Mario Party Superstars puts the vehicle in park and goes back to walking. Nintendo and developer NDcube released the Switch party game on October 29, 2021, and its whole pitch is a retreat: five remade boards from the Nintendo 64 Mario Party trilogy, 100 minigames pulled from across the series, and a return to the turn-by-turn rhythm the series ran on before the vehicle mechanics of the previous two numbered console games. It is the 12th home console entry in the Mario Party line and the second for the Nintendo Switch, following Super Mario Party in 2018.
Trailer, via Sebzouy18.
Five Boards From the Nintendo 64 Trilogy
The structure is the old one. Four characters, human or artificial intelligence, circle one of five boards, buying stars for twenty coins from Toadette and using items to affect themselves or other players. Each player rolls a die for one to ten spaces. After all four have moved, a randomly selected minigame fires off, drawn from the 100 on the disc. Most stars at the end wins, and the winner is the Super Star.
That minigame pool is the real argument. Of the 100, 55 come from the Nintendo 64 trilogy. Mushroom Mix-Up and Shy Guy Says are among the minigames included.
Button Controls, Finally
Unlike Super Mario Party, Superstars can be played with button controls. Every minigame runs on button inputs, so a Joy-Con, a Switch Pro Controller or a Switch Lite all work. The source does not say what this changes in practice beyond the controller options.
The board list draws on the Nintendo 64 era:
- Peach’s Birthday Cake, from the original Mario Party, where frosting meets flowers and you race for stars.
- Space Land, home of the Bowser Coin Beam countdown and its threat to your coin stack.
- The remaining three boards, also remade from the Nintendo 64 era.
What Superstars Keeps and What It Drops
| Feature | Super Mario Party (2018) | Mario Party Superstars (2021) |
|---|---|---|
| Controls | Motion controls | Button controls |
| Boards | New boards | 5 remade Nintendo 64 boards |
| Minigames | New set | 100 curated from the series |
| Vehicle mechanics | Not stated | Removed |
The comparison is the review. Superstars is not trying to move the series forward; it is trying to remind you why you liked it. The vehicle mechanics from the previous two numbered console games are gone. Birdo and Rosalina join a roster that otherwise brings back every playable character from the first four entries, and Mt. Minigames lets players freely play minigames without boards.
Mt. Minigames and the Online Modes
All modes can be played online. The source does not compare how much that matters now versus in 2018. Mt. Minigames is the quieter addition: it allows players to freely play minigames without boards.
The Homage Lands, With Limits
Critics praised the game’s homage to the series’ history, its classic minigames and boards, and its online functionality. Upon release, Mario Party Superstars received mostly positive reviews.
The limits are real. Nothing here is new. Every minigame is drawn from a previous entry, and the boards are remakes. A successor, Super Mario Party Jamboree, was released on October 17, 2024. The source does not say what that implies about Superstars’ role in the series.
What it does, it does well enough to justify the trip back. The button controls address the biggest problem with its predecessor. The Nintendo 64 boards are the ones people actually wanted. And 100 minigames, 55 of them from the trilogy, is a genuine archive rather than a sampler. Mario Party Superstars is a good party game and an honest one: it knows it is a greatest-hits record, and it does not pretend otherwise.
7.9/10, per the IGDB critic aggregate of 6 outlets.
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