So far, Nintendo’s Switch 2 upgrade packs have been all over the map. There are the smaller ones with just a few quality-of-life features like Animal Crossing, serious upgrades like the Legend of Zelda games, and larger-scale expansions like Kirby’s Star-Crossed World expansion. Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s Switch 2 upgrade, Meetup at Bellabel Park, is priced like a larger expansion, but that doesn’t quite capture the nature of what it is. Instead, based on a hands-on experience with Nintendo, it transforms the game into something else entirely, borrowing liberally from the Mario Party series.
Though Mario Wonder allowed you to go through its stages in multiplayer, Bellabel Park is centered around bespoke multiplayer minigames, using the Mario Wonder platforming as its mechanical underpinnings. So unlike an actual Mario Party game, in which the randomized minigames might challenge you to do new and unfamiliar things at a regular clip, these feel more like platforming challenges with a little bit of party game spirit.
Since they’re built around traditional Mario platforming, the challenges aren’t entirely competitive. We first played a cooperative level that had one player using the Switch 2 mouse functionality to draw Donut Blocks, Mario Maker style, to guide the other three players through a stage that was one big pit hazard. That by itself would be not much more than a neat toy-like experiment, but the stage was also littered with occasional hazards and puzzle challenges, like a special coin nested inside a set of breakable boxes. The Donut Block player would need to draw a path for a spike ball to roll its way into the boxes so that the other players could access the coin; and naturally, we were all shouting out tips of where and how to draw the path, adding to the chaotic fun of the whole experience.
