Did Mario Party Superstars Bring Back Mario Party?
Just barely.
I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who can get more excited for remakes than original titles. They’re not only a chance to see beloved ideas and concepts return, but to see those same ideas and concepts reexamined with an eye inclined to the standards of the modern age. I genuinely believe that I’d be more stoked about a Super Mario Sunshine remake than a Super Mario Sunshine successor.
There’s something to be said for taking the lessons you’ve learned and applying them in a wholly new project, but I don’t think that’s grounds enough to completely leave some games behind. Super Mario Sunshine was a year or two of development away from being a masterpiece, and a remake would give Sunshine that chance. I want to see them fix the cryptic blue coins, fix the suffocating shine requirements, fix some of the lesser shines or even create new shine missions to replace them, fix the displaced nature of the secret rooms, improve the nozzle implementation, remove the excessive Shadow Mario chases, and expand the scope of what perhaps doesn’t necessarily need fixing. Instead of using these inexplicit and inconsistent methods to travel from stage to stage, how about implementing a train station that transports you from any location in the game to the next? You can make the argument that the resources used to enact such ambitious changes would be better spent on an original 3D Mario, but to say that would suggest that using them here would be a waste, when I truly believe they’d be anything but. I don’t think I’d be alone in that either. The game that people have recently taken to crowning as the best 3D Sonic title is a fan remake of Sonic 06 that capitalizes on the original’s potential.
To be clear, my argument isn’t that remakes are a better investment than new titles, but that they have their place in the gaming landscape. As long as the original version is readily available largely unchanged, remakes can be, at the very least, a new perspective on an older piece of media that not everyone has to agree with. Remakes shouldn’t be replacements for their older counterparts, but alternative interpretations. In the most desperate situations, they’re signs that a publisher hasn’t forgotten about a franchise, or that franchise’s past.
Mario Party is in one of the most interesting cases for a remake, because remaking a Mario Party isn’t as cut and dry as remaking, for example, Link’s Awakening. You can remake a single entry in the series, sure, but fortunately Nintendo has taken the enticing second route with Mario Party Superstars — treating it as a best hits collection instead. Mario Party Superstars collects mini-games and boards from across the series and repackages them into a single remixed experience. And the idea comes at a time where the series could use it most.
Let’s start off simple: in terms of presentation and everything surrounding the gameplay experience, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Mario Party Superstars sits at the series’ peak. The Mario Party devs are in a fortunate position when it comes to art. There isn’t a single instance where the game adopts a free-moving camera — and at least to my knowledge, that applies to the series as a whole — so the Mario Party devs always know what the player’s perspective is showing. This is doubly true in minigames; many of which have a fixed camera, so the developers only need to cater to exactly what’s on screen. Essentially, NDCube can polish the art of Mario Party down to the exact space you’ll be standing on during gameplay, and as a result, we’re exposed to some of the cleanest visuals on the Switch. Every minigame is a feast for the eyes with expertly crafted lighting, models, the works, and that goes for the brilliantly recreated board layouts as well. A lot of people are fans of pre-rendered visuals, but as someone who doesn’t really get their charm I take delight in seeing these classic N64 boards adapted into 3D.
Superstars is also home to arguably the most robust and convenient suite of options in the series. There are still a few absences you can point out, but I don’t think it’d be fair to look at the breadth of options on display with any real scrutiny. Before a minigame begins, a demo of the minigame is immediately playable from the instructions menu, meaning there’s no need to whisk everyone away so a player or two can get a feel for the controls. Granted you’ve played the board at least once, you’re able to switch the board music to its original N64 counterpart. Nothing against the new iterations, but there’s a charm and catchiness to the classic tracks that doesn’t exist in these shinier new versions. Of course the option would’ve been nice for the minigame tracks as well, but you’ll be hearing the board music all the time, so I’m glad the choice exists where it matters.
There’s a dedicated minigame side-mode, as there has always been in Mario Party, but not only does it feature a selection of minigame challenge modes, each one is playable online against random players as well. This includes a daily challenge to tackle, and a gauntlet in which you aim to last as long as possible playing random minigames against a shuffling group of players.
During offline games, you’re able to add turns while in the middle of a game. I’d never use it myself, as I like the pressure of needing to pull ahead with only a couple of turns left, but the option is appreciated. There are a plethora of stickers you can use during board game happenings to congratulate or tease, a laundry list’s worth of achievements to unlock, and even a personal Mario Party card to customize for when playing games online, where you can show off your favorite character, board, minigames, achievements, and choose a unique design.
Speaking of online play, Superstars delivered on finally bringing online play to the series in every capacity. Yes, Super Mario Party’s weird update exists, but this is the first instance of online being built into an entry. You’re able to open or join a room created by your friends or other players, where you can even save up to eight Mario Party matches mid-game to continue later if someone suddenly has to dip. This applies to offline games as well. In addition you’re able to participate in online matchmaking to play with random players across the world. Previously Nintendo stated that they didn’t want to incorporate matchmaking into Mario Party because of the unreliable nature of player connectivity, especially for a game as long as Mario Party. Not only did they include it regardless, but if anyone or even everyone disconnects during an online match, they’ll be replaced with computers. So you’re allowed to finish the match and even bank it as an online one in spite of whether or not all players stuck with it through to the end.
Like I said, it leaves room for improvement. I’d like to see the return of the different dice block settings from the original Mario Party, and while you’re able to choose from different minigame packs, nothing as ultimate as Mario Party 4’s individual minigame toggles, allowing you to choose exactly which minigames do and don’t appear, has yet to return. But if they flat-out ripped Superstars’ framework for the next Mario Party, or even the Mario Party after that, I would have minimal complaints.
In the same vein as the boards, all of the 100 minigames from Superstars are returning, pulling from one of the series 10 main entries. I wouldn’t call myself a Mario Party savant — I’ve played a lot fewer of the games than you’d think — so the nostalgic value of the minigame selection is lost on me. If anything though, that speaks to their timeless nature, as this is a rock solid collection of minigames. I may like Superstars’ selection more than The Top 100’s, but there are some minigames from the latter that I miss. I thought Strawberry Shortfuse, Balloon Busters, Order Up, Defuse or Lose, and Heat Stroke, among others, were fun. Balloon Busters in particular is on the same level as Bowser’s Big Blast for me, if not higher. I know that it uses microphone controls, but I don’t think it’d be heresy to map the microphone function to a button. Still, that doesn’t make Superstars’ lineup anything less than great.
