Nintendo’s new Mario Party makes a great first impression

Super Mario Party Jamboree boasts big numbers: 110 minigames, seven game boards, and an online mode that supports up to 20 players. But the new Mario Party — the third entry in the franchise on Nintendo Switch and the 19th overall — doesn’t appear to coast on volume. Instead, there are inventive new twists on the Mario Party formula in Jamboree, including new cooperative modes and fun dynamic new boards.

During a recent preview event in New York City, I played some Super Mario Party Jamboree with a small group of media. Our first experience was a round of Jamboree on a brand-new board called Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party. At the center of the board is, naturally, a giant Wiggler vibing in a circular pit. This Wiggler’s body is part of the board’s path, and players can actively move it around to alter the map to their advantage, or to the disadvantage of others.

Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party is one of seven boards in Super Mario Party Jamboree, alongside new creations Roll ’em Raceway, Goomba Lagoon, King Bowser’s Keep, and Rainbow Galleria; and classic boards Mario’s Rainbow Castle from Mario Party and Western Land from Mario Party 2.

More interesting to me than any of the boards, though, was the Koopathlon, an online mode for up to 20 players — the highest number of players ever supported in Mario Party online play. In our session, we played as five human players against 15 bots in an online competition to see who could make it five laps around a race track, as opposed to a typical game board.

Koopathlon throws players into competitive minigames, many of which are played independently, like one where you have to bake bread to just the right level of doneness and another where you’re basically playing a modern version of Nintendo’s block-busting Alleyway. Other Koopathlon games throw up to 20 players on the screen at once to dodge Bowser’s attacks or try to avoid falling to their deaths.

Koopathlon, while a great time with friends and family (and Mario Party frenemies), seems like it will be the go-to option for Super Mario Party Jamboree players who just want to get online by themselves and get their Mario board game fix. (Super Mario Party Jamboree comes with three months of Nintendo Switch Online access, by the way.)

Maybe the most fun I had with Super Mario Party Jamboree was in Bowser Kaboom Squad mode, in which up to eight players cooperate to battle King Koopa with cannon fire. Doing so requires running around a small map, grabbing explosives from falling crates, and launching those bombs at Bowser. Between rounds of scrambling for ammo and avoiding Bowser and his minions, players are thrown into group minigames where they need to play cooperatively.

Some of these minigames have simple premises; one puts all players onto a grid, challenging them to make their character look in the direction of an ever-changing arrow on screen. That arrow pulls some dirty tricks though, and tests your reflexes in amusing, sometimes frustrating ways. Another minigame tasks players with rearranging a series of cards, requiring them to arrange numbers one through eight in ascending order. Once that’s done, the minigame switches it up, replacing the numerals on those cards with dots. In our playthrough, the game then asked us to arrange an illustration of a sea serpent in the right order. As the clock counted down each time, there was a good deal of fumbling and scrambling to get it right.

How you perform in Bowser Kaboom Squad mode’s minigames determines what kind of power-ups you’ll take into the next round of gathering bombs to launch at Bowser. Those power-ups change over time, and include things like banana peels that will make enemies slip and boost pads that you can lay down to give your teammates extra speed. If regular ol’ Mario Party is too competitive for you, Bowser Kaboom Squad’s style of cooperative play might be a great alternative.

But Super Mario Party Jamboree is pure Mario Party through and through. It has plenty of new additions, like all-new minigames and two characters fresh to the franchise — Pauline and Ninji — but you probably know what you’re getting yourself into with this 25-year-old franchise. If you skipped out on Mario Party Superstars and Super Mario Party for Switch, Super Mario Party Jamboree is a great place to jump in.

Super Mario Party Jamboree is coming to Nintendo Switch on Oct. 17.