Are you a fan of party games and a fan of games when even the most inexperienced person could win with just a single bad dice roll? Well, look no further than Super Mario Party Jamboree, a new game coming to the Nintendo Switch on Oct 17. Super Mario Party Jamboree is jampacked with a bunch of new content like boards, characters, and content that will suit anyone who wants to play a party game.
Before we go into more details about Jamboree, let’s start with some history of the Mario Party series. Nintendo’s Mario Party is a series of games that started back on December 18, 1998, with the release of Mario Party (1) on the N64. The game can be played by up to 4 players, but you can play it by yourself if you don’t have anyone else to play the game with.
The objective of the game is to collect more stars and coins than your opponents. This game, like most other games that Nintendo has made in the past, is an easy game to get into, but hard to master, as it can take hours. The gameplay of Mario Party is simple; you pick a board, each with its own special gimmick. You then roll one die to see who goes first, everybody takes their turn and then you play a minigame. What’s a minigame, you ask? A minigame is a side game within the game where you can get coins (or lose coins depending on what game you’re playing). Minigames can range from 1 vs. 3, 2v2, battles, duels, or 4 players. What are coins you may be thinking? Coins are like your wealth, the more coins you have the more likely you’ll be able to buy stars. Stars are super useful as they’re the main currency. You can get a star from Toad (the person who sells the stars) for 20 coins. The more stars you have at the end of the game, the higher the chance that you win in the end. Keep in mind that there are bonus stars at the end of the game which can change the results for either the better or worse. Also, if you have the same star count as another player it will be down to a coin tiebreaker.
Now that you have a decent understanding of how Mario Party plays out, let’s go over Jamboree. The main mode of Jamboree plays like Super Mario Party. You pick a map, pick a character (each having their own special advantage that revolves around their special dice block), and you play the game. The game has 20+ characters that you can choose from. One thing that I haven’t mentioned though is the thing that makes Super Mario Party unique, the buddy system. Buddies were broken in Super Mario Party, as they not only gave you more options but gave you better movement. Jamboree changed the buddy system instead of the special dice block and extra movement being the only 2 gimmicks that a character has, it’s now replaced with a specific ability for each character. For example, in the direct for the game, we saw a glimpse of some of the buddy abilities. Some that we saw were Donkey Kong being able to make you move to a random space, Yoshi can copy a random item from the first opponent the player passes when moving, and Waluigi who can steal 3-8 coins from any opponent that you pass.
From what we saw from the direct (Nintendo’s way of showing off new games) some spicy new content. According to pro Mario Party player, Kipper, says, “This is a Mario party game that has 7 boards. Claiming it’s the biggest Mario party game that has ever been created.” Another Mario Party fan, Dan, says, “I am excited about all the new boards because we haven’t gotten any new boards since Super Mario party. I also get to play as my favorite character, goomba.”
While Mario Party Jamboree is hyped up by many, I personally am a little nervous about how Nintendo will deliver the content. Super Mario Party, the original, had side content but it was underwhelming. The site content includes Experience Party, Bowser Challenges, and Koopathlon. All these side modes are different from one another as each has its own objectives and challenges.
Let’s begin with the Experience Party. Experience Party, “is a mode featuring three motion-controlled sub-modes where players work together,” ~Mario Party Wiki. These side modes include Paratroopa Flight School, Toad’s Item Factory, and Rhythm Kitchen. Paratroopa Flight School is quite basic. It’s a motion-controlled mode where players will flap their arms like wings to control and steer their character. There are 3 separate modes that you can play, Sky Battle, which is just competing to get the most Para-Biddybuds within a time limit. Rhythm Kitchen, which is a Rhythm mode where players will play side games that will test their skills in timing, and finally Toad’s Item Factory where 4 people work together to solve puzzles and guide a ball across obstacles by tilting the joycon in various ways.
Bowser Challenges on the other hand, features only 2 modes focused on bigger groups of players playing in real-time. The 2 modes are Koopathlon and Bowser Kaboom Squad.
Koopathlon is a returning revamped mode from Mario Party Star Rush (originally called Coinathlon). Instead of 4 players competing, it’s 20 players. The goal of Koopathlon is to finish the race before your opponents. However, there’s a catch, after the third minigame is over, a bowser clone appears and forces all 20 players to play a minigame. If you lose said minigame, you’re set back 10-30 spaces (depending on the placement you’re in).
As for Bowser Kaboom Squad, it’s a co-op mode where 8 players are put up against a Bowser clone. The objective of the mode is to defeat clone Bowser. To attack Bowser, players will grab bombs and put them in cannons across the map. The bombs are contained in little boxes and can be destroyed by attacking them. Once 20 bombs are placed into 1 single cannon, the cannon will fire and damage clone Bowser. However, if you’re bad at the game and clone Bowser defeats you, you’ll be trapped in a bubble. The only way out of the bubble is to have someone pop you out. Eventually, an 8-player minigame is played. If you win the 8-player minigame, you’ll get items that can help you defeat clone Bowser. Keep in mind that you only have 5 rounds to defeat clone Bowser, or you lose. If you manage to defeat clone Bowser, then you must get through his “final stand.” This is just a mash-to-attack boss game, but he’ll fight back so be careful.
The last thing that I’ll be going over is the single-player mode, the single-player mode is a 1 player game mode where the player travels around the boards as a character and gets tasks from NPCs (non-playable characters). The tasks that the NPCs will give you will be through a minigame. The objectives of the minigames are unknown but all that we know is if the player wins the minigames, they’ll be awarded mini stars which is the single-player mode’s main currency.
Super Mario Party Jamboree seems to be getting positive feedback from its audience. Whether it be the new mechanics and new content, Jamboree has a lot going for it. According to Kipper, “Main mode looks great!” Side modes don’t seem appealing to me as much as I hoped.” Kipper says, “I hope the balancing is better obviously seeing that the game wasn’t the most balanced, but I want to best experience for anyone who wants to buy this game.” I’m just glad that we Nintendo fans are pleased by Nintendo giving us another Mario Party. The only questions now to ask are will Nintendo listen to the fans and will they fix the problems from Super Mario Party?
