Very rarely, I want my friends to spew pure vitriol my way. I want to be told I'm hated. I want to be told I'm scum. Hell, spit on me a little, why not? Really get into it. I'm not a sadist by any means, but when I've just stolen a Star from one of my dear friends and sent them to the bottom of the leaderboard, I can't help but smile, and they can't help but wish to strangle me violently. It's not often you get to instigate and benefit from schadenfreude so immediately and gratifyingly like this. Truly, the best part of any Mario Party game is the suffering of those around you.
Mario Party Superstars promises a simple thing: that same overwhelming feeling of superiority over your friends, bundled with a heaped tablespoon of nostalgia for anyone that has been in the business of misery for the last few decades . To take it from the top, the classic Mario Party game mode sees you travelling around a creative board space by space by rolling dice, landing on spaces that can equally reward or harm you, with minigames taking place to break up each round of dice rolls. The goal is to get to the space housing the Star and buy it, with the winner at the end of the game being whoever has the ℱmost Stars in their possession - though experienced players will likely feel safe knowing that the game also rewards you with Stars at the end for winning minigames and earning coins effectively. Throw in a bunch of wacky Mario Kart style items to give you a boost - or, again, trip up your friends - and you have a recipe for success. If your success is measured by how much the people you care about hate you. Which mine is.
This game takes five boards from the three N64 Mario Party games and combines them with 100 minigames from across the series - all of the ones that use a more traditional control scheme, anyway. Super Mario Party previously dedicated itself to using a single JoyCon controller per player, so getting four players up and ♛running in this title should be ꦿless restrictive, with a wider variety of controller options available - even GameCube controllers, why not. The classic board and game selection is very nice to see, though five boards feels like a slim selection in comparison to 100 minigames - though those are rarely more complex than a WarioWare stage themselves.
Mario Party minigame design has come a long way since the ‘90s, and while the first couple of times you revisit an old stage can be a fun nostalgic hit, play too much and you'll soon find a selection of games that just won't interest or excite you. It's not true for all of them, but with 100 on offer, there's bound to be a few duds. You'll be crossing your fingers for fun minigames to be randomly selected after each round of turns, and sometimes you can't help but wish to be able to select a game everyone actually likes instead of leaving it up to chance.
Like a game of Monopoly, playing Mario Party for too long can leave everyone involved feeling fatigued and sick of Charles Martinet's charming, yet eventually grating high-pitched outbursts. At least, that’s what Monopoly is like in the Martinet house. Luckily if you only want some quick Mario Party action, you can instead visit one of several side modes. You can pick any minigame you wish in Free Play, play more easily with fewer friends in Tag Match or Trio Challenge, narrow things down to sport and puzzle games, or even take things online with a Survival Mode and Daily Challenges. Yes, that's right, daily online challenges in a Mario Party game. Truly it is 2021. Luckily all of these modes provide their own unique thrills, and playing with just a single friend in Tag Match against a pair of CPU opponents is a much better way to play Mario Party when low on friends than what previous entries offered.
There are collectables to purchase with coins earned through playing the game, but nothing too interesting. The meat of Mario Party Superstars is found in how many friends or family you have to play with you, and how often they're willing to do so. Mario Party is not the kind of game you grind out for hours by yourself - in fact, I'd argue that's one way to make you hate the experience - but as something you can pull up whenever you have a gathering of friends or family, it's a great option, even for those with no nostalgia for these games.
Mario Party Superstars is an excellent package for long-suffering Mario Party fans, but it's almost certainly not going to lead to any new converts. Online multiplayer is a nice feature to have at launch, and the variety of 100 minigames will keep things feeling fresh for your first dozen hours of play at least. But with that said, this is quite literally the safest Mario Party entry imaginable, and even with a hot nostalgia injection, I think I prefer Super Mario Party as the Switch's premier place to ruin your relationships.
Score: 3.5/5. A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher.