When Is a Child Old Enough to Mario Party?

Critics are praising the new—but still chaotic—installment, though it's unclear how many options families will have available to tweak the game to their liking.

Super Mario Party Jamboree is out on Switch today, and the reviews say it’s pretty good. I haven’t touched a Mario Party game in a few years, largely burned by the experience I had with my oldest. As it turns out, Mario Party’s deliberately unfair and unpredictable nature, perhaps the defining trait of the series, is not always seen as funny by a five-year-old who’s not having much success winning mini-games.

The question, then, becomes: when is a child old enough to Mario Party?

The last time we tried a Mario Party game was Mario Party Superstars. I don’t know exactly what age my oldest was at the time—she’s eight now—but she was old enough to be futzing around with other Mario video games like Super Mario 3D World. I have a distinct memory of her taking my controller and cackling as she sent my character falling off the ledge dozens and dozens of times. In my head, our time with Super Mario 3D World might translate to some fun times with Mario Party Superstars.

Eh, not so much lol.

Eurogamer’s review of Super Mario Party Jamboree strikes true, while also being funny:

“It just has the misfortune of not being very fun, and mistakes the volatility of chance and happenstance for being the same thing as competitive satisfaction that comes from playing a good game well.”

That’s just Mario Party! It’s unfair, chaos. Some versions probably get that balance down better than others, and there’s probably a version of Mario Party that trends towards fairness, but I’d be awfully shocked if Nintendo ever went in that direction.

Nintendo didn’t provide me with early access to Super Mario Party Jamboree, but I did get a copy of the game yesterday, and plan to check it out this weekend. Sadly, I couldn’t find many examples in reviews about how family friendly it is (or isn’t). NPR said “approachable gameplay and goofy chaos will make it a family staple for years to come” without divulging specifics on what you can customize to make it fit a family.

The most insight we get is ananalysis from Techradar. Often, options that’ll make games more configurable for younger audiences fall into accessibility modes, though Nintendo historically done a poor job of adapting, or acknowledging, accessibility:

“Super Mario Party Jamboree doesn’t have accessibility settings as such but you’ll have the option to toggle various settings before the start of any mode. These include adjusting difficulty, whether or not to start each minigame with a tutorial, or the option to turn off motion minigames. Note that there are no alternate button controls for motion minigames, which means modes such as Rhythm Kitchen will be inaccessible if you’re not able to play with the required control configuration.”

On the latest episode of Spawnpoint, the official podcast of Crossplay, my co-host Keza MacDonald revealed she’s been avoiding introducing Mario Party into her house:

“I have specifically kept Mario Party away the knowing the sibling murderous rage that Mario Party caused on the N64 between me and my brother. I still hate Yoshi because my brother always played Yoshi. I still look at Yoshi and I think ‘look at his stupid little smug green face,’ for no reason other than my brother used to play him in Mario Party and it's such an unfair game. My eldest son considers fairness to be very important, Patrick. It's really important to him that things are just. And Mario Party is not a just game at all.”

I don’t have strong memories of Mario Party from my youth, though I certainly played it. I do have strong memories of playing Saturn Bomberman, a banger version of that series that was the sole reason I invested in a multitap and a billion controllers for the Saturn. I begged my dad to bring home a projector from his office, so we could play matches on our garage. A lot of very loud shouting would then take place outside.

Anyway, Keza continued:

“I've kept it away because I just thought my eldest would hit the roof. I just didn't think he'd be able to emotionally cope with Mario Party. I mean, I can barely emotionally cope with Mario Party. I'm walking in there and I witnessed the littlest kid steal my son's oldest son's stars. I'm like, ‘oh!’ And to his absolute credit, my son held it together.”

The last time I played Mario Party with my oldest, and she was thrilled at the concept of running around as Princess Peach on a little game board. Coins! Items! It’s a really fun idea. What she found less thrilling was losing all the time. You can adjust the AI in Mario Party, but it is not the type of game where you can help shield your child from loss. There’s so much going on that, in the end, you simply cannot account for the chaos. So my daughter would lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. And lose.

The losing turned into pouting. Pouting turned into crying. We turned off the game.

It wasn’t this bad, and I think it’s weird when parents upload videos of their children in troubled emotional states, but this video wasn’t far from where we were heading:

Look, she was five years old. They’re all temperamental. But…most of her activities at the time—and this is true, even today—do not involve winning and losing. We’re deep into a cycle of gymnastics and cheerleading, which both feed off one another. She’s really good at it, and it’s delightful when your child finds something they excel at. 

And yet, at times, I do wonder if she misses something by never “losing.”

But again, it also might’ve been because she’s five. 

I haven’t played Super Mario Party Jamboree yet. But I’ll be installing it before they’re back from school, and by golly, this family is going to play some Mario Party before the evening is through. I have reasonable confidence the eight-year-old will be okay.

The four-year-old?

Hmm.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• Please share your stories of Mario Party chaos in the comments, whether it involves your children—or, more likely, when you were children yourselves.

• What success have other parents had in easing their children into winning and losing if they’re not into sports? We’re hit and miss on getting into board games.

• True chaos mode will not be playing this with my kids, but inviting them to play it with the neighborhood kids and watching as they all tear each other apart.