Of the classic minigames — ones like Bumper Balls, Shy Guy Says — I’d have to say Bombs Away is my favorite, where your goal is to survive on a shaky landmass being peppered with cannon fire. You can try jumping as cannonballs hit the platform to avoid getting stunned by their impact, but you have to adjust your angle constantly so you don’t overshoot and jump off the platform. You can let the cannonballs stun you so you don’t have to jump, but you’re at risk of slipping off as you’re incapacitated. Bowser’s Big Blast is also a fun time. It’s a purely luck-based minigame where you choose from a group of levers with one that’ll send you to kingdom come, kept interesting through the tension created by the fantastic presentation. I always enjoy when Messy Memory comes on, where you have to memorize the positions of an assortment of items before rearranging them correctly. My trick for this one is to make a story based on the arrangement of items. I’d say here for the top shelf that Peach wants to beat the shit out of that Fly Guy to get some bananas for Toad, for example. Goomba Spotting is one that I think doesn’t get enough love — a more interesting version of Roll Call in my opinion. Not only do the Goombas speed by in ever-changing amounts, but you can’t see your count nor can you decrease it, so you have to trust your gut in counting. Rapid River Race is another fun one, however simple. You dash down a three-lane strait littered with Urchins, being able to increase your speed at whim. It’s a gamble of whether you want speed or safety, palpable through the fact that hitting Urchins at a higher speed will stun you for longer, but going slower gives your opponents opportunity to blaze past. I’m a fan of trying to launch a Bullet Bill at just the right angle while your stationary platform spins in Bill Blaster, the pressure ever-present in that you can never quite gauge if the Bullet Bill someone else just launched in your direction will manage to hit you or you’ll be saved by the hitbox of your Bill Blaster.
2v2 minigames are similarly great. One of my favorites is Etch n’ Catch. Both players have a pencil that draws a disappearing line as they move, and together they have to draw a circle to catch a moving stamp, the team who catches the most stamps winning. Coordinating your movements to create something as simple as a circle can be surprisingly difficult, especially with how fast the lines disappear, and it’s a fun test of your sync. Eatsa Pizza is a beloved one, and for good reason. Both players have to move across a pizza while mashing A to eat as much of it as possible. The faster you mash, the faster you eat. Not only do you have to mash A at speeds faster than light, you have to move across the pizza in a way that optimizes your path while remaining unobtrusive to your partner. In Handcar Havoc, both players have to rhythmically pump a handcar forward while monitoring its speed and tilt to ensure it doesn’t fly off the track. It’s so fast-paced that you can’t effectively strategize with your teammate in real time, and you almost have to anticipate your partner’s instinct so that you can speed up or slow down accordingly. With Paint Misbehavin’, all four players are on paint cannons on rails, the rails composing a square formation. In the middle are multiple goombas, and you and your partner have to work together to paint as many of them as possible in your respective color. If you’re able to line it up right, you can even hit the opponent directly across from you, temporarily stunning them. It’s one of those minigames where you can try to think of a strategy, but it’s so frantic that it’s practically a roll of the die who manages to hit more goombas in closing. Burnstile is perhaps the most simple 2v2 on offer, yet it’s still a good time. Both teams are on platforms parallel to each other, with a pole sweeping across the screen in a circular motion. The goal is to avoid it for as long as possible. I’ve always had an affinity for survival minigames, and one-note as it may be, Burnstile fits the bill. You can say that the least interesting 2v2 minigames are the ones that feel like Free-for-All minigames adapted to the 2v2 format — like Burnstile — because they don’t tap into the possibilities presented by the team-based format, and I’d agree with you. Thing is, I can’t complain when the minigames are still fun. Plus, 2v2 minigames will always have the added friction between teammates, as it can be fun to pin the blame on your partner when they have less-than-stellar performance. Who knows, maybe they made the two of you lose on purpose to give themselves a leg up in another way. With that in mind, I don’t think it’s fair to call a 2v2 minigame bad on that principle alone.
Historically 1v3 minigames have been difficult to nail down. Making a Free-for-All or 2v2 is simple enough. Come up with an objective for all players to pursue under the same conditions, and the winner is decided by who has the best performance. 1v3s aren’t as cut and dry. You can do something similar, where both sides have the same goal but the three have a handicap of some kind compared to the one, which can work fine enough, but it’s still not easy to come up with premises like that. Not to mention that among the three primary minigame types, 1v3s have the most potential for interesting minigame ideas. If you can present a compelling and dynamic challenge for both camps while making sure the scales are even, you almost have two minigames in one depending on which side you’re on. Of course that isn’t much of a problem for Superstars, since it gets to cherrypick the best examples of 1v3 minigame design, and the selection here reflects that. I’m never bothered when Tube It or Lose It comes on, where the three are sledding down a hill in plastic tubes while the one chases them down in a spiked tube, trying to pop the three. It’s simple, but there’s strategy to be found in braking and accelerating at the right times and taking advantage of how the ramps you’ll come across affect your momentum. Look Away has the one choosing a direction for their character to look in — left, right, up, down, or forward — while the other three have to look in another direction to avoid elimination across five rounds. I find the best strategy for the one is to focus on a single player, and move through the rest. Even though as the three you basically have three lives, you can’t easily coordinate with your team members, and it’s easier to screw up than you may think. I think Pogo-a-Go-Go is an underrated one. The one controls a spinning circular platform with holes in it and has to get the three, who are hopping on pogo sticks, to fall through the holes. It’s easy to think of the game as skewed toward the three as it’s predictable for the one to stop then immediately switch directions. Thing is, most players I’ve come across don’t seem to realize that the one can continue to spin in the same direction after stopping instead of spinning in the opposite direction to trip players out. And it shows, because nearly every time I do that, I come out on top. Tackle Takedown doesn’t get a good rap as well. One player has a football they have to get to the other side of a field, and standing in their way are the three. If the three can tackle the one, they win, but the one has three dashes at their disposal to help them get to the other side. It can feel suffocating for the one trying to get past all three, but it only takes one well-executed dodge to decide the game. It’s a short minigame that rarely takes more than 10 seconds, purely about who had the better play. If I had to pick a favorite 1v3, it’d have to be Squared Away. It takes place on a field of cubes, the players being cubes themselves. The one is a fast 1-by-1 cube, while the three are slow 4-by-4s, and one of the three has to crush the one to win. There’s a simple joy to this one that’s hard to pin down. It can be exhilarating to weave in and out of the larger cubes as the one, and it’s also fun to best position yourself for you and your allies to close in on the kill. You don’t need communication as the three as well, as it’s easy enough to understand what the best positions for everyone is. Just a really fun minigame. The selection isn’t perfect. I’m not a fan of Coconut Conk. The three are on top of palm trees, and have to ground pound them to fell coconuts to hit the one rolling around below in a barrel. Your movement as the one is so stunted that you’ll constantly find yourself in disadvantageous positions. Even if the one knows what they’re doing, it’s almost always game if one of the three continuously drops coconuts in one spot and traps the one in a smaller space. Spotlight Search is weighed towards the three as well. One player swims around in a pool, while the three have to collectively shine their spotlights on the one to win. The one can dive into the water for a short period to avoid the spotlights, but their trail is indicated by a bubble trail, and it isn’t a challenge to make a good estimation on where the one will pop up next. Even if the spotlights are away from the one as they come up, there’s a short delay for the one before they can move again, which in my experience, is enough time to course correct and get the spotlights pinned on the one again. Still, a few bad apples don’t sour the catalog as a whole, and even the lesser minigames have their good qualities.
