I like Mario games, but I enjoy it more when Nintendo gives their other characters a bit of time to shine independently of the portly plumber. Which is why I’m so intrigued by Princess Peach: Showtime!, a game that seems to have been attempting to distance itself from the “platformer” designation in favour of… what?
Well, a demo came out for it yesterday, so I downloaded it today and gave it a play over lunchtime. The demo is pretty brief, consisting of just the game’s introductory sequence and two individual levels — one for Peach in her Swordfighter costume and another in her Patissiere outfit — but it was enough to intrigue me.
Let’s take a closer look, and ponder what I hope to see in the full game when it comes out later this month.
The concept behind Princess Peach: Showtime! is that Peach and the Toads have gone to a glitzy, elaborate theatre that appears to perpetually have multiple shows playing simultaneously. While I’ve never been to a theatre that had the resources to do this, Princess Peach is royalty after all, so we can assume she probably has access to the finer things in life.
Anyway, before long a villain called Grape appears and says that she and her Sour Bunch have taken over the theatre for some indeterminate reason, and now everyone is locked in the building. Not only that, but a bunch of the actors seem to have gone missing, too. Peach, being the only vaguely heroic type in the vicinity, decides to step up and investigate, and thus begins her adventure.
The demo for Princess Peach: Showtime! initially introduces you to how Peach is able to use a magic ribbon she acquires early in the game to rejuvenate things. If “things” sounds a bit vague, it’s because the ribbon has an effect on a variety of things, including the “Theets” who populate the theatre, plants, cakes and doubtless plenty of other things in the full game.
Peach is able to either perform a graceful spin to use the ribbon on things around her, or whip it out in front of her as a form of “attack” against the malevolent Sour Bunch when they show up. Successfully using the ribbon rewards Peach with a coin, and in some areas Peach will need to find all the items (or characters) that will respond to the ribbon in order to progress or obtain a reward.
Each level appears to be split into discrete “scenes”, with Peach heading “offstage” either to the side or downstage when she has concluded her business in that scene; it doesn’t appear to be possible to return to previous scenes, so if you miss something you’ll presumably be able to replay the level in order to attain it.
The main collectible doohickey in Princess Peach: Showtime! are turquoise stars known as Sparkle Gems, and each level (at least in the demo) has ten of them to acquire. Some are simply lying around out in the open (often off the main route through the level) while others are presented as an award for completing a particular challenge in a level, sometimes with variable numbers available depending on exactly how well you performed.
The Swordfighter Peach stage is pretty much as you would expect. Peach can run, jump and attack with her sword. The game uses a simple two-button layout, with B on the Switch controller performing actions such as swinging the sword while A jumps. Swordfighter Peach is also able to dodge and counter with a well-timed press of B; the timing for this is extremely forgiving, so it’s hard not to perform it when it’s required.
As the stage progresses, Peach is presented with more elaborate challenges to use her current costume’s mechanics. Early in the Swordfighter stage, for example, she simply has to hack and slash her way through enemies standing in her path, but later in the same stage she has to defeat set encounters of multiple enemies, making good use of the dodge and counter ability.
The stage ends with a boss fight, during which Peach must jump over a shockwave from the boss’ ground pound attack, which triggers an automatic acrobatic somersault onto the boss’ head. After stunning it this way, Peach can batter it around the face with her sword until it’s defeated.
Princess Peach: Showtime!’s stages are presented in a sort of “2.5D” perspective. The camera remains fixed to a side-on angle, but scenes have depth, so Peach is able to run “in” and “out” of the screen as well as left and right; it’s similar to how the Paper Mario games do things. While there is running and jumping and light platforming, it feels like in the full game these elements will probably be de-emphasised, at least for certain costumes — and the Patissiere, the other level available in the demo, is a good example of this.
The demo’s Patissiere stage sees Peach helping the Theets prepare for a culinary festival after the chef has disappeared. What this basically boils down to is a couple of confectionary-themed minigames: firstly, one where you bash the B button to mix up cookie dough, and secondly, one where you must accurately decorate cakes according to an on-screen diagram. The first is very easy; the latter is actually surprisingly challenging.
Both are examples of scenes with variable rewards: completely filling an on-screen meter with successes rewards Peach with two Sparkle Gems; filling the meter to a visible milestone rewards her with one Sparkle Gem; anything less than that is a failure.
The fact that the Patissiere level specifically steers clear of platforming — Peach’s jump is considerably more subdued in her Patissiere outfit — makes me feel like there will be some interesting and creative levels throughout the full version of Princess Peach: Showtime! I’m particularly keen to see how the “Detective” levels play; the parts where Peach isn’t fighting have a lightweight “adventure game” feel to them, so I feel like there’s a lot of potential for building upon this.
My only slight hesitation about Princess Peach: Showtime! is that the two levels in the demo are very easy. This is not altogether surprising, since they’re the first levels that relate to their respective costumes, but I will be interested to see if the game will ramp up the challenge factor to the same degree something like Super Mario Bros. Wonder does; that’s another game that starts easy, but its hardest challenges (particularly the final secret level) are fiendish. I’m not sure whether Nintendo feels the audience for a Peach-centric game is after a hardcore challenge, though.
Still, perhaps it doesn’t have to be about that. Princess Peach: Showtime! definitely has plenty of audio-visual charm about it — the character animations on Peach in particular are gorgeous — and that may well be enough to carry the game as a charming interactive animated movie of sorts, even if it does turn out to be very easy to complete. It does feel a little like even Nintendo is starting to bang its head up against the ceiling of the Switch’s technical capabilities at this point, though; it’s not a bad looking game by any means, but it lacks the slickness of something from earlier in the system’s lifespan like Super Mario Odyssey. That’s likely down to the game using Unreal Engine 4, which is not only dated tech at this point, but dated tech that has never really run great on Switch.
The demo at least confirmed that I definitely want to play the full version of Princess Peach: Showtime! when it releases later this month — it just remains to be seen whether this is going to go down as one of Nintendo’s all-time classics, or end up forgotten like Peach’s previous solo outing on Nintendo DS.
Only one way to find out, eh?
More about Princess Peach: Showtime!
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