“Mario Party” has seen its fair share of improvements over the past 26 years. The minigame juggernaut has added countless games, dozens of maps and characters, touchscreen controls, motion controls and so much more, but the upcoming “Super Mario Party Jamboree” is finally going all in on online modes. That means four-person games are no longer the maximum player count — try five times that many people.
Twenty players will now be able to compete head-to-head-to-head-to….well, you get the idea. The brand new mode is one of several additions that “Jamboree” makes to the classic “Mario Party” format. Yes, four people will still be able to roll dice blocks, move around boards, play minigames, hoard coins and collect stars to win. But now, new modes will give players the opportunity to play online with either eight or 20 people and compete in daily challenges to earn rewards. In a hands-on demo ahead of release, Variety got to try out these new games modes.
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Koopathlon is the new 20-player online format, and it’s every Mario brother for himself in this ultimate showdown. Players face off in minigames, and depending on how they perform they’ll advance farther down a racetrack circuit. After five laps around the racetrack, a winner will be crowned. The matches go quickly, making it the most fast-paced and frenetic game mode in “Jamboree.” The various games included whack-a-mole with Monty Moles; a knockout mode where sections of the floor fell out, leaving players to balance previously; and a coin collect-athon where cannons shot out goodies to grab.
On the opposite end of the “Jamboree” spectrum, Bowser Kaboom Squad puts eight players on a team together to stop a massive Bowser rampaging around the stage. The octet must race around to bash open crates, carry bombs back to their homebase and launch them at Bowser before time runs out. Between rounds, they’ll play a cooperative minigame in order to reap rewards that will help them defeat Bowser, like a speed boost or hammer to break down the bomb crates. Two of the Kaboom Squad minigames included a roulette wheel game where players had to quickly stop on the correct shape, plus one where everyone did their best plumber impression and had to plug up leaks in a winding water pipe.
The third new addition is a daily challenge mode that pits teams of two against each other in three games. Teamwork and communication is key here, as the pairs will work together to win memory puzzles, shape-matching challenges to score points and unlock rewards.
In total, there are seven “Mario Party” maps to play on, more than 110 minigames and 22 total character to play as — including two newcomers, Pauline from “Super Mario Odyssey” and the adorable Ninji. Like all of its predecessors, “Super Mario Party Jamboree” has a dizzying amount of minigames to play, but this time the series amps up its online play. No other “Mario Party,” and very few Nintendo games outside of battle royales, offer huge, 20-player modes. With casual multiplayer games like “Overcooked” and “Fall Guys” gaining popularity in recent years, it’s great to see “Mario Party” finally arrive and offer its tried-and-true minigame format in the modern, online era.
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