The only minigames I’m not fully on board with are the coin minigames. Not so much the minigames themselves, but rather with their implementation. I don’t have anything against coin minigames conceptually — they’re fun scenarios in which the goal is no longer to simply win, but to amass as many coins as possible to add to your coin count. Depending on the circumstances of the board play, your actions and their motivations may sway, and the fact that they’re rarer than regular minigames keeps them fresh and balanced. Essentially, they have the same dynamism as normal minigames, in a different format. My problem with them is that they’re too generous. Some coin minigames are fine, with pools of 30–40 coins, but others have coin pools in the 60s, meaning that even if every player performed equally, they’d all still walk away with 15 coins more in their pocket. That’s three-fourths of the way to a star and five coins more than what you’d get for winning a regular minigame. If a single player excels, they can go home with nearly enough for a star steal. The inflated coin pools are especially problematic in 1v3 and 2v2 coin minigames, where the coin total isn’t split amongst players, but instead paid in full to everyone.
Again, I like coin minigames a lot, and my problem isn’t even necessarily that they have the opportunity to pad players wallets so much. It’s the fun kind of mayhem when you get to a Bonus Minigame and the roulette lands on a coin minigame, meaning that any player is poised to walk away with a ludicrous payout if they can beat the odds. But it shouldn’t be this easy to earn coins. I don’t think a coin minigame should ever have a pool of over 30 coins, because that still provides everyone a fair chance to gather as many coins as possible and walk away with a decent amount. It also leaves room for the chance that one lucky player could perform exceptionally, and take the bulk of the pool for themselves for a pretty penny. But as it stands, when you’re starting a coin minigame, that’s your cue that you’re going to be walking away with no less than 10 coins, and no one should have that assurance. I wouldn’t mind overly generous coin totals if coin minigames were uber rare, but they’re uncommon at best. This isn’t a calculated estimate, but I averaged out three coin minigames in a majority of my 15-turn games, and you can scale that to one coin minigame per five turns. Those aren’t unbalanced numbers, but under the assumption that they’re accurate, that you can’t have more than one coin minigame every five turns, that’s still frequent enough to break the bank.
Perhaps coin minigames wouldn’t be as bad as they are if the coin economy itself wasn’t so broken, leading me to my biggest problem with Superstars. I won’t go as far as to say they’re worthless, but coins have been drastically reduced in value because everyone is Scrooge McDuck by the end of a game. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my Mario Party games have a tendency to end in a Golden Pipe-fest, where everyone feverishly buys Golden Pipes in the final few turns, cashing in their coins for a couple ridiculously easy stars, and this is borne from what I can only call overwhelming generosity on behalf of the game. Mario Party’s core tenet has always been that there can only be one winner — that no matter what every move you make has to be in service of your final position being at the top. That’s never changed thankfully, but that means that there will always be three losers, and in what I can only assume to be an attempt to soften the blow, Mario Party has increasingly seen to level the playing field. I don’t think it’d be outlandish to assume that was a guiding principle behind uniting everyone in a single car in Mario Party 9 and 10, and it’s lived on in the recent traditional Mario Party outings through boosted coin outputs.
In Superstars, it’s seen in practically every facet of the game. 2nd and 3rd place now get three and two coins respectively after a Free-for-All minigame, where before only 1st place got a prize. Thankfully there’s no participation trophy in 2v2 and 1v3 minigames, but this is still a little overkill. That’s anywhere from an additional 50–150 coins being given out over the course of a game. It makes landing on a red space nearly pointless, as most of the time you’re losing the table scraps you were mercifully given anyway. Some boards return with Koopa Bank spaces, and as usual, they take coins from any players who pass them, awarding the accumulated total to any player lucky enough to land on the Koopa Bank space. Except the Koopa Bank will now take three coins every time you pass it, as opposed to the traditional five. In the last five turns, the Koopa Bank will take away five coins, but that really should be the default number. Especially considering how not every board has a Koopa Bank anyways, and for the ones that do, you don’t pass by them often. Blue and red spaces will give or take three coins respectively, operating in totals of six in the last five turns, though it’s insane how unbalanced the ratio of red spaces to blue spaces are on the boards. On Yoshi’s Tropical Island it’s 1–5. You can throw in the Bowser spaces on that board for a better ratio of 1–3, but keep in mind I’m not counting the 11 Lucky spaces, which would kick up that already-weighted ratio to 1–4. To be fair, that’s faithful to the amount of red spaces on the original Yoshi’s Tropical Island. All of these boards are fairly faithful with their space designation, actually. But Lucky spaces didn’t pepper the boards in those games, which can give you 5–20 coins or an item, and in the N64 titles, everything else discussed prior, such as light Koopa Bank deductions and rewards for 2nd and 3rd place in Free-for-Alls, didn’t apply. Very rarely has landing on a red space bothered me, because I have so many coins anyway that losing a few rolls off my shoulders.
In addition, the Item Shop undervalues every item. It costs three coins for the cheapest items, which are Skeleton Keys, Mushrooms, and Cursed Dice Blocks, and only 12 coins for one of the more expensive and possibly best items, a Custom Dice Block. It costs five for a Double Dice Block, seven for a Warp Block or Chomp Call, 10 for a Triple Dice Block. It’s worth mentioning that the Item Shop stock varies from board-to-board, and some items aren’t available in the shop until later turns. The only item price I’d say is fair is the Golden Warp Pipe, at 25 coins. That alone is pretty cheap for an item that immediately transports you to a star, but considering that you still have to pay the 20 coin star fee, all together you’re paying about as much as it would get Boo to steal a star. As for every other item? For all the items that aren’t sold at an even price, they should be rounded up to the nearest even number, and every item that is sold at an even price should have about five coins added to its cost. With the exception of the Warp Block, which I feel should have its price decreased to five coins. I have rarely passed by an Item Shop without being able to buy every item on display, and no one should constantly have that luxury. Custom Dice Blocks feel especially cheap for one of the most reliable and multi-functional items in the game. You’re guaranteed up to 10 spaces of travel if you need distance, or you can choose any space to land on within 10 spaces. I almost always have a Custom Dice Block in my possession, and that’s more agency than I think was intended. Not that players should never have the ability to comfortably spend, but there should be instances where there’s a decision to make. Too frequently buying an item feels like a case of “Might as well”. That goes for paying for individual board mechanics as well. Running into an eventful spot on the board that asks you for a fee is rarely ever a matter of “if you can”, rather one of “if you should”.
