Mario Party Superstars' Best Feature Is The Board Game Stickers
Mario Party Superstars is a nostalgia-trip of iconic boards, Bumper Balls, and new improvements on the original Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube games. I recruited three of my colleagues to join me in playing Horror Land, a board from 2000’s Mario Party 2 on N64. It’s so crazy seeing Birdo and Waluigi walking around this classic board I first played 21 years ago. Horror Land has a day/night cycle every two turns and includes a new transition animation for when the time changes. This board also allows Whomps to finally get a good night's rest, and you can’t wake them up to get by. In 2018’s Super Mario Party, you only needed 10 coins for a Star, but in Mario Party Superstars, you’ll need 20 coins to buy a Star. Toadette has to adjust for inflation, after all.
My absolute favorite new feature of Mario Party Superstars are the stickers. That’s right, stickers! Think of it as a quick chat feature while you play on a board. Sure, it’s a blast yelling and laughing with your friends in-person, but there’s something so rewarding about also communicating through what are essentially Nintendo emojis. With just a tap of the control stick, you can send a crying Toad saying “Gah!”, an angry Goomba that says “Bring It!”, or even select your own character yelling a distressed “Whaaat?!” The best part is that every time you send a sticker, a quick sound effect of the character plays, which makes it even funnier and more engaging than a traditional quick chat. You can send a sticker at any time during anyone’s turn, and you can unlock more stickers with collected coins. The (very large) sticker appears in your corner of the screen next to your player icon, and you can send the same sticker every few seconds as a distraction in hopes that your opponent accidentally selects “No, Thanks” when buying a Star. (I can dream, right?)