Mario Party Superstars (2021)

It's a lot of fun with friends. I've virtually never been able to play a full 4-player game because our schedules are always clashing, but hopefully I'll be able to experience that soon because it seems like that would be where the peak fun is.

It's a bummer that the game only has 5 boards, less than even the games that came out 20 years ago, so they get a little repetitive if you play the game often, but fortunately I only hop on when playing with friends and it helps that no two rounds of Mario Party are exactly the same.

The minigames could be a little more spread out (if I remember correctly, there's 60-something from the N64 vs. 40-something from all 7 other games), but what is there is a good, pretty varied selection that I generally enjoy the majority of.

Mario Party Superstars is the twelfth million remake of the all-time classic Mario Party. It features five remade boards from the original N64 version and some new mini games, while including all the mini games from the other thousands of installments in the past. This game is the FIFA of Nintendo, it comes out almost every year and gives you one new or improved feature at a time for a quick fill of the pockets.

But despite this, it is still a fun game to play with your family or friends. The goal is simple, as always. Collect the most stars before the final round is over and you are a winner. It is that simple. To do this you throw dices, buy special power ups to help you get to the star’s location faster and play a mini game after every round to earn some extra cash (when you win of course).

The mini games are always great and never bore me, this game got them all, from 1998 until now. And they even added some more in this installment. It is just good fun.

This game, like the other editions, can destroy friendships and tear families apart because of the constant torment you can inflict on your opponents by stealing their money or even stars. You also can limit their movement to 3 spaces max and to top it off, send the star to a new location when your opponent gets really close to it. Mario Party Superstars can be intense and sometimes I asked the question to my wife: “You think this is a f*cking game?” And then I realise, it is.

My only complaint is that it needs to be remade almost every year, instead of just upgrade it with new content, like many other games. I know that the magic of money plays a part in this, but still. I honestly forgot which copy of Mario Party I owned because of the trillion different versions out there.

Mario Party, whatever the edition, will always be the ultimate party game with friends and family and remains fun to play.

People hyped this one up as a much better alternative to Super Mario Party (the other Mario Party on the Switch), but at the end of the day I find them both just all right and fine. I think I'd say Superstars is one step forward, and one step back. The number of game boards is the same (just five), and the quality of them seems about the same, and the mini-games felt about the same in terms of overall quality too (maybe slightly better for Superstars? idk).

My favorite thing about Superstars is that you can turn off the bonus stars. Finally, a little less bullshit! It's such a simple thing, I don't get how it's not a feature in every Mario Party. My least favorite thing about Superstars is that each board seems to have a hundred event spaces and random chance stuff, which always feels dumb and pointless. There are also fewer characters to play as in Superstars, and I kind of liked Super's whole thing with different dice you can roll to give the game the tiniest bit of extra strategy. So Superstars is the more straightforward Mario Party that overall plays just fine I suppose, but it didn't feel like the huge win for the franchise people have made it out to be.

Superstars is a great edition to the Mario Party series. It's also exactly the same as Super Mario Party.

People complained about newer Mario Party games being gimmicky. But.... these older boards are some of the gimmicky-ist I've ever played! And the actual objective to win (Collect coins by winning mini games to buy stars) is the same as in newer games!

This plays exactly the same way as the newer games. And I like it a lot. I feel like they've perfected what Mario Party is now. And I'm not complaining!

Having now played on all the remade stages and covered most of the minigames, I can say this is a really fast-paced and enjoyable couch multiplayer game. We live in a weird world where a Mario Party HD collection is the most fun I’ve had with a first-party Nintendo game released in the last couple years.

First, I should point out that in apparent awareness of the Donkey Kong “Very Hard” meme, Nintendo has renamed Very Hard difficulty to “Master.” Thank you Nintendo for looking out for the children.

This collection strikes a nice balance in its approach to modernize the highlights of classic Mario Party games. The core is intact and seems varied enough to be fun over time, but they bring in some nice new options and convenience features, and a light touch mixing in good mechanics from later games (like adding items to MP1 boards). Generally they also nailed the graphical overhaul, with the only downsides being that a few things can look a little too plasticky/shiny, and some of the UI / font stuff looks a bit sterile—no big deal.

Online play seems pretty well thought-out, with people who drop being replaced by CPUs until they return, fun emotes to spam (also available locally), and the ability to take 2-3 local people online to fill out the rest of the game instead of playing with the CPU only.

Before buying, consider whether your group has the relaxed, playful feel that this game expects. There are many random moments where someone gets lucky or gets screwed over, or you can actively screw someone over yourself. Some minigames are better or just fairer than others. Your group needs to be able to roll with these things for maximum enjoyment, but if desired you can somewhat customize/limit the experience by focusing on skill-based games, removing bonus stars, etc.

If you liked Mario Party in the past, or need a fun and accessible party game to throw on, this is well worth the pickup. I’ve played it with 2 groups now and had a lot of fun both times, particularly with family who played the original together over 2 decades ago.

I just realized that a few days ago I played with my children the mini game where in the 90s kids tore their palms up spinning the control stick so badly that Nintendo had to send out gloves to purchasers of the game to appease a lawsuit and continue to include a warning to not spin the control stick with your palm in the new version of the game and the moment the mini game started I said "Okay, so the way you play this one is spin the control stick with your palm."

I am so glad this game exists, I've been playing this solo, with friend's and the kids and it's enjoyable each time, the online holds up really well also with only a couple of times lag occurred. The content on offer is pleasing although they could do with adding a couple more boards overtime. As far as the gameplay, it's pretty much what I love most from the N64 days, overall play positioning can change in an instant due to the games merciless nature, and the return of the Bowser and chance time spaces only add to the agonisingly fun time, they could of toned down on the lucky spaces however, there seemed to be more of them than any other making coin collecting a cakewalk. The minigames though? Bloody brilliant.