So let’s talk Mario Party instead.
Yes, Mario Party. I hear you moan from here. I’m not a big fan, but when someone says, “let’s spend the next hour playing this incredibly fickle and nonsensical board game,” I do not object. I just choose my character – usually a princess, which is probably one of the few times I choose a dazzling avatar – and just let it happen. After all, the points do not matter Mario Party. Death last? Here, get a star!
I probably haven’t played a yet Mario Party the title within almost a decade, and the Wii U delivery completely skipped – but that hasn’t really changed much with 2018s Super Mario Party for the Switch. Or at least not in the draft. A lot of bells and whistles have been added, and it’s definitely a nicer game. But the essence of ‘here’s a bunch of weird mini-games, and if you’m lucky with your dice, you’ll get a star’, is still there. I was a little drunk when I was playing (safely) with friends, and I quickly went to check out on the beat of ‘I’m going to end up in the accident room on purpose.’ I lost a lot of coins and it could not bother me. I was just in it for the camaraderie.
The games we played were a mix of familiar and new – there was one where I had to draw shapes in collaboration with another player with a piece of string on a pen board, and another where I had to draw a pod management who shot the other players arrows at. But the last time we played was the best, and I seriously wish it was a whole separate game: Slaparazzi.
In this mini-game, all the players inside a ring are surrounded by small stools on which Koopas will randomly climb up to take a picture. Your goal is to be the subject of these photos, by getting as far in the middle as you can, and knocking the other players out of the way in the process. The game shows each photo as it is taken, and gives a score on your placement in the frame.
The photos are hilarious. They are never well by conventional standards, with characters trapped either vaguely or in awkward angles. But it’s those awkward corners, the players caught or slapped in the middle of a slap, that make the whole thing a pleasure to behold. It’s just amazing how the reality shows and tabloids can be, and it turns out that I’m very, very good at getting people out of the way to promote the camera. It was the only mini-game I won the whole time my friends and I played.
Nintendo
I’ve always loved the photography mode in games like Spider man and Final Fantasy XV, so of course I loved Slaparazzi. And as you can imagine, reloading Pokémon Snap because the Switch can not come to me soon enough.
This is, of course, the year I learned to wait. I can wait for a new Cut, and for Unsung story to be worked out from alphas and touches to something more, for the right mini-game in Super Mario Party, for Cyberpunk 2077 to work out his problems and for spring to come in again Animal transition to catch the fish I miss. Earlier this week I wrote about how 2020 was the year of the informal player, and these two titles – Unsung story and Super Mario Party – showed me it’s not just the games that are comfortable, but also me.