Princess Peach: Showtime!is unlike anything else.
In this sense, Nintendo has historically disparaged womanhood as Peach’s biggest liability.
doesn’t do that.
Princess Peach: Showtime!
review
It instead equates ribbons, dresses, and other types of girly-girl magic to legitimate tools.
This helps establish Princess Peach: Showtime!
as two things: first, it’s an innovative Super Mario installment.
Outside its unique characterisation of Peach, Princess Peach: Showtime!
is satisfying in its creative level design and varied styles of combat.
This dynamism is demanded by Showtime!
’s auxiliary characters and antagonists.
entirely with unfamiliar characters (other than Peach) is a subtle but definitive way Showtime!
forces players to identify with its leading lady, while also building out her niche in the franchise.
doesn’t leave enough space for misunderstanding.
That’s right, a female villain!
Peach herself proves to be as malleable as hot sugar.
Instead of “plays,” it’s best to understand Showtime!
’s 35 levels as mini-planets with their own physics and politics.
After entering a stage door, Peach’s reality will shift to reflect the 2.5D set she stepped into.
This is only the scullery floor of Peach’s power.
The more I played Showtime!, the more I looked forward to Peach’s future.
It was no longer doomed with dead-end kidnapping; it had become a spilling basket of sweet possibility.
I ended up running around Sparkle Theater fueled by self-determinism.
I stop by the shop in the lobby and select a dress with wide white stripes, like Beetlejuice.
I’m thinking about this because Showtime!
With more grace and pacifism (thank God), Princess Peach: Showtime!
lets Peach move closer to this more boisterous, commander-of-the-galaxy kind of woman.
She’s spinning into being a girl with some agency.
And she doesn’t even need a gun.
Before, Peach could hardly control herself, armed or not.
Her emotions formed the root of her strength in Super Princess Peach.
It wasn’t a bad idea; it’s healthy to let feelings flood, sometimes.
Princess Peach: Showtime!
accessibility options
Adjustable vibration intensity.
Ability to swap button controls.
Princess Peach: Showtime!
allows Peach to wear whatever she feels like.
She can sing, or swim.
She can fight through stealth, or brute force.
never tries to manufacture some artificial connection to manhood and its associates: domination, coarseness, cruelty.
Women are not worms.
Princess Peach has always had this sentimentality, and a wish to be a benevolent leader, so Showtime!
is feminine by necessity.
Outside of the castle, there’s more space to be gentle.
““Fifty years.
Such a long walk / from the door to the table.”
Finally, Peach gets to rule.
A copy of Princess Peach: Showtime!
was provided for review by Nintendo.
