Super Mario Party Jamboree 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 seem to thrive on volume. Instead, there are inventive new twists on the Mario Party formula in Jamboreeincluding new cooperative game modes and fun, dynamic new boards.

At a recent preview event in New York City I played a number of Super Mario Party Jamboree with a small group of media. Our first experience was a round Jamboree on a brand new board called Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party. In the center of the board is, of course, a giant Wiggler vibrating in a circular pit. The body of this Wiggler is part of the path of the board, and players can actively move it to change 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 Jamboreealongside 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 of Mario Party 2.

More interesting to me than any of the other boards, however, 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 complete five laps around a race track, as opposed to a typical game board.

Koopathlon pits players in competitive mini-games, many of which are played independently. There’s one where you have to bake bread until it’s just the right doneness, and another where you’re essentially playing a modern version of Nintendo’s blockbuster game. AlleyIn other Koopathlon games, up to 20 players appear on the screen at the same time to avoid Bowser’s attacks or to avoid falling.

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

Perhaps the most fun I had with Super Mario Party Jamboree was in Bowser Kaboom Squad mode, in which up to eight players team up to battle King Koopa with cannon fire. This involves running around a small map, grabbing explosives from falling crates, and launching those bombs at Bowser. In between rounds of scavenging for ammo and evading Bowser and his minions, players are thrown into group mini-games that require them to play cooperatively.

Some of these minigames have simple premise; one places all players on a grid and challenges them to point their characters in the direction of an ever-changing arrow on the screen. That arrow, however, plays some dirty tricks, testing your reflexes in funny, sometimes frustrating ways. Another minigame tasks players with reordering a series of cards, requiring them to arrange the numbers one through eight in ascending order. Once that’s done, the minigame changes it, replacing the numbers on those cards with dots. In our playthrough, the game then asked us to arrange an illustration of a sea serpent into the correct order. As the clock counted down each time, there was a lot of fiddling and scrambling to get it right.

How you perform in Bowser Kaboom Squad mode’s minigames determines which power-ups you carry over into the next round of collecting bombs to fire at Bowser. These power-ups change over time and include things like banana peels that make enemies slip and boost pads you can lay down to give your teammates extra speed. If regular Mario Party is too competitive for you, Bowser Kaboom Squad’s cooperative play style might be a good alternative.

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

Super Mario Party Jamboree coming to Nintendo Switch on October 17.