Just when we thought Super Mario Party had been abandoned, Nintendo has surprised us all with the update everyone’s been waiting for.
Nintendo appears to be keen on revamping their vast array of Mario games, like we saw in the recent Nintendo Direct with Mario Golf: Super Rush. As the first update for Super Mario Party since 2019, Nintendo will finally add an online multiplayer mode. The update comes three years after its initial release, which was back in 2018.
Mario Party, Partner Party, and the minigames are the three game modes affected by the update, which is live now.
The Mario Party and Partner Party modes are the two traditional methods of playing Super Mario Party. With a limit of up to four players per session, these offer a traditional experience filled with (hopefully friendly) competition. There are two different lobbies if you want to start playing; the Friends Match, which only allows your friends to join, and the Private Match, which anybody can join if they have the password.
As an added bonus, when playing Super Mario Party online, users are granted full access to all 20 of the Mario characters and all maps in the game. This is regardless of whether or not players have actually unlocked them while in the offline version.
The minigame mode hasn’t been forgotten, either. Players are now able to access 70 out of the 80 various minigames in online mode. These can be accessed in the single-player Challenge Road, or in the co-op River Survival mode.
A newly-added ‘Online Mariothon’ feature has also been added. It first appeared during the launch for the update, which randomly generated a set of minigames for players compete in, but Nintendo then announced that it was here to stay. Unsurprisingly, this update brought a lot to unpack.
Super Mario Party randomly updating after 2 years pic.twitter.com/c04NpDgwv4
— KirbBound (@KirbyEarthbound) April 27, 2021
But there’s a catch. Only players with an existing subscription to the Nintendo Switch Online premium service can use the online mode. If you already have one and currently own the game, it should have automatically updated to the latest version.
However, Nintendo suggests that players check for certain just in case. You can do that by selecting the Super Mario Party icon in the home menu, pressing the ‘+’ button, and then manually choosing the software update.
The full details can be read on Nintendo’s official post here.
