Question one: who’s going to be on the sofa?
A family with children, or a group that gets together often. Jamboree. It’s the bigger game — seven boards against five, and more than 110 minigames against 100 — so a household that plays every holiday runs out of new things more slowly. Mixed ages compete on genuinely even terms in both, because much of each minigame is luck and quick reactions rather than practice.
Adults who grew up with a Nintendo 64. Superstars. All five of its boards come from the Nintendo 64 games — Peach’s Birthday Cake, Space Land, Yoshi’s Tropical Island, Horror Land and Woody Woods — and Nintendo describes its minigames as drawn from the Nintendo 64 and GameCube games. For someone in their thirties or forties, that recognition is half the gift.
Question two: which Switch do they play on?
This is the one that can quietly spoil a present. Some of Jamboree’s minigames are played by moving the controller rather than pressing buttons, and Nintendo is explicit that those motion-control minigames need a Joy-Con and aren’t compatible with the Nintendo Switch Lite, whose controls are built into the console. Nintendo says the motion minigames can be switched on or off in certain modes, so Jamboree still plays on a Lite — but the owner is getting less of the game.
Superstars has no such catch. Nintendo’s own words: all of its minigames are played with button controls, so it works the same on Joy-Con, a Pro Controller or a Switch Lite. If the Switch in question is a Lite, or if the players simply don’t enjoy waving a controller around, Superstars is the better buy.
On a Switch 2, both games are listed by Nintendo as Supported. Jamboree also has a separate Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV: a game show hosted by Toad, exclusive to that edition, with 20 new minigames that use the Joy-Con 2 as a mouse, the console’s built-in microphone and HD Rumble 2 (some video features need a USB camera, sold separately). Owners of the regular Jamboree can add all of that later with an upgrade pack from Nintendo’s store, so buying the Switch version now doesn’t close that door.
Question three: will they play online?
Both games can be played online, and both need a Nintendo Switch Online membership for it — plus, per Nintendo, a copy of the game on each system. Jamboree lists online play for up to 20; Superstars for up to four, with every mode playable online. For grandparents across the country or friends in different towns, that’s a real way to have a party without a sofa — but only if everyone has the same game. It can be worth buying two copies, one for each household.
The controller count
Nintendo’s own instructions for starting a game are to connect a controller for each player. Four people on one console means four controllers, and a Switch arrives with a single pair of Joy-Con. Our family games guide does the maths for a four-player household, and Pro Controller vs Joy-Con covers which kind of extra controller to add. With Jamboree, make any extra controller a Joy-Con rather than a Pro Controller if you want everyone to join the motion minigames.
As a birthday or holiday present
A Mario Party makes a lovely gift for the occasion as well as the person: it gets played on the day, with the people who came. That’s why it turns up on our birthday gifts for gamers list and in our party games roundup. If the recipient already owns one, the other is a genuinely different game rather than a repeat — different boards, different minigames, different controls.
