party at your own pace by suspending a game and picking up right where you left off!

Publisher: Nintendo
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch (OLED model)
Also available for: N/A
Cast: Charles Martinet, Samantha Kelly, Deanna Mustard, Laura Faye Smith, Kenny James

Developer: NDcube
Director: Takeru Sugimoto
Chief Program Director: Yuuki Konno
Design Directors: Tsutomu Komiyama, Shinichi Nakata, Rina Wegner, Hayato Minagawa, Fumihisa Sato, Atsushi Nakao, Ryo Yokomizo, Yuya Rokuyama, Satoru Imamura, Yukako Kawauchi

When Nintendo released Super Mario Party in 2018, I really wanted to like it, but a lack of online multiplayer and support for the game meant that I was stuck playing against bots. Interestingly early in 2021, Nintendo patched the game and added a form of online multiplayer, but it was too little too late for most, myself included. So when Mario Party Superstars was announced with a fully-fledged online multiplayer, I was pretty much on board straight away. Honestly, releasing a Mario Party game in 2020 or 2021 without online multiplayer while many people are still stuck states away or streets away from friends and family because of COVID-19 restrictions would have been crazy.

Mario Party Superstars isn’t a brand new game in the series, which is why a lot of the elements and the boards fall right into place. There’s a sense of nostalgia here if you’ve played any of the older games, with remakes for boards from the first three Mario Party games here. The five boards in the game at launch are “Yoshi’s Tropical Island” (Mario Party), “Space Land” (Mario Party 2), “Horror Land” (Mario Party 2) and “Woody Woods” (Mario Party 3). Each of these is a sparkling new rendition with a few twists to make them feel both like home and fresh at the same time. If you’ve never played any of these older Mario Party games, it’s not a worry either as they play great now, and I’m sure if you didn’t mention this was a remake collection, no one would notice.

The over one-hundred mini-games here are also an assortment of remakes from the N64 and GameCube Mario Party games. A lot of what’s here is a lot more interesting, and more importantly, fun than the last couple of Mario Party releases. There’s a reason the early Mario Party games were as popular as they were, and a lot of that comes down to the quality and hectic nature of the mini-games included in this package. If you love the mini-games and mini-games only, there’s a mode for that, which you can play locally or online.

As a collection of the most loved boards and mini-games in the franchise’s history, Mario Party Superstars gets an automatic jump up the ranking board, but there’s certainly more that Nintendo could have done here. By today’s standards, five boards are low for a fully-priced game like this one. The very stripped back gameplay is a double-sided sword as well. Gone are recent additions like Mario Party 9‘s format of having all the characters move at once, but the Ally system from Super Mario Party is gone. What’s here is the basic Mario Party gameplay where you’ll roll a dice to move around a board, land on spaces with positive, negative or neutral effects and attempt to get the most Stars by the end of the 15+ rounds. Everyone moves only on their turn, and the game can feel relatively hands-off at times; the detachment when playing against AI compared to real players is night and day. It’s the classic style of playing Mario Party, but Nintendo has removed the recent additions to the franchise that players have been happy to see included in all the efforts to play it as safe as possible.

Outside of the mini-games, which are primarily skill-based, the winner seems heavily based on RNG. Getting a low roll, after low roll, just to have another player trigger an event that moves the star to the opposite side of the board right as you’re about to pass it and buy one is tough. There’s nothing you can do either when you can’t seem to roll above a three, which sucks, even if it’s part of the series’ board game charm. If you’re playing in the same room as someone else, you can talk crap to their face when you steal their coins. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo doesn’t let you jump into a voice chat channel when playing online, but you can unlock stickers with coins earned through playing to express your feelings. These small animated stickers of characters’ faces being sad, happy, shocked, or an assortment of other miscellaneous things seems silly. Still, posting these stickers back and forth when playing online helps build the relationship with others you’re playing with online. It’s small but much appreciated to make the online experience work.

Mario Party Superstars looks excellent on the Nintendo Switch, and these old boards have come to life like never before. There are plenty of mini-games here, and they’re all fast, and most importantly, fun. There’s nothing new here outside of a working online multiplayer, but for fans of the series, that’s probably all that’s needed anyway.

(Mario Party Superstars code provided for review)