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 portable mode (read: like a Game Boy or DS).
Yep, you can’t play the game in portable 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 kinda-sorta a 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 portable mode: a situation that was reversed during the launch of the hardware when Voez only supported portable 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 portable 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 handheld portable setup.
Super Mario Party [Nintendo] Thanks Gabriel!
Source: Destructoid PSA: Super Mario Party is a rare case of no portable support for Switch, no Pro Controllers either