I can understand if the developers believe that the older Mario Partys were too punishing to younger players, but here’s the thing — people grew up with those original Mario Partys the same way kids nowadays are going to grow up with these ones, and look at where Mario Party is today. I assure you that if you take a group of kids today and put one of those crueler Mario Partys in front of them, they’d have just as much fun. Mario Party isn’t meant to be fair, that’s what makes it so enjoyable. You’re always on a knife’s edge, playing with the knowledge that one bad roll of the die could capsize everything you’ve built up. Strategy isn’t about planning and execution, it’s rarely ever that smooth. It’s about making the right decisions at the right time, benefitting yourself whenever you can, and clawing your way to the top. That’ll go over kids’ heads — Mario Party to them is nothing more than a chaotic board game — but that’s my point. There’s no need to jeopardize the deeper Mario Party experience for those who enjoy it when at the end of the day, any kid you ask is going to say that Mario Party is luck-based bollocks. And anyways, I don’t think it should be Nintendo’s responsibility to cushion these kids when all their stars are viciously stolen. If they throw a tantrum about it, well, there’s a responsibility for their parents.
I apologize for going on a tangent here, but with the recent re-release of Pikmin 2 I’m reminded of how much I wish games nowadays would just kick your teeth in with a steel-toed boot and leave it at that. It feels like an increasing amount of modern games are trying to ensure that no one ever truly loses, and it forces me to create my own self-imposed challenges to experience true stakes. It’s fulfilling when games kick you down and make you get yourself back up. That’s one of the things that’s special about Mario Party, it can never truly get rid of that cruelty without compromising what Mario Party is. There can be no reset button when you lose your coins, your stars, your hard-earned first place position. Mario Party will sucker punch you, look you dead in the eye, and give you two options — rebuild, or give up. The reality is that there always will be and still are situations where you won’t have enough to pay up at certain points, but if you can’t remove that cruelty, why not embrace it, instead of going for this half-assed middle ground that’s only providing us with a lesser experience? Why not give that experience that only Mario Party can provide, that it should pride itself on being able to provide?
When the dust settles, it doesn’t upend the balance of Superstars, nor does it make Superstars a bad game. After all, the coin economy isn’t the essential aspect of a Mario Party. That would be the boards. As aforementioned, all boards in Superstars are returning, specifically from the three N64 titles. There’s a total of five boards. Two from Mario Party 1 and 2 each, and one from Mario Party 3.
The first of the Mario Party 1 boards is Yoshi’s Tropical Island. Yoshi’s Tropical Island dukes it out with Horror Land for my favorite board constantly. It’s a marvel just how much Yoshi’s Tropical Island accomplishes with its simple premise. There are two islands in the shapes of ovals that are side-by-side, longer sides facing each other — the Watermelon and Cantaloupe islands, as the game calls them. On each island will be either Toadette with a star or Bowser, who’ll rob you of an indeterminate sum of coins. If Toadette is on Watermelon, Bowser is on Cantaloupe, and if Bowser is on Watermelon, Toadette is on Cantaloupe. They swap whenever a player lands on an Event space, which happens frequently with just how many there are on such a small island. The defining features of each island is that Watermelon has an Item Shop and a Koopa who awards you 10 coins for making a lap around the island, and Cantaloupe has a Boo space and the only Chance Time space on the board. The only junctions on either island are the two pathways that connect them, the bottom one leading from Watermelon to Cantaloupe, and vice versa for the top pathway. Each pathway is guarded by a Thwomp, who requires a toll for you to pass to the opposing island. The toll fee starts at 2 coins, and you’re able to pay the Thwomp any amount of coins to pass as long as it’s more than the current toll fee. You can pay the Thwomp in pocket change, or dump your whole reserve into it. Now here’s the catch — the current toll fee is always one coin more than what the last player paid, and the toll never goes back down. This means that you can strategically choose how many coins to give the Thwomp to handicap your opponents at a cost, that cost being that the toll fee won’t discriminate towards you either.
The only real difference between the original and Superstars’ iteration is the inclusion of the items and the Item Shop, which alone drastically improve the board. Goes to show just how essential of an addition items were. Really the only problem I can see with the original board is that Cantaloupe was objectively the better island. Watermelon still had Koopa, but the coins you got from Boo on Cantaloupe bled from another player’s wallet. With the Item Shop now on Watermelon, players can stand toe-to-toe with the players on Cantaloupe. That dynamism in the fact that no island is ever truly better than the other is what makes this map so damn chaotic yet balanced.
Imagine a scenario. Everyone is currently on Watermelon, but the star is on Cantaloupe. You’ve just won a VS minigame with a pool of 30 coins, walking away with a grand total of 160 coins to your name. You now have enough to steal three stars if you’re able to make it to the Boo space three times, and you decide to hightail it to Cantaloupe. You use 40 coins to block off the other players, who are comparatively broke. You’ll lose the ability to steal another star, but you can still get three stars by purchasing one from Toadette. Things look set, but here’s why this is a bad idea: it is blatantly obvious what your strategy is, more so than it may be on another board. You can hide your intentions to star steal on Space Land up until you land on that Boo space, but the second you head over to the right side of Yoshi’s Tropical Island, everyone goes on high alert. The player who’s been saving up their Custom Dice Block now uses it to land on an Event space. Bowser robs you of 27 coins as you pass, knocking your total down to 93, meaning you can no longer get even two of the stars you had planned on. But hey, you’re still walking away with one more star, right? The endeavor will have paid off in the end. A player uses their Dueling Glove to challenge you for a total of 53 coins. They capitalize on your nervous state in such a high stakes game, and walk away richer than they were before, leaving you at a meager 40 coins. You steal some coins back when you pass by that Boo space again, getting your coin total back up to 56, but now you’ve passed by Boo, and you’re certain that you won’t hold onto those 56 coins long enough to come back around and steal a star. Not with Bowser there, and odds are not at the whim of whatever Mario Party shenanigans unfold next. You begrudgingly pay the Thwomp’s toll of 20 coins to enter Watermelon, leaving you at just 36 coins. Not only have you now trapped yourself on this single island, not only did you put a player in a desirable position not to dissimilar to the one you were in a couple turns back, but even if it was short lived, you became public enemy number one.
Now, let’s build another scenario off the back of this one. Imagine being in the shoes of the player who had the Dueling Glove, along with a Triple Dice Block in their inventory. Upon fortuitously landing on a VS space and getting a 30 coin pool, they immediately planned on letting another player take the top prize. They settled for a cool second place, getting back a little less than their entrance fee. At this point, the winner has made the bold move of crossing over to Cantaloupe, and another player has already used a Custom Dice Block to put Toadette on Watermelon. You decide to use your Dueling Glove now to try to bankrupt the cocksure player. It’s a risky play, but it pays off with your coin total now in the triple digits. You finish off that turn with a lower roll than you’d hoped for, but you still have an ace up your sleeve. It becomes your turn again, and it’s time for your grand plan to enter its final stage. With everyone focusing on the player going for the star steals, no one has had time to pay attention to you. You use your Triple Dice Block, roll exceptionally high, and not only cross the star space, but claim the coin gift from Koopa as well. You’re now one star higher on the leaderboard, with the top coin total to boot. And no one was sharp enough to realize that ever since the VS minigame, everything went according to plan.
