WHAT TO PLAY
Party games
75 games in the catalog
A party game is one you start when guests are already on the sofa and can explain in a minute. Rounds are short, the rules fit in a sentence, and luck interferes just enough that a first-timer can beat the person who owns the console. It is judged less by depth than by whether the whole room is laughing.
The genre has no single starting point. It grew out of arcade games with several joysticks, out of the multitap that let four people share a console, and out of the board and card games people played at a table long before screens. Bomberman showed the format on a console; in 1998 Mario Party turned it into a recognisable series by putting minigames inside a board game.
It has lasted because its demands are small: one room, a few people and some grace in losing. The hardware moved from cartridges to motion controllers, phones and browsers, but the idea that the players, not the screen, are the main attraction has barely changed.
Today (2015 onwards)
23 games in the catalogToday party games run in several streams. Nintendo keeps the classic model: Super Mario Party in 2018 built its minigames around the Joy-Con, and Superstars in 2021 brought back boards from the Nintendo 64 era; 1-2-Switch made games where you watch your opponent rather than the screen. A second stream is online: Among Us, Skribbl.io and Gartic Phone need only a phone or a browser, and the fun comes from talking and bluffing rather than from mechanics. A third is physical chaos, as in Overcooked! and Party Animals, where players lose through their own clumsiness.
Switch 2 Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
An interactive museum inside a giant console mock-up; minigames explain how Switch 2 works.
Switch 2 Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV
A packed party board game expanded with Jamboree TV and the new console's features.
Mobil Monopoly GO!
Digital Monopoly with events and sticker collecting; a hit among mobile games of recent years.
PS5 Party Animals
A physics-driven, clumsy animal brawler; characters fall over and stumble on their own, and it's hilarious.
Switch WarioWare: Move It!
Lightning-fast absurd minigames controlled with two Joy-Cons held together as one object.
Switch Kirby's Dream Buffet
A party game where ball-shaped Kirbys race down tracks made of cupcakes and jam for points.
Switch Mario Party Superstars
A nostalgic collection of the best boards and minigames from the first five entries, with no unnecessary novelty.
Mobil Stumble Guys
A mobile take on Fall Guys; a chaotic obstacle-course battle royale for crowds of players at once.
Switch WarioWare: Get It Together!
Bizarre microgames lasting seconds with a single word of instruction; the pace is frantic.
Web Gartic Phone
Telephone message game meets drawing; one sentence gradually turns into an absurd picture story.
PS5 Overcooked! All You Can Eat
A compilation edition of the frantic kitchen co-op; kitchens catch fire and ride on islands all by themselves.
Mobil Among Us
A social deduction game about uncovering the traitor among the crew; the boom came years after release.
The HD generation (2005–2014)
28 games in the catalogThe Wii changed who party games were for. A controller you point and swing could be understood without explanation, so whole families played, not only people at home with a gamepad. Collections of motion minigames followed, such as WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Wii Party in 2010 aimed straight at non-gamers. The DS added a stylus and microphone. At the same time party play moved onto phones: Words with Friends and Draw Something are turn-based, played at a distance without both people being online at once, while QuizUp and Trivia Crack brought quizzes.
3DS Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
The first full-fledged Smash Bros. in your pocket; a free-for-all brawl on the go.
Wii U Game & Wario
Minigames from the creators of WarioWare, this time fewer but more elaborate, tailored to the GamePad.
3DS Mario Party: Island Tour
The first Mario Party designed purely for a handheld; smaller routes instead of one big board.
Mobil QuizUp
A real-time trivia contest against players from around the world on hundreds of topics.
Mobil Trivia Crack
A trivia wheel of fortune that spread at lightning speed thanks to social sharing.
Wii U Wii Party U
A sequel to the Wii hit with eighty minigames searching for a meaningful role for the GamePad.
Mobil Draw Something
Draw and guess with friends; a social hit that Zynga bought at the peak of its fame.
Wii Mario Party 9
Goodbye board-trudging – players ride together in one vehicle, and minigames decide the outcome.
Wii U Nintendo Land
A Wii U launch showcase styled as a theme park with twelve attractions from Nintendo series.
Mobil Spaceteam
A chaotic party game where you shout nonsensical technical commands at each other.
Vita Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz
The monkey in the ball doesn't move on its own; you tilt the whole world and gravity does the rest.
PSP Dead or Alive Paradise
Plážové prázdniny bojovnic Dead or Alive se poprvé vešly do kapesní konzole.
The arrival of 3D (1995–2004)
18 games in the catalogIn 3D the biggest change was in how the games were assembled. Mario Party in 1998 took a board game and put minigames inside it, so every turn ended with a short contest for coins and stars, played with the analogue stick, button mashing or rotation. The Nintendo 64 had four controller ports built in, so no multitap was needed. Subgenres grew around it: light-gun games such as Point Blank, arena and race games with mascots like Crash Bash, and from 2003 WarioWare, which chains together microgames that last only a few seconds.
GCN Mario Party 6
The first entry to truly innovate the formula - the day/night cycle changes both rules and strategy.
DS WarioWare: Touched!
The first WarioWare built purely around touch and microphone; the microgames speed up until you lose.
GBA WarioWare: Twisted!
A cartridge with a gyroscope; lightning-fast microgames are played entirely by tilting the handheld.
GCN Mario Party 5
New game boards and over seventy minigames; items were replaced by a tactical capsule system.
GBA WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!
Hundreds of five-second microgames; pure joy.
GBA WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!
Hundreds of unparalleled five-second microgames — Nintendo in its purest, most absurd form.
GCN WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$!
A console version of the microgames from Game Boy Advance; lightning-fast, absurd tasks within seconds.
GCN Mario Party 4
The series' first GameCube entry, which fully embraced the leap to more detailed 3D graphics.
PS2 Rayman Arena
A departure from platforming toward fast arena battles and races with characters from the world of Rayman.
Xbox Fuzion Frenzy
A launch collection of fast minigames for four players; Xbox's take on Mario Party.
PS1 Crash Bash
Poslední hra Crashe na PS1 vyměnila skákačku za čtyřhráčové párty šílenství.
N64 Mario Party 3
The final N64 entry in the trilogy, adding one-on-one and two-on-two duels.
8- and 16-bit (1986–1994)
2 games in the catalogThe label did not exist yet, but the recipe was already there: one screen, four controllers and rules that fit in a single sentence. Super Bomberman on the Super Nintendo shows it most cleanly. The arena is a fixed grid with breakable blocks, everyone lays bombs and tries to trap the others in a blast, and the last player standing wins the round. A round takes a few minutes. Four players fit thanks to the multitap, a small adapter plugged into a controller port, and accessories like that decided whether a console game could become a social event.
