Super Mario Party Jamboree is shaping up to be the largest, most ambitious Mario Party game to date. While Nintendo has claimed that line in its marketing, it’s also a very fair statement – in practical terms, this is the biggest Mario Party we’ve seen yet, with more mini-games, more game modes, and more dazzling sights than ever before.
You get the sense of this scale moments after you launch Super Mario Party Jamboree. Where you’d typically be thrust into a bunch of menus with options for kicking off your first game, you instead get a light dash of story, and an introduction to a home base known as Party Plaza.
Here, you can take an air balloon to games of traditional Mario Party, but also visit an array of other regions: a Mini-Game Bay, and other locations for several standalone mini-games that feel like offshoots of cool ideas Nintendo had cooking in the background.
There’s a flight simulator where you hold the Joy-Cons out and physically flap your wings. There’s a mini-game set in a factory where you move Joy-Cons to guide a ball to its next destination. There’s a Bomberman-like battle against Bowser. There’s even a cooking mini-game that’s set up a lot like Iron Chef, where you must wield the Joy-Con to create extravagant dishes for a panel of judges. Each of these is entirely separate to the action of Super Mario Party Jamboree, and some of them actually seem robust enough to be expanded in future games.
Read: Super Mario Party Jamboree preview – Never gets old
I can only imagine these inclusions were the result of brainstorming, and allowing developers to have fun with mini-game development. This is pure speculation on my part, but it seems like some of the mini-games meant for the base Mario Party could have been elevated to these standalone experiences, based on their fun, scope, and creativity.
They’re all great inclusions, and help to add flavour and variety to this Mario Party sequel.
Super Mario Party Jamboree tries something new
Even beyond these modes, Super Mario Party Jamboree continues to innovate.
You can play standard Mario Party games, roaming across boards to earn coins and participate in mini-games, eventually earning stars and other special items. It remains incredibly fun, and the mix of mini-games is fantastic, with a real variety in the skills and movements you must perform. Each of the game’s board is very lively, with intricate moving parts that make travelling across them a fun, consistently engaging activity, either solo or with friends.
But if you really want to shake up the action, then Super Mario Party Jamboree has one additional secret that really elevates the entire game: there’s a campaign mode hiding in Party Plaza.
In this mode, you’re actually helping to set up the parties you’ll play with friends. That involves travelling around each game board, completing quests for various NPCs, collecting items to set up the board, and also taking part in mini-games. Across each board, you’ll need to collect a number of stars, and then you can advance to the next board.
The tweaks to the classic Mario Party formula make this mode a must-play, particularly if you’re somebody who enjoys playing Mario Party solo, or finds it difficult to organise games with friends.
There’s just something so novel about being able to wander a Mario Party course under your own steam, collecting wayward items, chatting to Mario stalwarts, and being helpful along the way. This mode isn’t completely different from standard rounds of Mario Party, but it boasts a novelty that keeps it feeling fresh – and it really is a clever way to shake up the formula.
Of course there needs to be someone setting up the titular Mario Party – and who better than you? As you travel, you’ll see exactly how bread is made, and you’ll have immense fun baking it.
With this mode, and every other mode packed into Super Mario Party Jamboree, the game makes a very big impression. The effort and love that’s gone into it is very clear, and after years of fun, familiar experiences in Mario Party, it’s very nice to see something different and more ambitious in this game.
We’ll have much more to say about Super Mario Party Jamboree closer to its launch on 17 October 2024.