It’s insane to me that you can wring that much depth out of what’s essentially two circles strung together, but Yoshi’s Tropical Island truly is that fantastic. You always have to consider how making passage to Cantaloupe with a high coin count immediately pins you on everyone’s radar, and that is the crux of that island’s risk. It makes stealing a single star over the course of a game a circumstantial instance, let alone doing it more than once. The chips truly have to fall just right for you to be able to safely take a star from another player without drawing the ire of your opponents. Even if you don’t use a strategy as complex as the one I discussed during your game, you can find yourself in a situation where there’s a normally irrelevant move to make that could have monumental consequences. All while Yoshi’s Tropical Island still strikes that balance of leaving you with enough agency to where you’ll always have to commit to a course of action, while never letting you assume that whatever happens next is under your control. Of course, the strategic depth is only applicable assuming that you and the group you’re playing with are aware enough to exploit it, but for those who aren’t, there’s still enough chaos that ensues to keep the board interesting. I really can’t think of any complaints I have with Yoshi’s Tropical Island, anything that I wish was done better. If this isn’t a perfect Mario Party board, it’s a damn impressive accomplishment.
The accompanying Mario Party 1 board is Peach’s Birthday Cake. The board takes place on, well, Peach’s Birthday Cake, and the layout is set up like a circuit — you start at the bottom layer which eventually leads you up to the top layer, where Toadette stays to hand out stars. After you make it past Toadette, there’s an Event space that’ll immediately take you back down to the bottom layer, and an Item Shop right after. If you don’t make it back down via the Event space, you take part in the Goomba lottery, located at the end of the top layer’s path. The lottery will cost you a 10 coin fee or however many coins you have, and to play you pick from four seeds. Three of the four seeds will sprout a “loser”, which sends you back to the bottom layer to do the circuit again. If you get the one “winner” however, you continue ahead to a side path that has Bowser on it, who will steal some of your coins, with the path leading back to the top layer where Toadette lies in wait. Dotted around the bottom layer are dual sets of Event spaces. Upon landing on one of these, you’ll be given the option to pay to plant a Piranha Plant that will either steal coins or a star from the next player to land on that Piranha Plant’s respective Event space.
Notable additions made to the Superstars version include the ability to pay five coins for a Piranha Plant that steals coins, whereas before you could only plant one that steals stars, as well as the Event space on the top layer that sends you back down to the bottom.
From the outside looking in, Peach’s Birthday Cake isn’t an appealing board, and it wasn’t in Mario Party 1. The long road to the star space was exhausting, and the complete lack of junctions meant that your position was left entirely up to the dice. Not only do items fix a lot of the board’s problems, they work in conjunction with the board’s mechanics to offer players that degree of strategy that the original couldn’t provide. You can prioritize distance using a Double Dice Block, Triple Dice Block, or Mushroom. If you’re the only one at the beginning of the circuit while everyone else is near Toadette, a Warp Block would do mighty fine. You say you need to ensure you avoid the upcoming Piranha Plants? That’s what Custom Dice Blocks are for. Now let’s say you’ve already bought a star-stealing Piranha Plant, and a player with a star is currently a single space away from the first of those next two apposite Event spaces. If you have a Cursed Dice Block in your inventory, what you can do is use that on the respective player to drastically heighten the odds of them landing on one of the Piranha Plant’s Event spaces. Which just so happens to be balanced out by the fact that it’s still not a 100% guarantee, as you can still roll up to a three while under the influence of a Cursed Dice Block. The advent of the Event space on the top layer that sends you back down to the bottom layer means that you now have an avenue to skip the Goomba’s lottery, and the new cheap coin-stealing Piranha Plants gives players at the bottom of the food chain a chance to climb back up. It doesn’t bother me that this is the only board without a Boo space, because the antics of the Piranha Plants act as an interesting alternative to Boo.
That said, I don’t think any board should have its strategic component squarely rely on item usage. Being able to use items strategically is already conditional, and the only point at which you can choose which items you want is at the single Item Shop at the end of the loop, which is still missable if you land on the Event space right before. You don’t pass by the Item Shop enough to feel like it’s giving you considerable means, and it’s most likely that you’ll default to a distance item because of how specific the instances in which you’d want to use another item are. In essence, not only is it uncommon to be in possession of items, but it’s even more uncommon to be in a situation where you would benefit from divergent usage of items, because that scenario would require you to both be in a fitting position and have the correct item to act appropriately. I know a lot of the strategy in Yoshi’s Tropical Island comes from item usage, but the bridges between Cantaloupe and Watermelon still present a decision to be made. In a lot of ways, the items used and the ways players use them revolves around how the players interact with that central mechanic. When it comes down to brass tacks, too much of Peach’s Birthday Cake is left up to luck, and unfortunately the flaws the board has extend to its mechanics.
Because of the inflated coin economy, you’ll almost always want to get a “winner” when playing the lottery. I assume the expectation was that Bowser would steal enough of your coins so that you’d waste your time looping back to Toadette, but since players are always loaded, you’ll almost always have enough to get another star even after Bowser robs you blind. And even if you don’t, you can complete the top layer and get another item as long as you don’t land on the Event space. If the board weren’t already so reliant on luck, maybe the lottery wouldn’t be so beneficial. But since you already can’t do much about your position on the board at any given time, the player that lucks out with a “winning” lottery ticket will most likely stand head-and-shoulders above the rest.
Circuit-based board design rarely works in Mario Party because by funneling players down a set trajectory, freedom in movement is no longer a part of the equation. It’s then up to the board to bake interesting decision-making opportunities into that circuit-based design. Like say, Mario’s Rainbow Castle. Mario’s Rainbow Castle leads players down a road with two junctions that eventually leads to the star space. Except that the star space rotates between Toad and Bowser — Toad letting you buy a star, and Bowser, not so much. What makes the board interesting are the junctions and the gambles they force you to take leading up to that star space. Do I take the shorter path to make larger strides towards the star, or do I hang back with the longer route? Your decision was influenced by a variety of factors: who and how many were currently ahead of you, your current distance from the star, whether it was currently Toad or Bowser at the star space, and so on. Even without items it was an entertaining board, but being remade in Superstars would’ve given the board’s full potential a chance to be realized, as items and some edits would’ve made this board a godsend. Peach’s Birthday Cake on the other hand has its presence validated solely by the fact that it’s been radically improved through the addition of items.
And that’s why I don’t regret Peach’s Birthday Cake being chosen over Mario’s Rainbow Castle. If this much strategic flavor has been layered onto the board through the additions made in Superstars, you can imagine how miserable of a board it was in Mario Party 1. It still isn’t an amazing board, but In adding items and other adjustments, Superstars transformed an awful board into a decent one. Even though I would’ve loved to see a modern take on Mario’s Rainbow Castle, I think that leap in quality speaks to the potential of Superstars as a concept.
