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How to play Mario Party Superstars online with friends

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Mario Party has been the series that has brought people together — while simultaneously ripping them apart — for decades. For years, friends and family have picked up the controllers and had a great time moving around the colorful boards, playing the mini-games, and seeing who was lucky enough to end up the superstar. When Super Mario Party came out on the Switch, many fans felt it was long overdue for a console Mario Party to finally allow players to start games online. While the game did eventually get that option, it was so late that most people already had their eyes on Mario Party Superstars.

Thankfully, Nintendo learned its lesson, and you can play this newest entry in the king of the party game franchise online with other Switch owners around the world right out of the box. It may not be quite as fun as seeing the face of your opponent next to you when you steal a star, but being able to get a game going even when you can’t get a group together in one room is always a welcome addition. Nintendo is still a little odd when it comes to how they do things with online gaming, so some confusion as to how it all works here is understandable. Here’s everything you need to know about how to play Mario Party Superstars online.

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Further reading

How the different play options work

Picking a game mode in Mario Party Superstars.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Right off the bat, Mario Party Superstars will give you three choices as to how to play: Offline Play, Local Play, and Online Play.

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Offline Play is slightly misleading since it actually functions more like how you’d think Local Play would. This is the option you pick when you want to play offline with one or more friends in the same room, all connected to one Nintendo Switch.

Local Play is basically LAN. If you have friends who have brought their own Nintendo Switches and copies of the game, you can directly link up with each other and play on your own screens.

Online Play, obviously, is the one you want to select to play with people, either friends or random players you’re matched with from around the world. Online Play is further broken down into two more categories: Global Games and Friend Games.

What are Global Games?

Global or Friend game screen.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Global Games are what Mario Party Superstars calls matchmaking in most other games. This is the mode you can pick when you want to match up with anyone else looking to play a game. You will only be able to play this mode alone.

Once in Global Games, you have the choice to start a normal Mario Party game or go to Mt. Minigames to play one of those modes online. If you choose the regular Mario Party game, you can then customize what type of match you want to find. You can select which maps you want to play, as well as the rules.

If you go to Mt. Minigames, you can pick any of the normal modes here, with the exception of Free Play, including Tag Match, Trio Challenge, Coin Battle, Sports, and Puzzles, plus two online exclusive modes called Survival and Daily Challenge. Tag Match is a 2-on-2 game, Trio Challenge is 1 versus 3, Coin Battle is a game where whoever can collect the most coins wins, and Sports and Puzzles limit the mini-game types to sports and puzzle types using Score Attack rules.

Survival pits you against other players to see who can set the longest winning streak across multiple rounds of mini-games.

Daily Challenge is always evolving, as the name implies, but it has you play against others in a set of mini-games that follow some kind of trend.

What are Friend Games?

Making a room in Mario Party Superstars.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Friend Games is the mode you’ll pick to play with specific people you know and have on your friend list. After selecting this option, you will opt to either create a room or join one. Creating a room will mean you need to invite others to join you, while joining means you’ve been invited by a friend hosting a room. If you have one or more people playing with you locally and want to bring them to play with one or more people online, you must be the one to create the room.

When creating a room, you can pick Friends Only to only let people on your friend list in, or set a code so that only people who have it can join. However, if you want to play with people who are not currently on your friend list, you will want to pick Open to All. From there, anyone who has your room ID can join. Once you have everyone in, start the game, and it will function exactly like it would if you were playing locally. You, as the host, will set all modes and rules and get the party started.

If you’re joining a friend, you will either need to join someone on your friend list after they created a room, or enter the Room ID if they’re not. From there, it’s up to the host to set all the rules and start up the game.

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Jesse Lennox
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