Super Mario Party’s online minigame mode is outrageously limited

There’s online multiplayer in Super Mario Party, a franchise first. But we wouldn’t blame you for skipping over the mode entirely. Instead of having a wide array of the game’s entertaining minigames available, Super Mario Party’s online mode has less than a dozen total — and on a rotating basis.

The Online Mariothon mode is a free-for-all competition for players worldwide, where players must focus on racking up the most points to place on the leaderboards. Unlike most marathons, this one is more of a sprint; groups of four only get to play five minigames together. These are culled from a list of just 10 different games.

Super Mario Party’s main selling point is the wide variety of minigames — there are 84 of them. Only getting to play five minigames with online friends is one thing; that the entire, random selection contains 10 total is another.

Oh, and if you’re one of those people really into the basic Mario Party board game, or one of the more exciting cooperative modes exclusive to Super Mario Party? You can’t take any of those online, so make sure your friends are cool to convene in real life anytime you want to roll some dice and collect those stars.

Nintendo hasn’t said anything about expanding these options in future updates, so we’ve reached out to ask. All that aside, we’re very into Super Mario Party thus far ... as long as we have our friends nearby.