Super Princess Peach

"Feminism arrives in Japan"

June 8th, 1913: Emily Wilding Davison runs in front of the King's Horse during the Derby race, and is trampled to death. It is remembered as the most significant moment in the movement for women's equality in the United Kingdom - although for years women had been campaigning through means both peaceful (Emmeline Pankhurst's diplomatic approach winning a large amount of respect for the movement) and less peaceful (the Suffragettes' explosive attacks on buildings, and their sabotaging golf courses with acid winning widespread public disdain), their end goal had never been made as publicly aware as during that fateful race. Watching the footage now, it's unclear whether Miss Davison intended to simply upset the race, or whether she truly planned on ending her life in this most public of forums, but the end message remained the same. The women of the United Kingdom wanted equality. They wanted the right to vote. To be treated with respect. And now, it was a message that could no longer be ignored. The women were on their way to achieving their goal, and they had paid for their victory with blood.
October 20th, 2005: Super Princess Peach is released in Japan.

A strange artefact has been discovered on Vibe Island, off the coast of the Mushroom Kingdom - the slightly naughty-sounding Vibe Scepter, a powerful object with the ability to affect a person's emotions. Naturally, Bowser has managed to get his scaly mitts on the Scepter, and is intent on using it to cause no end of mischief. Knowing that Mario will no doubt try and stop him, Bowser launches an assault on Peach's castle, kidnapping both Mario and his lanky dimwit of a brother Luigi, as well as all the toads in the Castle.. Now it's up to Peach to rescue the plumbers and the toads, take back the Vibe Scepter, and save the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser's latest act of tyranny. Luckily help is at hand, in the form of Perry - a talking umbrella with a dark past...

This delightfully silly plot sets the tone for Super Princess Peach perfectly. This is an altogether more lightweight effort than the majority of Nintendo's platform outings (don't pick up Peach expecting an epic along the lines of New Super Mario Bros.) - as you'd expect for a game that is, in all fairness, being strongly marketed at a preteen female crowd, and as such the pink, fluffy air that accompanies a tale about a dainty princess and her talking umbrella feels completely natural, if a little too sugary. It's all really quite enjoyable in a wholesome Sunday-afternoon kinda way, and as long as you can lay aside your manliness long enough to embrace the perfumed plot, it's quite possible to find yourself becoming quite involved in Peach and Perry's adventure. While it lasts, that is. Because sadly, it isn't just the jailbait-friendly plot that's a bit on the slight side in Super Princess Peach.

After Luigi, Wario and Yoshi had all struck out with their own solo games, it was inevitable that the Princess would eventually get her own time to shine (it was either her or Toad, and frankly, nobody wants to see Super Toad Land), and to give them their credit, Nintendo have done their best to afford Super Princess Peach with it's own unique feel to distinguish it from it's peers. Initially, Peach feels like a game very much tailored to the DS. During the (surprisingly lengthy) opening cutscene detailing the fallout from the assault on the Castle, while the plot is continued on the top screen, the touch screen plays host to a mini-game where you must use the stylus to calm down the remaining toads, who have fallen victim to the effects of the Vibe Scepter. Mingling the intro with some rather frantic toad-poking action is a novel touch, and manages to make this opening stand head and shoulders above other games where you must simply watch the drama unfold. After this first impression, though, where both the dual screens and the stylus are put to good use, Peach swiftly becomes a more standard Nintendo platform affair.

Everything that you'd expect from a platformer set in the Mushroom Kingdom is here - as you traverse the usual fire-based environments, icy wastelands, ghost houses and such - all playing out on the top screen - you are faced with a full complement of Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Boo Ghosts and such, which you can dispatch by smacking them with Perry the Umbrella. In a nice touch, your enemies have fallen under the influence of the Vibe Scepter, so while some may be so angry that they will continue to charge you no matter what (which gives encounters with Boos a new flavour - everything you know about them not attacking if you are facing them can turn out to be wrong), others may be so calm that they've fallen asleep, or so upset that they're bawling their eyes out. Not only does it add a new twist to familiar enemies by calling for some new tactics (it's best to sneak slowly around the napping nasties so as not to wake them, for example), it's also immensely satisfying to creep up on a sleeping Goomba before caving it's head in with your umbrella of death.

As is the norm for this style of game, there are eight worlds to traverse, each with five levels and a boss fight, and with three hidden toads to rescue in each level. As cliched as the various environments on display are - woodland levels feature much tree-hopping, icy levels see you sliding about in a most unladylike way, volcano levels have lots of bubbling lava to contend with and so on - there is some fantastic level design on offer, such as an area where you will encounter blocks that, when hit, turn the whole level ninety degrees. Using these blocks to reach the end of this twisty maze is great fun, and really shows off the innovation that Nintendo platformers are famous for. Other highlights include the frequent sections where Peach uses Perry as a zipline, hanging on to the benign brolly as she slides with surprising pace along a sequence of rails. In moments such as this, Super Princess Peach is a thoroughly entertaining game. That said, though, on occasion it's possible to go a long time between such touches of design genius, and in these periods, Peach actually becomes a little dull, which is a huge disappointment for a game featuring one of Ninty's flagship characters.

What really gives this game it's own identity, though, is the use of the emotion system. Being a woman, Peach is completely ruled by her emotions, and has a tendency to become overcome by them on a whim - or, more literally, by touching the relevant emotion on the touch screen. When she becomes overjoyed, she floats into the sky. When she becomes angry she bursts into flame. When she becomes upset she runs around crying her eyes out (it's a well known fact that all women can cry on demand - a special power designed to target us menfolk's weak spot). And when she becomes calm, her health fills up a little, but that's slightly crap, so nobody is likely to use it very often. These emotions come in very handy in the game, and are used very well - from using your rage to burn down obstacles to using your tears to grow vines that can be climbed, there are some cracking ideas on offer. Harnessing a young woman's rampant PMT to solve puzzles? Genius.

