Super Princess Peach (Review)

Released back in 2006, Super Princess Peach was the first 2d side-scroller that Nintendo had released in quite sometime and the game launched about 3 months before New Super Mario Bros. Despite the game's non manly appearance, Super Princess Peach is actually one of the better direct spin-offs of the Mario series. As the video game world has evolved to feature females in more active roles, it was only a matter before the Mushroom Kingdom's damsel in distress got a moment in the sun.

It is however a shame that Peach's big chance to kick some ass is spoiled by the game's weird sexist undertone. The thing that makes Peach so super is her ability to get super emotional. Through-out the game, Peach can take on four emotion-based powers: joy, rage, gloom, and calm. Joy will cause Peach to float through the air in a cyclone. Rage causes her to burst into flames and somehow makes her really heavy. Gloom causes huge tears to pour from Peach's eyes and gives her the ability to run really fast. Finally, calm restores lost health. Those abilities are the only thing that really set this game apart from a standard Mario platformer and they are very fun to use to traverse the moderately long stages. The emotion powers' applications in boss fights is pretty interesting, and it's pretty shocking to me that some of the bosses actually put up a fight....not by much, but at least they tried.

There's only 2 major gripes I have with the game. The first problem is the fact that the game is too easy. In most platforming games when you fall off the stage it results in instant death, in this game fall off the stage only cost you one health point and you have to restart that section of the level. Even when you're low on health you can use the calm ability to regain all of your health, which basically negates any real threats. The only time in the game I felt any real danger was during the final battle against Bowser, who is actually harder here than he has been in most of the recent games. The second problem I had (which is really more of an annoyance) is saving the Toads. In every level there are 3 Toads to find and rescue. Their not needed to finished the level, but it is required to save them all to fight Bowser at the end....something the game doesn't tell you until actually get there. Luckily for me, I was only missing about 5 of them, so it didn't take long to get access to the final battle.

Super Princess Peach is a very fun game even though the low difficulty keeps it from being truly engaging. The game is currently out of print making it really hard to find in stores, but if you can find it I suggest picking it up.