Nintendo held their E3 2018 Direct presentation yesterday, announcing a slew of new games. One of them flew a bit under the radar, but for fans of Nintendo’s older franchises this was a welcome return, as it was announced that Super Mario Party would be released for the Nintendo Switch.
You can check out the announcement trailer here:
Nintendo is looking to return the series to its roots, with each player able to traverse the board on their own. In the recent Mario Party games players moved in one group across the board to promote more teamwork as opposed to fighting among each other. Not only that, but it seems that the Switch’s quirky abilities will be used for some dynamic gameplay. In the trailer one of the features shown was the ability to link other Switch systems with players your in a game with. It is also shown that with the link ability you can team up with another player for 2v2 combat in certain situation using the Joy-Con. In addition to all of that, you can link multiple Switches together to create one giant display screen. While this is a unique way to change things up, we wont know how big of a difference this will be until we get our hands on the game itself.
Along with the party maps, their will be 80 different mini-games to create friendly (and chaotic) matches for the players along with the Joy-Cons being used differently for each game. Some were shown in the trailer, one of which was the aforementioned 2v2 game. With a top down view the four players are in shell tanks, with two trying to blow the other two up. Another one was a baseball game that takes place in a diamond with Princess Peaches castle as the foreground. At the end of the trailer there’s a short montage showcasing some of the other mini-games that players will partake in, which involves some of the classic Mario friends and villains.
With the ingenuity of the Switch and multiplayer aspect of the Mario Party series, this seems like the perfect marriage. Fans of the series have been aching for its return to form, and Nintendo may have just given them what they desired. Luckily, we won’t have to wait long to play it, as the game comes out in a few months.
Super Mario Party will release October 5, 2018 for the Nintendo Switch.