In my time across all the boards, I found some of these events either highly enjoyable, like a big fish moving the star from one side of the board to the opposite side on Yoshi’s Island, or just downright unnoticeable if you don’t interact with a very specific part of the map, like the shifting of night and day on Horror Land. On top of whimsical designs that make it fun to discover all the twists and turns of the board, each map features unique events that can shift up the board either in your favor or to your disadvantage. The fresh coat of paint on classic maps like Mario Party 2’s Horror Land or Mario Party’s Peach’s Birthday Cake is a tonic for my tired adult eyes and enraptured the faces of my young niece and nephew (who, while being too young to play, still stared and laughed at the colorful energy). If you’re like me, the main boards are where you’re most likely to spend the bulk of your time, and as long as you’re playing with friends and family around the house or online, it's a brilliant, madcap time. RELATED: ‘Mario Party Superstars’ Will Divide Family and Friends Alike This Fall Minigames, a place where you can go with friends or alone to train up to take on would-be challengers on the board. If not experienced during the end-of-round minigame session on the main boards, these can all be accessed on Mt. As for the representation of the other games, included are 100 minigames from across the series. Perhaps trying to entice the gamers like myself who remember packing the cartridges of the first three games into their Nintendo 64, the game features an admittedly limited five remastered boards from across the system's Mario Party, Mario Party 2, and Mario Party 3.

Neither the next original entry in the series or a complete remake in the traditional sense of the world, Superstars is a big celebration of the series that dates back to 1998 and across ten main console games. With a delightfully vibrant presentation, zany spirit, and light-hearted, anything-can-happen competition, Superstars is able to mostly outshine its threadbare content as a warm welcome home for fans of the series, a great introduction for newcomers, and an all-around simple escape into some roof-raising family entertainment. Ultimate, they are now trying to give us the best of both with Mario Party Superstars.

In a world where the Nintendo Switch offers arguably the top titles in both comfort gaming with Animal Crossing: New Horizons and colorful competition in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros.

The long dark story mode map