To stop you from getting too carried away, though, you only have a limited amount of 'vibe' with which to use these emotional powers, and when that's gone you need to stock up - there are some crystals scattered around that can achieve this, but for the most part regaining your vibe is done in a thoroughly unexpected way. If you find yourself short on vibe and there are no crystals in sight, it's possibly to use Perry to scoop up any nearby enemies, before swallowing them to regain vibe power. There's something so downright wrong about seeing Peach - Nintendo's most demure and ladylike character - essentially beating down her foes before literally devouring their souls that you can't help but feel a little awkward. That said, enemies are always more plentiful than crystals, so you'll just have to embrace Peach's new dark side.

The main failing of the game, though, is it's insistence on holding your hand all the way through. After doing a good job of setting up a new and interesting way of solving the puzzles in the game, Nintendo come close to blowing it by filling the game with hint blocks at every turn where you need to use an emotion in a new way. So rather than letting you work out that it's best to use Crying Peach to get across crumbling platforms as she runs faster, or that if Peach steps on a red button while she's all aflame she'll trigger a pathway-clearing explosion elsewhere in the stage, the game comes straight out and tells you, robbing the game of the joy of discovery - hints such as these are acceptable in the early stages, but when you've reached the half way point and there are still hints popping up all over the place it starts to get a bit too much. Of course, you don't need to read the hints if you don't want to - and most gamers will probably have started ignoring the hint blocks long before the second world even begins - but just knowing that they're there means that you will never get stuck on the game, because should you come across an area you are struggling to pass, you know that you can very easily find a solution before frustration sets in. Some may see this as Nintendo attempting to be user-friendly, but ultimately it simply saps the challenge out of a game that is - in all fairness - not exactly very difficult anyway, and to make matters worse, the joy of hunting for the hidden toads is sapped by the fact that a great big exclamation mark appears on the touch screen if you enter a room where a toad can be found, so you already know whether or not you should bother exploring a particular area. This pandering to the less skilled gamers reaches it's lowest depth when each boss fight is preceded by a hint block telling you exactly how to defeat the creature you are about to face - which is a pity because aside from this grip the boss levels are the unquestionable highlight of Super Princess Peach.

Each boss level begins with a short, stylus-controlled vertical section that spans both screens. While this is essentially just a new way of actually reaching the boss, these sections are universally excellent - from using the stylus to stretch elasticated platforms to launch Peach higher, to shooing Boos out of a slowly descending Peach's path, to stabbing the screen to break falling pieces of volcanic rock that look set to squish our Princess, these moment are pure DS joy - the sort of thing that could only be done on the DS. It's like having most of Yoshi's Touch & Go thrown in to the mix in each world. The following boss battles are every bit as enjoyable (and are the only points where the game tends to get a bit tricky - though the fact that you have infinite lives makes up for that), and while most the bosses are familiar to Nintendo fans (King Boo, Wiggler, Petey Piranha and co.), the developers have done a good job coming up with new and novel ways to defeat them using Peach's emotions.

Sadly, though, despite the fact that the bosses can prove to be quite a challenge, Peach won't last you long. The main game will be done within a few days at best, and though there are some enticing extras (hidden jigsaw pieces, extra levels that open up after you defeat Bowser, a special enemy to be found who only pops up a certain times, hidden mini-games - including an ace one where you control Toad in a small platform section, blowing into the mic to make him jump - and sound tests being the most prominent), you'll likely have seen absolutely everything within a week. It's a bit of a shame, really, but again, it's a sign that Nintendo were perhaps aiming Peach at a younger crowd.

This is also hinted at in the graphical presentation of the game, with lots of bright colours on display. The environments themselves are very well presented, with some bold and distinct backgrounds (though I'm a touch concerned about the somewhat phallic statues that litter the volcano levels), and some great use of colour. However, the sprites don't really look up to much, to be honest. The bad guys still display tons of character - especially those who have been overcome by the effects of the Vibe Scepter in one way or another, though they are nothing really remarkable - especially when compared to the adorable enemies in New Super Mario Bros. who dance along to the music - and the sprite used for Peach looks a bit too squished and disproportionate, and a bit too small on the screen. It's nothing appalling, but the DS has seen much better. As able as it all still looks, you cant shake the feeling that Peach was probably originally intended for the GBA (a theory backed up by the fact that the DS is only used to full effect in limited sections).

The music, too, is a little short of the usual standard set by Ninty's Mushroom Kingdom adventures. There's nothing terrible at all, but similarly there's nothing that will stick in your head in the same way as some of the classic Mario tunes. And to make matters worse, some of the voice acting is excruciating - the toads make some bizarre guttural noises that may or may not be words, and Peach's voice is squeaky to the point of abuse. Aurally, it's all a little bit of a let down, truth be told.

At the end of the day, Super Princess Peach is a lightweight platformer designed for young girls. There's still plenty that the less female gamers can enjoy (this is no Disney Princesses by any means), and there are some occasional touches of sheer platformery genius, but for the most part it's a bit too quick and easy to be a classic. It's bordering on being sexist with it's overemotional main character and tendency to walk a bit too far into the pink and sugary side of things, but not to the point where anyone could ever really get offended. It's sometimes a little dull. It's sometimes glorious. But mostly it's just..... good. If you've polished off Mario's latest adventure and want more 2D Mushroom Kingdom madness it's worth a look, but it's by no means an essential purchase.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/11/06