Though, I don’t find that things get better with Space Land. Space Land’s geography is comparable to that of a square, with paths stretching out from the center that connect the board’s sides and corners. It’s one of the more lenient boards, in that you’re able to choose and alter your route with ease. The primary gimmick of the board is the Bowser Coin Beam. When crossing through the middle, you’ll pass by a counter that ticks down by one each time you pass it. Once it reaches zero, a laser fires along the walkway stretching from the top right of the map to the bottom left, and everyone caught in its warpath loses all of their coins. Aside from that, there are Event spaces among the upper and lower sides of the board, and landing on one will initiate a Thwomp or Whomp in a runaway car to chase you to the beginning of the side you were on. So if you were on the bottom side, moving towards the left, regardless of how far along you were you’d be sent all the way back to the right. You can also choose to pay five coins for the Sniffit’s patrol service, in which upon landing on an Event space, a Sniffit cop will chase the runaway car, sending the player even further back to the beginning of the side before the side the player was previously on. Imagine you’re on the bottom side again, moving towards the left. Landing on an Event space when a Sniffit is out on patrol will send you to the top of the right side of the board.
As far as I’m aware, Superstars didn’t make any changes to Space Land besides minor adjustments. We’re at the point now where items are no longer being added to boards wholesale, as they debuted in Mario Party 2. With that in mind, in Mario Party 2 you were only able to hold a single item, so the capacity for three items is an addition to all boards hailing from Mario Party 2.
In all honesty, I don’t think Space Land is that great of a board. The ability to go wherever you want isn’t as liberating as you’d think, as only select paths lead into the center. The first of those paths you’ll come across is at the bottom left of the board. Since you start at the bottom side, you have to trek a fair distance before you reach your first junction, which can be easily undone at any time by an Event space. Speaking of which, I don’t think sending players back to where they were is that good of a mechanic? Credit where credit is due, I think the Sniffit patrol was a smart addition. It gives you some control over where you end up after an Event space, allowing for players to send themselves back to a certain location or set their opponents up for a kneecapping. The fact that runaway cars send players right before a Sniffit patrol means that you can prevent a constant cycle of Event space mayhem, as the Sniffits send you back before a branching path leading into the middle, allowing you to avoid the Event space-littered path entirely. But there’ll still be times where you hit an Event space and are forced to redo a segment of the board without any fanfare. It can benefit you, like if a star is placed behind you, but that’s the exception to the rule. Maybe there’s an argument to be made for it, but it just isn’t that compelling of a mechanic to me. As for the Bowser Coin Beam, as much as I adore how brutal it is, it rarely hits a player. Even when it does hit it isn’t too crippling, because like I’ve said, the coin economy is so generous that you can come back from destitution easily. There’s this cleverly designed part of the board where you can repeatedly decrease the counter so as to provoke armageddon, but it doesn’t save the mechanic.
This is the first board with Skeleton Key Doors. I really do adore Skeleton Key Doors — fruitful routes reserved for those with Skeleton Keys. They’re balanced through the fact that you’ll either need to sacrifice getting another item to purchase one at the Item Shop, or try your luck getting one on the board. Not only that, but Item Shops are typically nowhere near Skeleton Key Doors, meaning that buying one is a commitment that could benefit you less than if you had stuck with a safer item. Unfortunately, I don’t think Space Land is a good first showing. There are two Skeleton Key Doors. The first one is at the top side that opens a side path leading to a Boo and continuing into the center. It’s a convenient rendezvous for star steals, in addition to feeding into the middle, letting you choose where you want to go next. It’s a little too easy to access, as not only will one of the paths sprouting out from the center take you a little ways before it, but there’s an Item Shop on the route there as well. It’s a valid strategy to use that Skeleton Key Door to farm Boo with little repercussion. The second Skeleton Key Door has the exact opposite problem — it isn’t useful enough. It’s on one of the right pathways branching out from the center, leading into the middle of the right side of the board. Its primary appeal is that it has the board’s two Chance Time spaces back-to-back. This is a habit of some Skeleton Key Doors, and I really don’t think Chance Time spaces are a good appeal. If you happen to want a Chance Time space and are near one of these Skeleton Key Doors, unless you have an appropriate dice block, you’re still taking a gamble on whether or not you land on that Chance Time space to begin with. And unless you’re in the pits or want to make a last-ditch gamble, odds are you’ll rarely want to land on a Chance Time space. Chance Time spaces are best implemented when they’re scattered among the board, because the players who don’t want to land on them will be forced to try their luck when they do. It especially doesn’t make sense to lock every Chance Time space on the board behind a Skeleton Key Door, because who would make the effort to prompt one if they can be easily avoided? It doesn’t help that there’s no appeal to this Skeleton Key Door otherwise. The board’s second Boo is on the right side, except the Skeleton Key Door’s path spits you out past it. Both pathways would be drastically improved if they had their contents switched. The top left Skeleton Key Door still has the appeal of being a convenient avenue to the center, and could have the Chance Time spaces as an additional benefit, or detriment. This would ideally be in addition to Chance Time spaces along the board’s common paths. Removing Boo would also better justify the ease of access given by the presence of the Item Shop right beforehand. Placing Boo behind the rightmost Skeleton Key Door would be enticing by being a Boo space easily accessible from the center. It’s worth mentioning that after exiting this Skeleton Key Door’s route, there is and still would be a nearby path that allows the player to enter the center again, but it’s a longer journey compared to the opposing Skeleton Key Door’s.
Other than that, I can’t really come up with solutions to most of my complaints with Space Land. They’re too inborn to the board’s design that they couldn’t be resolved without completely reworking the board, and at that point, you’d just have a new board on your hands. Its inclusion wouldn’t sting as much if it were a board that could use significant changes, but by and large it’s the same as it was in Mario Party 2. At least with Peach’s Birthday Cake, its presence in Superstars means there’s a version of it that realizes its potential, however little of it there may be. In Space Land’s case, it feels like we were robbed of improving an older board with no solace. I would assume it was chosen to include an already-liked board, and if that indeed is the case, all I have to say is that they could’ve made a better choice. Don’t get me wrong, I still like Space Land. More than Peach’s Birthday Cake, that’s for sure, but that isn’t to say I don’t have my preferences otherwise.
Things finally start looking up with Horror Land, the second of Mario Party 2’s boards. It’s the most complex board, and I can’t explain its layout in the same way I could the other boards so far. It’s set up on the same general track as the other boards, where you travel it in a clockwise direction, with a plethora of branching paths to choose from. The board revolves around a day and night cycle, where every two turns, the board will cycle to either day or night. In the case of landing on an Event Space, the time of day will immediately rotate. Nearly every mechanic on the board has their behavior affected by the time of day. There are two spots on the board where you can pay to have the time of day changed, each spot exclusively correlating to either a change from day to night, or night to day. There is also a grand total of four Boo spaces, one of which is only active during the day, and the other three being active only during the night. This includes King Boo, who will either steal coins from all three players at no charge, or a star from all three for 150 coins. We’ll come back to him. There are Mr. I spaces at the top and bottom of the board perpendicular to each other, and passing by either gives you the opportunity to immediately travel from one to the other for a small fee. What’s more is the added effect of forcing any other players along Mr. I’s path to join you. This is the only mechanic that isn’t affected by the day and night cycle. Perhaps the most noteworthy mechanics of the board, there are two Whomps blocking two junctions, one junction at the right of the board, and one at the left. During the daytime, you can pay the Whomp an increasing amount of coins ala the Thwomp system from Yoshi’s Tropical Island to pass them, and consequently send that Whomp to block the other path. At night, the Whomps are bound into place, and players are impelled to take whatever path currently isn’t being blocked. The Whomp at the left side of the board will block paths that lead to an Item Shop or two Boos back-to-back. The Whomp at the right side will block paths that lead to the upper part of the board and the aforementioned location to switch the time from night to day or the rightmost path leading back down to the start of the board.
