One of the reasons why Nintendo has such a foothold in the world of video games is that it's really good at making games. That's reductive, but true. First-party Nintendo games like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom are generally extremely elegant, polished to a sheen, and approachable by just about anyone. The last thing any of them do, usually, is make the player feel bad about themselves.
Mario Party has never really followed those rules. Sure, it's easy enough to pick up and play; just roll some dice and play mini-games! What could go wrong there? But for Mario Party's entire 25-plus years of existence, the series has existed less to provide simple pleasures and more to remind players that no matter how much they think they're in control, they're not.
Super Mario Party Jamboree, the latest in the venerable series, comes to Nintendo Switch this week. After playing some of it, I can confirm that part of Mario Party, if nothing else, has been left wonderfully intact. It may not be a "good video game" by conventional standards, but who cares?
Super Mario Party Jamboree: The party where nobody leaves happy
Like its predecessors, Jamboree is a multiplayer (both local and online) board game that's typically meant for up to four players, except for the modes where it's not. More on that in a bit. Games are divided into a minimum of 10 (or a maximum of 30) turns, and in each turn, every player rolls dice to move along the board with the eventual goal of collecting enough coins to buy a star, which is usually placed randomly on the board. At the end of each turn, everyone participates in a randomly selected mini-game, after which the victor(s) get a bundle of coins. Whoever has the most stars at the end wins the game.
Crucially, a bunch of bonus stars are given out at the end of the game, often resulting in a surprise winner. In other words, it's all random and nothing matters.
Jamboree brings a handful of new maps (as well as a couple of older ones from the original N64 games) and some mechanical tweaks. The biggest addition to the formula is probably Jamboree Buddies. These are support characters who show up and hang out on the board for a few turns. Anyone who passes by a Jamboree Buddy triggers a shockingly time-consuming mini-game for everyone on the board, with the victor recruiting the Jamboree Buddy to roll alongside them and provide unique bonuses based on which character it happens to be.
During the review period, I was able to convince my roommate to play a full 10-turn game with me, which took more than an hour. I am always blown away by how long it takes to actually finish even a short game of Mario Party. Despite the length, though, we both had a really good time because the Mario Party schtick still works if you're in the right mindset. This series has always been about dice rolls and luck more than anything else, and that's on display here.
For example, at one point in the game, my roommate passed by a space that allowed him to spend a majority of his coins to steal a star from me. This briefly put him in first place. About 30 seconds later, due to conditions that he could not have foreseen nor avoided, he'd lost the star, still had no money, and I had more stars than I'd had before he stole one from me. Neither of us were actually really in control of any of this.
That's the spirit of Mario Party. You don't play Mario Party so much as Mario Party just kind of happens to you. You can go into every turn with a vague plan of what you want to do if the roll of the die goes your way, but there's always some kind of unpredictably stupid BS waiting for you. Mario Party is a fake tunnel painted on the side of a brick wall, and I'm sprinting into it every time.
But for what it's worth, Nintendo has made some genuinely good additions to Jamboree. Jamboree Buddies are sufficiently game-changing to justify how hard it is to acquire them, and the new maps I've played seem like worthy inclusions in the Mario Party pantheon. My favorite so far is a speedway map in which every character drives an open-wheel racecar, collecting coins with each completed lap and taking advantage of a variety of unique spaces and items to win the day.
There's also a 20-player online multplayer mode that I unfortunately haven't tried yet, to go along with several other side modes (like a basic single-player mode that introduces the player to various mini-games) that should at least keep kids busy.
Super Mario Party Jamboree also has many of the same problems as every other game in the series. Mini-games often don't control exactly how you'd like them to, especially ones that involve platforming or motion controls. As I mentioned earlier, it can take an egregiously long time to finish a game, too.
But what I won't do is criticize Mario Party for being Mario Party. When Nintendo has been making these games this way for nearly three decades, all you can do is accept that it's on purpose. If you're ultra-competitive and actually care about winning with skill and strategy, go play a real board game. Mario Party is for the real freaks who want to see their friends suffer more than they want to succeed themselves, and Jamboree is a perfectly fine vehicle for that.
Super Mario Party Jamboree launches on Nintendo Switch on Oct. 17.
