Princess Peach: Showtime!

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Frequently taking the role of Mario’s damsel in distress, Princess Peach has rarely gotten the starring role in a videogame. She has been playable in numerous games dating back to Super Mario Bros. 2 and through numerous Mario spin-off games like the Mario Kart and Mario Golf franchises, as well as the Super Smash Bros. series, and more recently as one of the playable characters in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but in all of these games she’s taken a much less-prominent role than Mario himself.

To my knowledge, Peach has only been the star of two games before this. The first, Princess Toadstool’s Castle Run, was an LCD watch game made available as a promotion at McDonalds restaurants in 1990… not exactly a grand debut. The second, Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS in2005, is a solid Platformer that was, in retrospect, somewhat problematic – Peach’s signature abilities in that game were emotion-based powers, as if she had superpowered PMS. Yikes.

For Peach’s return to a starring role in Princess Peach: Showtime! on Nintendo Switch in 2024, I would argue that Nintendo and developer Good-Feel have aimed for a more dignified return to the spotlight for Peach. In this game, Mario is nowhere to be found or even mentioned, and the only other Mario series characters, the Toads, are quickly ushered out the door once the action starts. And while this is mostly a 3D Platformer, it doesn’t really play at all like Mario’s Platformers – in short, this is very much Peach’s game, aiming for its own unique style.

The premise of the game is that shortly after arriving at a grand theater to enjoy a performance, the establishment is taken over by a villain calling herself Grape, along with her gang of mooks, The Sour Bunch (ha). With the theater’s staff and actors in disarray, Peach accepts the plea of the theater’s guardian, Stella, to save the show. It’s a paper-thin plot, to be sure, but it’s unique and works well enough to set the stage (ha) for the game’s action.

By default, Peach can jump and use Stella’s ribbon ability to interact with parts of the scenery or fend off enemies. However, in each of the game’s main levels, she’ll make use of a level-specific themed costume to transform her move set. Many of these offer a different range of abilities, like a sword to slash through enemies and obstacles, or a ninja outfit that allows for wall-jumps, stealthy camouflage, and a short-range dash attack. However, others seem to lead to more of a minigame, such as a patisserie outfit that has players button-mashing to bake cookies and then following diagrams to decorate cakes.

These outfits bring the game a fair amount of variety, but they do also tend to lead to a “Jack of all trades, master of none” situation, where each of the different gameplay types feels pretty shallow, with players generally only using one of two buttons that are often context-sensitive, meaning at times it can feel like you’re not playing through the game so much as you’re going through the motions of doing what the game wants you to do.

This isn’t to say that Princess Peach: Showtime! is bad, and indeed some of the game’s sections can be pretty enjoyable, but this is a game that feels very much like fast food – enjoyable while consumed, but unlikely to be a truly memorable experience that you’ll fondly look back upon years from now.

I suppose I should also mention that this is an extraordinarily easy game, though I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing – it’s surely more accessible to its target audience of younger kids. But older players may find the lack of challenge here to be disappointing.

If there’s one area where Princess Peach: Showtime! unquestionably shines though, it is the presentation. While nowhere near the sort of showpiece game you see in other Mario franchise titles like Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Princess Peach: Showtime! is extremely polished, with detailed, colorful 3D visuals with some nice animation and a fair amount of creativity, especially when it comes to Peach herself, who has some lovely idle animations and different flourishes depending on which costume she’s wearing. The soundtrack is also quite nice, though perhaps not so iconic as Mario games often tend to be.

Really, the one part of the presentation that falls a bit flat is the voicework, or lack thereof. As often tends to be the case in Mario franchise games, characters tend to talk in grunts or, at most, Peach will have a few words or a catch phrase used to sum up a more lengthy sentiment. Given how much written dialogue is in this game, it’s distracting how limited Peach’s dialogue is, and I wonder if it might’ve been better if she didn’t speak at all… though of course far be it from me to suggest that a woman shouldn’t speak. Alternately, perhaps it might have been even better to differentiate herself from the other Mario universe characters if she was fully-voiced – it wouldn’t be the first time, as she spoke full sentences just fine all the way back in 2002 in Super Mario Sunshine, even when Mario didn’t. In any case, this in-between approach just didn’t seem right to me.

Still, despite the areas where Princess Peach: Showtime! is lacking, it’s still an enjoyable game, even if it feels more like empty calories than the sweet treats patisserie Peach prepares. I do not think that this will rank high among most Mario fans’ favorite games in the franchise, though I think most will find it pleasant enough, and those players who consider Peach to be their favorite Mario character will likely be satisfied at this character starring in a decent game for the first time in at least a few decades.

tl;dr – Princess Peach: Showtime! is mostly a 3D Platformer, though it plays very differently from other Mario franchise titles, mainly due to this game’s use of stage-specific costumes with context-sensitive abilities. The result is a game that’s varied and enjoyable, but also very shallow. This isn’t a great game, but it should be enough to satisfy fans of Mario’s favorite princess who have waited decades for her to star in her own game.

Grade: B

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