Keeping in line with Space Land, Superstars makes very minimal changes to Horror Land, making for another instance where a board was likely chosen for the sake of including a beloved board. Though, I will say it’s lost some of its charm. The look of Horror Land in Mario Party 2 wasn’t scary by any means, but it had a creepy air to it. The inclusion of a road to the south with a crashed taxi puts into perspective that there’s a world out there, one that probably wouldn’t want anything to do with Horror Land. It makes you wonder about how that crashed taxi driver must have felt, and what happened to them. In Superstars, the board is redesigned to be in line with the established Mario Haunted House aesthetic, and while the added detail looks stunning and more polished, like the different tile patterns and better defined locations, there’s an uncanny flair to the original that’ll be missed.
This is an excellent board. It might seem overwhelming with the abundance of unique mechanics and its sheer size, but after a game or two, you get the hang of things. It helps that the Mr. I spaces ensure that you’re never completely locked into one path, acting as highways from one end of the board to the other. Of the gimmicks, the Whomps are the most brilliantly used. It’s not a simple matter of choosing where you want to go, every time you pay the toll to take the path the Whomp is currently blocking, you have to consider that you’re opening up that path for everyone. This is best illustrated with the leftmost Whomp, because getting two Boos in a row may seem broken until you realize that everyone else has the same opportunity to use those Boos now. Also, as I said, whether or not a Boo can be used is dependent on the time of day. The two being blocked by the Whomp can only be used at night, and the same goes for King Boo, with a lone Boo at the southwest being available at daytime.
That single Boo and King Boo are guarded by Skeleton Key Doors, which have the best placement out of all the boards. The first Skeleton Key Door is near the beginning, blocking the daytime Boo. The second is in the depths of the board, blocking access to King Boo. The first one is right before an Item Shop, meaning you can reliably buy a Skeleton Key expecting to use it. The catch is that it’s another venture entirely whether or not you get there during the daytime, and if you don’t, you’ve just wasted three coins and the time it took you to take that path, which connects back into the main board. The King Boo space on the other hand sounds insane, but not only is it in the depths of the board, leagues away from the nearest Item Shop, but you’re still taking that gamble of whether or not you can get there at night. Unless you have some way of guaranteeing that you’ll make it there when you want to, it may be better to disregard King Boo entirely, and with how conditional he is it’s nigh impossible to effectively work him into a board strategy. It’s worth mentioning that one space before both the daytime Boo and King Boo, there’s an Event space, meaning that a player can either strike gold or humiliatingly flunk their plan.
You’ll notice that’s a theme with the board — that there’s multiple opportunities for those exciting Mario Party memories to be born. You could manage to change the time from night to day right before another player makes it to the dual Boos. You can land on a pent-up Koopa Bank space before King Boo, giving you just enough to steal three stars if you choose to use that Skeleton Key you conveniently have in your inventory. And of course, managing to pull off the King Boo star steal in and of itself is notable, if not the tension upon seeing a player make their way there with enough coins to wreck shop alone. There’s always potential for the next “Mario Party moment” to occur on Horror Land, because there’s always a noteworthy event not too far off. I may just love the unbridled chaos of Yoshi’s Tropical Island more, but I’m always down for a game of Horror Land. My only legitimate complaint is one I share with Space Land — it doesn’t feel like it benefitted enough from the remake treatment to be selected for Superstars over a flawed board that could’ve used the facelift. But besides that, Horror Land is smashing.
Woody Woods is the single board chosen to represent Mario Party 3, and if there’s one board selection I’m disappointed with, it’s this one. I assume it was chosen to fill the box art void; to be the one “generic” board to represent the game as a whole on promotional materials. But I don’t understand why of the three games to pull that board from, they chose the game that would be getting the least representation. Though that’s not to say I don’t think Woody Woods is a good board, because I do. Woody Woods is set up to funnel players through a leftward path that loops back around through the right. You can divide the board into a lower half and an upper half, and an easy way to compartmentalize the board would be viewing the lower half as a central for deciding your path, which the upper half sees you committing to. The main mechanic are these signposts that Monty Moles come up to rotate every turn, which determine the direction you travel. There are three of these signposts; a centermost one that sets you on a path to either the left or right signposts. Think of that centermost signpost as the board’s focal point, as you’ll be directed back there again and again. Traveling the left path from the center signpost takes you to a junction where you can either continue to the next signpost, or go downwards and back to that center signpost. The benefit of going downwards is that you get to pass by a special Item Shop that sells rare items, like being the only shop of all of the boards that sells Plunder Chests. The left signpost is at the leftmost side of the board leading from the lower half into the upper half, and decides which of two paths you’ll travel right across at the top of the board. The upper of these two paths takes you to Boo, and the lower one lets you pass a Monty Mole who’ll allow you to switch the direction of all three signposts for a fee. Both paths convene at the end and lead you down the rightmost part of the board back to that center signpost. The right signpost is immediately after the right path from the center signpost, and will either lead you left into the middle of that bottom path with the sign switching Monty Mole on it right before that Monty Mole, or feed you directly into the rightmost path that leads back to the center signpost. There’s an Event space in front of each signpost, and landing on one will switch the direction of the single signpost in front of you. There are also two clumps of Event spaces of three, in front of the trees Woody and Warukio. Woody is on the left path leading to the leftmost signpost, and Warukio is on the top path of the upper half leading to Boo. Landing on one of the Event spaces in front of either tree will let you choose between a Coin Apple or a Dice Apple. It’s meant to be a challenge which of the two you get, but in reality the challenge is so easy that you’re basically able to choose what you want. If you’re playing the event with Woody, the Coin Apple will give you five coins and the Dice Apple will let you roll again. If you’re playing with Warukio, the Coin apple will take five coins, and the Dice apple will let you roll a Reverse Dice Block.
This is the most heavily changed board in the game. The special Item Shop at the bottom left replaces another Monty Mole who could change sign directions, and the position of one of the Koopa Banks was changed with another added as well. In addition, both Skeleton Key doors have had the direction of their routes reversed, with space rearrangements being made for one of them. Mario Party 3 was the progenitor for the item system as it is today, so aside from the items themselves, Woody Woods undergoes no changes in its item system.
