I enjoyed playing Super Princess Peach on the Nintendo DS as a child, so I was thrilled when I saw the first trailer for her new solo game in 2023. For the first time since 2005, Princess Peach is back in the spotlight for Princess Peach Showtime. On launch day, I drove to GameStop, bought the game, and immediately dove in when I got home – and I was not disappointed. Showtime is such an improvement from Peach’s last game. The bright colors and beautiful graphics are absolutely lovely to behold, but those aren’t the only parts of the game that caught my attention. The level themes, costumes, and music were significant elements that worked together and enhanced my love for Princess Peach Showtime exponentially.
I’ll start with one of the game’s most essential elements: the level themes. There are thirty levels within Princess Peach Showtime, and each has its own theme to go with Peach’s costume. One of my favorite themes is the Patisserie Theme. These levels are super creative because of the overall theme and sub-themes present in the gameplay. For instance, in Welcome to the Festival of Sweets (where the Patisserie Costume is obtained), Peach bakes cookies and decorates cakes for a festival. While the festival sub-theme is fun, the next Patisserie level takes the sub-theme’s creativity to new heights by making it Halloween-themed. Here you need to bake cookies for the zombified theets and reverse Madame Grape’s spell to save them, resulting in some super fun gameplay mechanics. Finally, in The Dark Baker & the Bewitching Sweets, Peach frees the Sparkla by beating her in a cake-decorating contest. Once defeated, Peach teams up with the Saprkla to defeat the miniboss in a cookie-baking minigame, which was a wonderfully unique take on the traditional Mario boss battle.
The second reason I liked Showtime was Peach’s closet of costumes. The game has eleven costumes in total, each one allowing Peach to perform tasks such as ice skating, baking, and sword fighting. Not only that, but depending on my ability, I would either fight a miniboss, play a minigame, or both. In A Snow Flower on Ice and A Parade on Ice, you play a minigame involving jumping and spinning to hone the skills that are needed to defeat the miniboss. The miniboss brainwashes the ice skater theets, and in order to undo the brainwashing, Peach uses her spin ability to attack the boss and separate the theets from him. Once the theets are separated from the boss, Peach uses her spin ability to undo the brainwashing, and after she rescues all the theets, she works with them to deliver the final blow and defeat the miniboss. I loved seeing Peach show off her ice skating talent and her talents in many different ways, proving she’s more than capable of handling things on her own.
Princess Peach Showtime’s soundtrack also grabbed my ear in some delightful ways. Soundtracks are essential in video games, and Showtime’s musical arrangements are no different. Some of my favorite tracks include Tumbleweed Town and A Wild Showdown. The tracks perfectly capture the level’s Western-themed atmosphere while providing great melodies and beautiful musical arrangements. Two more tracks that I liked were Legendary Dragon Kick and Finishing Blow. One instrument I especially loved in Legendary Dragon Kick was the erhu violin; the instrument really added to the track’s beauty by offering a unique sound that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the game. It also enhanced the Chinese feel of the level, as the erhu violin is a Chinese instrument.
Overall, I really enjoyed Princess Peach Showtime. It’s a game that oozes charm, thanks to the remarkable level themes, variety of costumes, and foot-tapping music that you just can’t get enough of. These critical elements worked together to make this Showtime a unique and fun gameplay experience, and one that is vastly superior to what we previously saw with Super Princess Peach. Princess Peach Showtime has something for everyone – even people who aren’t really into theater – and, as long as they are of this caliber, I hope Nintendo will continue to make more spin-offs starring everyone’s favorite Mushroom Kingdom Princess.
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