Let’s kick this look at Super Mario Party Jamboree’s new Nintendo Switch port off with a wonderful example of what Eurogamer isn’t – a one-opinion monolith. So while I greatly respect the brilliant Katharine’s opinion that Jamboree is fine and agreeable but equally compromised and frustratingly random, that respect comes with a head-shake of disagreement. I actually thought it was rather good!
This information is key to parsing Nintendo’s latest Switch 2 exclusive. Did you play Jamboree? Did you like it? If you’ve never touched it you definitely need to read a range of opinions to find out if you’re likely to be closer to me or to Katherine’s two-star Eurogamer review of the game from last year. I thought it was probably one of the better Mario Party titles since the golden age of N64 and GameCube entries – even if in places it could still infuriate in ways that were unintentional and less fun.
With that noted, let’s talk specifically about the brilliantly titled Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV. Try saying that ten times fast. The title is a head-scratcher – but in a sense, that makes it quite appropriate for this release, for how this do-over is structured is truly baffling.
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Where the original Jamboree felt like a carefully-crafted thing with each of the game options and modes integrated into a hub world of sorts, the Switch 2 edition’s new content is more siloed. When you first boot up the game you’re greeted by a relatively static menu that gives you the options: do you want to play Mario Party Jamboree, or Jamboree TV? There is a wall between these modes that no amount of gleeful button-bashing or palm-annihilating stick spinning can penetrate. These things are, for all intents and purposes, separate games.
The decision feels bizarre. This leaves you with two packages. The ‘Nintendo Switch 2 Edition’ of the base Jamboree game is a very bare bones Switch 2 edition – no new stuff, and relatively minimal visual updates. The latter fact becomes stranger still when you realise that Jamboree TV, the new bit, sees far more notable visual improvements. Upgraded as part of this are many things that are also in the base Jamboree – but they are only upgraded in Jamboree TV.
D’you follow? What I’m saying, basically, is you can enjoy two different presentations of the exact same minigame in this release – where one is inferior and the other properly updated. But not all of the minigames – only some of them. As if to underline this, the menu where you ‘select a game’ has a Nintendo Switch 2 logo superimposed in the top-left corner of the screen when you have Jamboree TV selected; flick over to the base Jamboree and it displays the original Switch logo, as if to underline: this is merely the Switch 1 game.
On the other hand you have Jamboree TV itself. Launch into this and instead of the usual Mario Party setup, proceedings take the form of a TV show where host Toad guides you through a different flavor of Mario Party with a mix of old and new minigames. Jamboree TV is firmly its own thing – which means several options, modes, and even the record-keeping features of the original game are absent. You’d go into this thinking Jamboree TV would be a definitive offering, but in that sense it isn’t.
Instead, priority is shifted to the Switch 2’s new input options. Expect plenty of minigames that make use of Mouse Mode, the Camera, and Microphone – though some of these minigames will of course require the purchase of a separate accessory. Thankfully the best of them use the Joy Con 2’s mouse, which everyone will have to hand. Minigames are the core of Mario Party, and on that basis I can confidently say: The Jamboree TV package is, broadly speaking, decent.
I admit, it’s decent in that Mario Party way. I plainly don’t come to these games for high art – I come for the chaos that makes kids howl with laughter or can inspire absolute, glorious, screeching drunken fury with adult friends. In a sense, I am embracing of being a hog slopping my way up to the trough for these sorts of games – I don’t expect the world. What is here I can see getting some great party night mileage.
A brilliant and most welcome addition is GameShare, too. This basically means you can use your Switch 2 to transmit a shared version of the game with Switch 2, Switch, or Switch Lite machines – so you can get four-machine four-player action going on with only one copy of the game. There’s a compromise here in that only one mode is available, with a truncated setup and a limited selection of minigames – but it’s a great option. Being handheld only, it occurred to me that this mode offers a Mario Party you could actually play on a flight or a train, which is a pretty neat way to kill an hour.
I struggle to get over the formatting, though. It’s the disconnect for me. I can see Nintendo’s conceptual thinking: in reality, Jamboree TV is more like a stand-alone DLC. Existing owners of the base Jamboree from the original Switch can even pay a reduced price to ‘upgrade’, which you can basically think of as buying these additions as an add-on. That gives you the ‘Switch 2 Edition’ – which as mentioned earlier is barely upgraded – and adds Jamboree TV. So, yes. It’s sorta a DLC.
But, again… that damned disconnect. It nags. Hopping into that menu and seeing the options, then realizing the upgraded visual quality, polish, and overall presentation varies dramatically depending on which bit of the package you’re playing just leaves me reeling. One of the greater strengths of Jamboree was how it was the first Mario Party in a long time that felt like such a cohesive and complete package – but by bolting something else onto it in a slapdash way, that sense of cohesion is somewhat shattered. It’s a bizarre choice – one as cumbersome as this release’s run-on name.
Which is a shame, really. Like I say, I think the base game is one of the better Mario Party games in recent years. If you need something to entertain, frustrate, tease, and scandalize a group of friends – in the fun way – base Jamboree remains a great option, and the new offerings in this package are decent enough. I just wish Nintendo had thought more deeply about its structure and released a truly integrated game for this Switch 2 upgrade – and I hope this isn’t the format of future Switch 2 Edition + New Content releases.
A copy of Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV was provided by Nintendo.
