Princess Peach: Showtime reminds us that her ‘Super’ era wasn’t so great

For the first time in nearly two decades, Princess Peach headlines her own game in the soon-to-be-released Princess Peach: Showtime! for Nintendo Switch. Peach’s previous starring adventure, Super Princess Peach, debuted on Nintendo DS in 2005, and inverted the typical story of a Super Mario Bros. game, tasking the princess with rescuing dudes in distress Mario and Luigi.

Like Super Princess Peach, Showtime! appears to be targeted at a younger audience, based on its forgiving level of difficulty and simple controls. There are other similarities, including Peach having a sentient object as a sidekick. In Showtime!, it’s a magical ribbon; in Super Princess Peach, it’s a boy who was transformed into a magical parasol named Perry.

Thankfully, there have been other changes. The tenor of the conversation around the new game seems to have progressed compared to how Super Princess Peach was written about at the time. And Nintendo’s current explanation of her special abilities in Showtime! is far less cringe-worthy and sexist than the setup for her DS adventure.

Super Princess Peach was originally planned for the Game Boy Advance by developer Tose, a journeyman studio behind dozens of Nintendo, Capcom, and Square Enix games, but it was eventually brought forward to the then-new Nintendo DS. That transition was evident in the simplistic implementation of the DS’ touchscreen. As Peach, players could call upon four emotions, or Vibes as the game described them, that powered her abilities. Those Vibes — joy, rage, gloom, and calm — were accessible by tapping the four corners of a DS touchscreen, and let Peach set objects on fire by tapping into her anger and soaking levels with tears with her overdramatic “bawling.”

In her 2013 Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video “Damsel in Distress: Part 3,” critic Anita Sarkeesian argued that Super Princess Peach’s mood-swing-based powers made the game a “train wreck of gender stereotypes.”

“Peach’s powers are her out-of-control, frantic female emotions,” Sarkeesian said. “She can throw a temper tantrum and rage her enemies to death, or bawl her eyes out and wash the bad guys away with tears. Essentially Nintendo has turned a PMS joke into their core gameplay mechanic.”

Additionally, Sarkeesian noted that although Super Princess Peach inverted the typical gender roles of the Super Mario games, Peach still manages to take a narrative backseat to her male co-star, her sentient parasol. “Peach is not even featured in any of the game’s narrative cutscenes, instead they all focus on the back story of her parasol, who it turns out is really a cursed boy named Perry,” Sarkeesian said. “The dude in distress role reversal premise here feels like it’s just intended as a lighthearted joke or niche market novelty.”

Few critics at traditional game media outlets at the time took Nintendo and Tose to task for how Peach’s powers were handled. At GameSpot, however, the late Ryan Davis called out Super Princess Peach’s “weird sexist undertones” in his 2006 review, noting that “there’s something rather sexist about the idea that Princess Peach’s big secret weapon is that she can get really overly emotional at the drop of a hat.”

Many other reviewers of Super Princess Peach appeared to critique the game chiefly through the lens of their perceived audience — young, hardcore gamer dudes — and dinged the game for its easy difficulty, pinkish hues, and an assumption that only little girls would want to play it.

“When Super Princess Peach arrived in the IGN offices, the box it came in literally permeated the air with an overwhelmingly flowery, peach scent. Call it a clue to where Nintendo’s targeting its new platformer,” wrote IGN’s Craig Harris at the time. “Though the final, released game won’t be covered in perfume, it should be clear to you just by the title what you’re getting into: a Mario-style game that’s more likely than not aimed at a more feminine, and less hardcore, girl audience.” Harris gave Super Princess Peach a positive review: a 7.8 out of 10, or “good,” on the IGN scale.

Sometimes, a reviewer noted its regressive approach to a female lead while also reminding the reader that it’s ultimately a game for young girls. 1UP’s review, written by one-time Polygon contributor Jeremy Parrish, said that “It’s important to keep this fact in mind while playing it because, if you’re not a little girl — and, chances are, everyone reading this review isn’t — it’s easy to become distracted by all the little things that don’t quite match up to the expectations of the average hardcore gamer. It’s not a very challenging game, for instance. […] Peach’s special powers derive from her innate ability to cry and giggle. And it’s far, far too pink.”

Image: Tose/Nintendo

Image: Tose/Nintendo

Parrish too gave the game a favorable score and praised it as “a long-overdue inversion of franchise clichés,” but he also criticized it for its regressive approach to a female lead, writing, “Don’t mistake this for a stunning victory for feminism” and encouraged Nintendo fans who read 1UP at the time to “suck up [their] machismo long enough to give [Super Princess Peach] a fair shake.”

Early takes on Princess Peach: Showtime! — including Polygon’s preview of the game — have generally been favorable, and are written not from the perspective that “not hard = not good,” but to set expectations about the game.

“Showtime! is definitely for the younger crowd, but so are many of the best Nintendo games,” IGN’s Brian Altano wrote in his preview. “And as an older Nintendo fan currently raising a younger Nintendo fan at home, […] I really love what it’s doing so far.”

“Princess Peach: Showtime! seems to confidently know exactly what it is, and that’s a way for gaming novices to get a taste for lots of different types of games and find the ones they love,” wrote GameSpot’s Steve Watts.

It may have taken nearly 20 years, but it’s heartening to see how both Nintendo and critics have approached Princess Peach in their writing. Rather than see Princess Peach: Showtime! as only a “game for girls,” it’s simply a game for Peach fans of all stripes — including the now-older ones who want to introduce a new audience to Nintendo’s games or play as Princess Peach right alongside them.