It’s party time in party plaza with Super Mario Party Jamboree, and what promises to be the biggest Mario Party game ever. Following the ups and downs of their last few attempts, before the fan-pleasing throwback of Mario Party Superstars, Nintendo Cube is sticking to the tried and true. That doesn’t mean there isn’t space for new ideas, and modes that answer some niche requests from the community, though.
The basics of Mario Party are here. Dice roll up to 10, Stars cost 20 coins, and some of the boards – there’s five new and two remakes – can initially boggle the mind with complex routes and events that completely upend all your plans.
Wiggler’s Tree Party is a nice and simple beginners board, leading pleasantly into the twinned routes and karting theme of Roll ’em Raceway. It gets much trickier for Goomba Lagoon, with high and low tides that can trap you in a corner of the map going in the loop – this is a really frustrating point on this map, to be honest – and the shopping mall themed Rainbow Galleria is a maze of multiple levels with a half-price shopping event, stamps to collect and more. That’s my favourite.
Western Land and Mario’s Rainbow Castle have been remade as unlockables, and then there’s a seventh map to make this the biggest Mario Party since the first one!
All of the fundamental Mario Party gameplay tropes are here, with a familiar core set of items. But there’s also a bunch of new and returning items, such as the Bowser Phone and Cellular Shopper from Mario Party 3, a cheaper regular pipe with random movement, payday dice that give you coins to match your move, and trap items that can steal from your opponents. I feel there’s a good balance here that gives more options to quickly get somewhere else, though without always having control over where you go.
New for this game are the Jamboree Buddies, adapting the Ally system from Super Mario Party. These characters will randomly appear on the map and will give a major boost to any character that gets them for three turns, always double whatever your landing space offers (good or bad) as well as a character-specific perk. Mario as a buddy adds extra movement, Peach makes stars costs less, Waluigi can steal coins from opponents you run past, and so on.
You have to get to them within a few turns though, and that triggers a bespoke Showdown minigame with the player to initiate the challenge having a starting bonus to earn them, so it’s more about skill than dice rolls. One strange decision is that another player can steal a buddy if they pass you on the board, which can rip that advantage away from you if everyone’s in a similar spot. It can too easily nullify having earnt a buddy – especially Waluigi and Yoshi where you have to pass an opponent to trigger their ability – and maybe a quick rock-paper-scissors game might make this feel more fair.
One of the defining characteristics of a Mario Party session is the randomised nonsense that bonus stars, invisible blocks and more spin out. If that’s something that grates with you, then the new Pro Rules will help to lift a good chunk of the most egregious randomisation, paring back some (but not all) of the possibilities to make for a more predictable and consistent competitive game. You know what the bonus star is for ahead of time, special spaces now have defined outcomes, shops have limited and specific items, and potential star spaces are marked out so you can plan ahead with a Chomp Call in your back pocket. It’s good to have, but I gravitated back towards the shenanigans of the regular Mario Party.
Of course, so much of Mario Party is about the minigames, and Jamboree has a very broad set of games to play – it promises the largest selection of minigames ever, though a bunch of those are specific to certain modes, and it won’t take long before you’re seeing them repeat. As in the last few games, you can practice before you play, to help even the playing field for newcomers, and there’s a good mix of games that generally play with familiar ideas and themes. There’s a bit of social deduction and fake outs, a bit of luck, a bit of skill, a smattering of motion games amongst the predominantly button games (so you can play without motion and not feel short changed).
If you just want minigames and not a 90+ minute board game, Minigame Bay has a bunch of ways to dip in for a few quick games. Whether playing solo, taking on daily challenges, or with a full set of players, it’s a good quick alternative to dip into. Outside of the main Mario Party and minigame modes, Super Mario Party Jamboree throws a bunch of other ideas up at the wall to see what sticks.
Paratrooper Flight School has you extending your arms out and flapping and tilting the Joy-Con to fly around a few sky islands. There’s a two player battle mode, a co-op mode and a free flight mode, all of which will make your puny arms feel like they’re about to fall off. Toad’s Item Factory is then a quirky little puzzle game where you move world items to get a ball through a stage, and Rhythm Kitchen is a co-op rhythm mode with vegetable digging, chopping and more. They’re all kind of just fine, playable with real people or AI. Little diversions from the endless tirade of board games and minigames elsewhere.
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- Fly with your arms out in Paratrooper Flight School
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- Toad’s Item Factory has you bouncing balls through levels
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- Cook to the beat in Rhythm Kitchen
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- Explore the boards at your own leisure with the Party Planner Trek
A bit more successful is the Party Planner Trek. This mode sends you off to the various game boards to help set things up, freely meandering around the map and chatting to Toads, Goombas and a bunch of player characters, who might then ask you to find an item they’ve lost or take on a minigame challenge. You’re collecting Mini Stars through this, which builds up to a big event once you have enough, before you can visit the next stage. It’s a nice, fairly chilled out way to get the lay of the land, and learn some of the minigames. By its nature, that makes it much better suited to younger players, while old hands probably want to get their minigame time in with the main modes.
In addition to full online Mario Party and minigame modes, there’s also a pair of standalone online modes that are all about larger multiplayer groups. Koopathlon is a big minigame race where up to 20 players rush to collect coins as quickly as possible in individual games, each coin moving you around a track one space, with every fourth game being a 20-player Bowser survival minigame, where you can end up losing places.
Then there’s the eight player Bowser Kaboom Squad, with a Kaiju-sized Bowser stomping around a map as you all race to collect bombs, bring them to a cannon and fire them at Bowser. Every once in a while you get a co-op minigame, rewarding you with items to help build up to the final damage phase to win.
We only got to try these online modes at an in-person preview event, but they’re a good bit of fun if you want a larger mode to dip into. Bowser Kaboom Squad has some clunky controls with a single Joy-Con in hand, trying to navigate 3D space without real camera controls.
Oh, and since I complained that it had disappeared with Mario Party Superstars, I’m happy to confirm that the little jingle that your Joy-Con plays with HD Rumble has returned for Jamboree.
