Mario Party has been a staple in my household and many others for a very long time, and continues to dominate game nights and the casual multiplayer scene for very good reason. It has endured despite its relative lack of innovations in large part thanks to a phenomenal foundation that never gets old. Sure, Nintendo has tweaked things here and there, but, for the most part, the Mario Party experience you get today is practically the same as we got back in 1998. We’ve even got a Switch Mario Party game that just remade old maps with a few modern conveniences.

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To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad thing, at least not inherently. Sure, it can feel a little lazy, but, as aforementioned, I think the foundations are so solid that one needn’t change the formula too much anyway. However, that being said, there is absolutely room for improvement, and Nintendo can only sustain this series on nostalgia and goodwill for so long. Which is why it is time it took a page out of Mario Kart’s book and tried something a little different. I am, of course, referring to Mario Kart’s recent penchant for crossovers, something that would absolutely benefit the board-swapping Mario Party.

Mario Party Needs Guest Characters & Boards

Mario Kart 8 and its subsequent re-release, Deluxe, featured a string of popular Nintendo guest characters and unique tracks to go with them. These weren’t merely rushed to cater to fans, but rather carefully considered tracks with unique coins to collect depending on their respective game’s currency, additional twists like floating balloons in the Animal Crossing track, and music. This isn’t new territory for Nintendo, as it has been doing this to an even greater degree with its legendarily good crossover series, Super Smash Bros., for quite some time. However, Mario Kart 8’s interpretation of it is one of the few times Nintendo has actively featured crossovers in a series that doesn’t typically include them.

Ostensibly, Mario Kart 8 paved the way so that other Nintendo properties, especially the Mario line of party games, could begin benefiting from such a novel idea. Yet, Nintendo has still not implemented crossover characters into any of its other games, including the very best Mario Party titles on the Nintendo Switch. It would work especially well for Mario Party, a game like Mario Kart that works largely thanks to its replayability, which is bolstered by an array of endlessly enjoyable maps. New characters and maps taken from and inspired by other Nintendo properties feel like a no-brainer, especially as the inherently ludicrous nature of Mario’s world, coupled with the precedent for crossovers being established in other Nintendo properties make it feel perfectly natural.

Imagine, for a second, a Hyrule-themed Mario Party board with a handful of Zelda-inspired minigames thrown in for good measure, or even a Xenoblade Chronicles board that sees you trapse around a truncated version of the different titans from XBC2, or perhaps even a Splatoon map which integrates that series’ love of colorful paint into the board’s mechanics. It all feels so self-explanatory and easy ways of creating new DLC for older Mario Party titles, something Nintendo seems bizarrely reticent to do. Yet, here we are, nearly three decades on from the first Mario Party game, and we’re yet to see a single character crossover.

It Is Time For Super Party Bros.

With Super Mario Party Jamboree’s terrible Switch 2 edition proving Nintendo has little interest in adding more boards to it any time soon, perhaps it is time we begin looking beyond Mario Party and instead to a new future. Why, after all, should we limit it to simply being a Mario-themed party, when the fun could extend to all of Nintendo’s famous faces? Rather than add crossover characters to existing or even new Mario Party games, much like Mario Kart 8 did, Nintendo should create a whole new IP called Super Party Bros., a spin-off of Super Smash Bros., albeit without all the smashing and a little more partying.

This could be Nintendo’s crossover party game, one that takes all the mechanics of the Mario Party games, but throws in maps and characters from other games, as well as perhaps even abilities to spice things up. It would, naturally, be a huge undertaking, especially if each character included were to get their own map. So, one wouldn’t expect Nintendo to come out of the gate with 89 playable characters and corresponding maps like in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Rather, it could start with a small roster from a selection of its most popular titles (Animal Crossing included, of course), and build from there if fans are interested.

Sure, Nintendo has tried to create other party games in the past based on non-Mario media and failed, but I have a feeling that there would be a pretty huge outpouring of support for a crossover party game of this scale. LEGO Party ostensibly does this with its inclusion of Ninjago, and it has the potential to push it even further thanks to LEGO’s inherent collaboration with numerous franchises. Nintendo is practically leaving money on the table by not at least trying something akin to this with its own characters.

I’m not even asking for Solid Snake, Joker, or Cloud to appear, as cool as that would be. Even Sonic can be left out of this particular party, if that’s what it takes. However, should Nintendo be able to pull off a party as big as I’m thinking, then I suspect many third-party developers would want to join in, much like they did with Super Smash Bros. Regardless, it is about time Nintendo began inviting more of its iconic characters to Mario Party, if only to help keep things interesting and a legendary franchise alive.

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