After almost five years, Nintendo Switch Online is now well and truly worth the price tag. When it debuted in September 2018, Switch Online was a little underwhelming. Though it brought some NES and SNES classics to the handheld, the service's actual online functionality wasn't all that great, with some severe latency issues plaguing just about every online game. While Nintendo Switch Online's functionality still isn't on par with its console competitors, it's made up for it by giving subscribers a slew of classic Nintendo and Sega games from across history, with Nintendo Switch Online's Expansion Pack adding Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy Advance games to the mix - a few of which have made Mario Party Superstars a little irrelevant.
Released in October 2021, Mario Party Superstars brings together four boards and 100 mini-games from across the Mario Party library, pulling from all eras of the series. On its initial release, Mario Party Superstars earned high praise from both fans and critics alike, with its wealth of content putting its predecessor, Super Mario Party, to shame. But with Nintendo Switch Online adding more and more games to its service, it runs the risk of making Mario Party Superstars obsolete.
Nintendo Switch Online Has Rendered Mario Party Superstars Almost Irrelevant
As mentioned up top, Mario Party Superstars takes 100 mini-games and four game boards from previous iterations and remasters them in all of their HD glory. While Mario Party Superstars' 100 mini-games come from all across the series' history, including Nintendo 64-era titles, GameCube, and even the Wii, its four boards all hail from the first three Mario Party games which were first released on the Nintendo 64. And now that these first three Mario Party games are on Nintendo Switch Online's Expansion Pack, it puts Mario Party Superstars in a bit of an awkward spot.
At its core, Mario Party Superstars is a remaster. When Switch Online subscribers play the N64 versions of Mario Party 1, 2 and 3, they're playing emulated versions of the original games, complete with their original clunky controls, and 1990s graphics. Players who boot up Mario Party Superstars are met with fully remade boards and mini-games, with shiny new graphics and color palettes alongside modernized controls. These updated versions of the classic boards also come with a few new twists, such as new events and new spaces, meaning that playing these remade iterations does provide a slightly different experience to playing the original N64 versions. Though, for some fans, that difference might not be enough.
Being subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online and having the emulated versions of the original Mario Party trilogy is more than enough to dissuade some gamers from buying Mario Party Superstars altogether. They may not be as pretty as Superstars, but the original versions have more than enough content in them to keep fans happy, and no amount of additional bells and whistles is going to convince those fans that Superstars is worth the price of admission. Nintendo needs to do something big.
If Nintendo wants Mario Party Superstars to stay relevant, then it's going to need to add some more content to the game, and that content needs to be significant. A DLC expansion is the best path forward for Mario Party Superstars, but one specifically designed to offer fans something they can't get elsewhere on the Switch. The most obvious option is to just give players more boards from across the franchise, focusing on the GameCube, Game Boy Advance, DS, and Wii eras of Mario Party. To make the deal even sweeter, Nintendo could offer this DLC through Nintendo Switch Online's Expansion Pack in a similar vein to Mario Kart 8's Booster Course Pass, keeping fans subscribed to the more expensive service while still encouraging them to get the game.
Mario Party Superstars is available for the Nintendo Switch.