A board where you’re not only forced to choose a single path to follow for an extended duration, but that path is selected for you at random, doesn’t sound appealing at the outset, but you have more control than you might think. There’s an Item Shop right before the centermost Monty Mole, and you’re able to purchase a Dice Block in your favor granted you get a good roll. Is the sign direction next turn going to be the one you want to follow? Buy a Double or Triple Dice Block. Is the sign direction the turn after next the one you’re after? Then a Cursed Dice Block is right for you. While on one of the longer paths, there’s always a possibility for a Warp Block or Bowser space to switch things up, and even then, I don’t think traveling through these longer routes is detrimental since the board is built to accommodate for them. Considering how beneficial traveling through the upper half is, specifically as you use it to reach the only Boo on the board, you naturally have a longer path to follow to return back to the centermost signpost. There’s also a risk involved with taking the upper path, as you might get locked into the lower path, which you won’t want to go to most of the time. If you don’t want to take that 50/50 shot, you can use the junction before the rightmost signpost to head to the downwards path and get a good item. Taking the right path from the center signpost is the least lucrative of the two paths, but you’ll either get to quickly loop back to the center or take a shortcut to the Monty Mole, which depending on your situation, may be preferable. Keep in mind this isn’t taking into account the possible star positions, which can validate one path over the other at the drop of a hat. At the end of the day the luck-based element of having the game decide your path for you is still there when you don’t have an item to influence the odds, but taking a shot in the dark like that is what Mario Party’s all about.
There’s an underappreciated genius to Woody and Warukio as well. They’re both placed in proximity of the leftmost signpost, meaning there’s the possibility that you can cross the signpost with the extra dice roll, either from the front or back. Depending on your situation, there’s a bet you can take. If you want to go in the direction the signpost is currently pointing in after having landed at Woody, you can choose between rolling again to try and pass through or take the coins instead. If you’re at Waruiko and you want to keep your coins so you can use Boo, you might be inclined to take the Dice Apple, though that’s at the risk of sending you behind the signpost and possibly forcing you into the lower path. I didn’t expect there to be an auxiliary mechanic that the developers could tie into the signpost functions, yet the developers found one.
The first Skeleton Key Door is very well placed. It’s on the lower path of the upper half, and it’s a road leading to the upper path, right before Boo. It’s insane to me that this path used to lead the other way around — taking you to the lower path from the upper path instead — because in simply reversing the direction you travel, the Skeleton Key Door has been exponentially improved. Not only are the Item Shops leagues away from the Skeleton Key Door, but it still isn’t a guarantee you’ll see Boo. You still have to beat the odds at that first signpost to make it to that Skeleton Key Door. Even then, you can still get the upper path without the need for the Skeleton Key, leaving you with a key in your inventory you likely won’t use until you come back to the upper half. I say that because the second Skeleton Key Door is conditional, though in this instance I think that’s a good thing, opposed to Space Land’s case. Near the start of the board, there’s a short side-path you can take to loop back to the beginning. Along this path is the second Skeleton Key Door, which acts as guaranteed passage to the rightmost signpost, skipping the center signpost. Along this route is a Chance Time space, and a shortcut to two possible star spawns. Not that a more versatile Skeleton Key Door would’ve been a bad thing, but it’s understandable why this one was made less useful. When you get a Skeleton Key, nine times out of ten your mind will think of using it for Boo, as that’s how it can be handled best. But as aforementioned there’s still a possibility that you won’t need the Skeleton Key in the end if the signpost sends you to the upper path. Having the other Skeleton Key Door be highly conditional means that not needing to use the Skeleton Key Door to Boo isn’t exactly beneficial, as you likely won’t have a good chance to use the Skeleton Key anywhere other than the Skeleton Key Door you just missed. It balances out the Skeleton Key usage, and the same could’ve been accomplished by simply removing the less useful Skeleton Key Door outright. But in keeping it, an avenue has been opened for one of those Mario Party moments where all the pieces happen to line up for a lucky someone — for someone to have an extra Skeleton Key when the star is behind that second Skeleton Key Door. Not to mention that the appeal of that Chance Time space still exists, flawed as it may be.
I don’t know if I can call it a perfect board, but it’s hard to find flaws with it. My biggest complaint would be that even though I’m largely fine with it, the rightmost stretch back to the center signpost could be made more eventful. But there’s an Item Shop on that path, meaning you’re given the choice between buying a high-rolling Dice Block to get you back to the center quicker, or buying a different item to use for later and preparing for the long haul. The need to make that decision validates that stretch of the board on its own, enough to where I can’t confidently point a finger at it. The same goes for most of the board. I would’ve chosen a different board from Mario Party 3 if there really couldn’t have been more than one to represent it, but Woody Woods getting the spot isn’t a loss.
Overall, it’s a good selection of boards. Not perfect, but it meets the standards I would have for a Mario Party remake like Superstars. The most important boards were the Mario Party 1 picks, as those were the ones that would be altered most significantly by virtue of adding items, and both boards are good choices. I have no qualms with Yoshi’s Tropical Island, and I can respect the decision to include Peach’s Birthday Cake. Space Land and Horror Land are the two safe picks Superstars made — the crowd-pleasers that most would be happy to see return, only made better by the updated item system. You know what I think about Space Land, but I have nothing but good things to say about Horror Land. I do wish that boards that would’ve warranted more drastic measures were chosen instead, but in all fairness, most of Mario Party 2’s boards are spot-on. I’m disappointed most with Woody Woods being chosen, because there are far more interesting boards to remake. Chilly Waters and Spiny Desert for starters, and the things I would do to see Waluigi’s Island return…
But it’s a solid assortment, and if I were to rank them from best to worst: Horror Land, Yoshi’s Tropical Island, Woody Woods, Space Land, and Peach’s Birthday Cake. Though I don’t see why it has to stop at those five boards. More than anything, I think Superstars was a learning experience for NDCube. In revisiting these boards, understanding their strengths and resolving their flaws, I hope NDCube has been able to realize what makes a Mario Party great. For veteran developers who’ve been around since the Hudson Soft days, I imagine it’s been particularly eye-opening. I want NDCube to put those lessons into making a Mario Party for the ages, one where I don’t have to say “but” or “although” and can acknowledge it as a great entry. But the concept of recreating tried and true Mario Party boards is too alluring to be restricted to a single entry.
Mario Party Superstars is the perfect case for DLC, and I don’t understand why none has been made, or why none likely will be made. If Superstars is one thing for certain, it’s an excellent base to build off of, and additional boards would be a shoe-in. They could cover more of the N64 boards, there could be a Superstars Mario’s Rainbow Castle, a Superstars Chilly Waters, a Superstars Waluigi’s Island. And why should it stop there? They can remake boards from the GameCube era and beyond, or even include more minigames and characters. At the very least, I hope a Mario Party Superstars sequel comes to light. It wouldn’t make much sense to make a sequel where the only noticeable changes that could be made is the group of boards and minigames available, but it’d be a way for more boards to get modern iterations. NDCube should always be looking to push into the future. But there’s no saying that the past can’t push the future forward either.