Mario Party: Star Rush

Mario Party: Star Rush brings another significant rules change to the series – all players move on the board at the same time instead of the traditional turn-taking, which fundamentally speeds up the pace of the game and cuts down on the usual waiting for others. The main Toad Scramble mode has players competing for stars and coins on a shared map full of random events, while side modes like Balloon Bonanza or Coinathlon offer different goals and structures of fun, from a balloon chase to purely competitive coin collecting against a time limit, so players can pick the pace that matches their mood.

The game places a heavy emphasis on accessibility for solo play – thanks to controlling an entire group of characters as a single player, most modes can practically be completed even without other participants, which was an unusual detour for a series built on social play, responding to how people actually use handhelds even when alone. Minigames remain the core of the experience and use the standard 3DS controls, while the game also supports local connectivity via StreetPass for collecting bonuses outside of active play.

Reception was mixed once again: reviewers praised the faster pace and inventive solutions for solo play, but many longtime fans missed the classic structure of one big board with four players taking turns one at a time. Star Rush thus remains to this day more of an interesting detour in the series' history than its definitive peak, valued mainly for its willingness to try new approaches to the traditional formula and for its attempt to make the series work well even without a full lineup of four players at one console, which turned out to be a reasonable choice for a handheld platform, even if it didn't sit as well with everyone as the classic format. Even so, it's an interesting variation on a proven recipe that's worth trying out for yourself.