I’m not go deep into the history of the console Mario Party games since that’s been done a million times before. First it was good and then it was weird and then it was bad and now it’s good again. But Super Mario Party marked a turning point for the Mario Party series.
After half a decade of weird to bad games, [Super Mario Party](https://youtu.be/by_XTria-mQ?feature=shared) was a breath of fresh air for the series; it returned the franchise to the classic “everyone moves on their own” board gameplay style of the first eight home console entries. It was also a shockingly good demonstration of the Joy Con’s unique features, including haptics, HD rumble, and 1-to-1 motion controls for each of the minigames. The presentation was also lovely, with brand new renders for all of the characters and real peppy hub world music to get you hyped for a party. I know I had a fun time whenever this game showed up at friend’s houses, and I’m sure that families around the world enjoyed it as well. It became one of the Switch’s top 10 best selling games of all time and still remains in that bracket today.
But the game was marred by several key issues. First was that you were forced to use Joy Cons for the entire game; no other controllers were supported, making the game literally unplayable on the Switch Lite without shelling out for more controllers. Second was the board selection; you get only four boards and all of them were grid-based, making them all bland and flavorless. Third and most disappointing was the online multiplayer; you could only play a selection of 10 minigames with people online and that was it. You couldn’t play the main board game modes online at launch, which I’m pretty sure killed the game in many people’s eyes. What’s even worse was that this was the first Nintendo published game to release after Nintendo made their online into a paid service, and let’s just say it wasn’t the greatest ambassador in that regard.
We thought this game was gonna get copious amounts of free updates like Mario Tennis Aces and Kirby Star Allies. But nope. Nothing at all. The board game modes [finally did get proper online play](https://youtu.be/o22mjNmuuJc?feature=shared) in early 2021, but by that time everyone was looking ahead towards a sequel. And when that sequel finally did come around later that same year, nobody paid attention to Super Mario Party anymore. And nowadays it just sits in that pile of weird Nintendo published Switch games alongside Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and Yoshi’s Crafted World, ones that nobody care about that still cost $60 dollars to this day.