PSA: Super Mario Party is a rare case of no handheld support for Switch, no Pro Controllers either

Tabletop is fine though

When Nintendo announced Super Marty Party at E3, info slowly came trickling in that insinuated that the game could only be played with a single Joy-Con per player (meaning, no Pro Controllers). Fans kind of rested on that information for a few months; and now the situation recently came to a head once they realized that the scheme also nixed handheld mode (read: like a Game Boy or DS).

Yep, you can’t play the game in handheld mode solo: you need to break off a Joy-Con and enjoy it on the TV, or in tabletop mode with the Switch propped up, which is a kinda-sorta portable way to play it. Some people are up in arms that this is one of the only instances in the history of the Switch where a game won’t work in handheld mode: a situation that was reversed during the launch of the hardware when Voez only supported handheld mode (a case that’s since been patched).

If any game was going to break that code it would be a Mario Party joint, and as someone who predominately uses their Switch in TV and tabletop mode, I’m okay with this arrangement. If you’re a mostly handheld kind of person, you probably won’t be: plan accordingly.

Hopefully the follow-up will be designed to work with non-motion controls so this doesn’t happen again: or there’s, at the very least, a single-player mode that supports a true portable setup.

Super Mario Party [Nintendo] Thanks Gabriel!