Yesterday, a tweet from Supper Mario Broth caught my attention. Apparently, there is another ending when you complete a board without collecting a single star.
Mario Party contains an obscure “underwhelming victory” scenario. Normally, the winner is celebrated with a special cutscene and declared Superstar. However, if no stars were obtained, no cutscene plays and all the winner gets is text saying “YOU ARE WINNER” before the game ends. pic.twitter.com/g4zniHsyGW
— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) December 9, 2025
As a big fan of the Mario Party franchise and having played the first game extensively, I was surprised that I had never heard of this secret.
Upon closer inspection, I found very few posts on Reddit making this claim, as well as two YouTube videos:
And in the second video, two interesting things are said:
- The game would not return us to the title screen as usual, but the title screen would still be changed according to the character considered the ‘Winner’.
- The two boards (Bowser’s Magma Mountain and Eternal Star) cannot be unlocked if a board has not been completed ‘correctly’.
So I wanted to try it out for myself to see what it was really like. I tested several points:
- Does it work all the time?
- Where do you return to after finishing the game if it’s not the title screen?
- Are both boards unlocked?
- Does it also work on the two unlockable boards?
- Does it work if there is a tie on the coins?
- Does it also work if Bowser steals a star on Eternal Star?
So I took Rosalie Mupen GUI and a US version of the game to see how it would work.
For my first test, I played a classic game where I played all four players so that the computers couldn’t buy stars, and I did it on Luigi’s board.
At the end of the game, I captured what happened. (I took a screenshot of my entire screen; I didn’t bother searching for anything. And yeah, Discord sound…)
This video already answers some questions.
Firstly, as we can see, the game clearly distinguishes between ‘Winner’ and ‘Superstar’ in Koopa’s text.
And then we have what we were looking for…
It is also noticeable that the animation of Mario, or any other character, is much less detailed in this case. He just jumps once on the spot instead of doing his usual kneeling pose.
There is also no voiceover during the scene, which makes it feel as if something is missing.
The music ‘Winner’ also plays on a loop in the background, including during the score summary screen and while putting money in the bank.
And at the end of the score screen, the game returns us to the main menu rather than the title screen…
However, if we restart the game, it recognises that Mario was the winner and displays his title screen. (It was a blank save file, so it showed the basic title screen.)
So we have answered some questions. Now let’s check if it still works with a tie on the coins.
(So I used a cheat to make the game last only one turn, and I did it on Wario’s board, which has lots of blue spaces.) And here’s the result :
So even with a tie, the game keeps in mind that the person is only a ‘Winner’ and not a ‘SuperStar’.
Furthermore, the two locked boards will not be unlocked if at least one board has not been completed with a superstar.
To complete the experiments, they must be done on the last board of the game, Eternal Star. Are we also considered ‘Winners’ on the big star?
(Here, I used a cheat to force the selection of the board I want.)
Again, you are just a Winner…
And the last but not least, If we had a star during the game but “lost” it, perhaps because of Bowser, are we still a Superstar? Here is the answer:
So, yes, we lose in any case and we’re not a ‘SuperStar’, sad.
But did Hudson Soft really create this screen just for that? No.
It is mainly used in the Mini Game Stadium, a board where there are no stars.
Is there a connection between all this? Perhaps, but I haven’t looked into it further. I just had to satisfy my curiosity, and yours too, no doubt.