When Games Are Deceptively Feminist
For decades now, the gaming industry’s hero, Mario Mario, has been stomping on the heads of goombas and facing his mortal enemy, Bowser. However, this time, the minions of Bowser’s brutal dictatorship have been ordered to capture Mario instead, alongside his brother, “that green guy”, and his friend, “a mushroom headed loudmouth”. Now, the only one left in the mushroom kingdom left to save them is Princess Peach herself. Now you might be thinking, “Finally! Some good female representation in my video games!” Not exactly. While women are definitely represented, whether it’s good representation is definitely up for debate in this game, Super Princess Peach.
Princess Peach was never a well written character. Despite her appearance in countless Super Mario titles, it’s impossible to name even one of her personality traits other than “damsel in distress”. She’s defined only by her bright pink dress, long flowing blonde hair, and a tiny crown. (Although, recently, in the Mario Movie, her character was greatly changed to try to amend this). So, now that she gets a game all to herself, how do the developers use this opportunity to flesh out her character? Well, that’s the catch: they don’t. Peach is still treated as if she were a mindless doll with zero motivation, but this time, she’s emotional.
At last, we get to the core mechanic of this platformer, Vibes, which is just an elaborate way of saying emotions. Princess Peach is endowed with the ability to call upon one of four emotions at any time: either “joy” (happiness), “rage” (anger), “gloom” (sadness), or “calm” (nothingness). Each one of these Vibes has a different ability that helps Peach advance further in the level. The “gloom” ability allows her to bawl her eyes out enough such that tears flow in massive streams onto the nearby ground, and as a result, some plants grow and form new paths. The “joy” ability, for some reason, allows you to fly and form cyclones around you. The “rage” ability just sets you on fire and burns a good chunk of your surroundings. The “calm” ability allows some of your health to replenish, as if it weren’t easy enough to find extra heart containers in this game. All of these abilities are controlled by a meter which is refilled by finding crystals throughout the level.
Clearly, the stereotype among women is that they’re supposedly emotional, and Super Princess Peach takes this to another level. One might argue, “She’s in control of her emotions, and she can use them at will because those are her magical abilities!” Even so, Peach had never had any of these abilities before this game was created, and you can clearly see that the developers of this game were struggling to come up with some unique point of difference for this game, so they resorted to using tired tropes. However, in a game designed for children as such, this mechanic should probably be criticized as lazy game development rather than considering it as blatantly harmful.
Furthermore, let’s take a look at the visual representation of this game. Since this game was made for the Nintendo DS, there are two screens to pay attention to. The top screen shows the gameplay, while the bottom screen is where you can select from the four different VibesTM. Also on that screen is an animation of Princess Peach. She stands with her arms in front of her, holding her hands together, occasionally rocking back and forth. She stares at the player with almost a look of servitude, as if she’s thinking “Tell me which emotion I should feel next!” Then when you select the desired Vibe, she’ll act out that emotion for you on that screen. Also, although her outfit has remained consistent throughout most of the series, one would think it’d be quite cumbersome to run around stomping bad guys in a dress and heels, but I guess that just what makes her so badass. Peach has been shown in many other games in a more practical outfit, such as in the Mario sports games, so why wouldn’t this game continue this trend?
Let’s take a closer look at the story of this adventure. It opens on Vibe Island where Bowser is searching to find the Vibe Scepter (It’s hard to ignore the obvious adult humor in this naming), a weapon whose ability is to make everyone in the vicinity feel random, strong emotions, rendering them useless in battle. Of course, so the plot can continue, they find this weapon and use it to capture the Mario brothers, who are now the “damsels” in distress, thereby reversing the roles of the classic trope. However, reversing it doesn’t solve any of the problems created by the trope, it just highlights them. Because the men are the one who are captured and helpless, it is seen as almost comical that a woman is the one who has to save them. Even Toadsworth, Princess Peach’s main advisor, repeatedly suggests that it is unsafe to go to save them alone, advice that no one had bothered to give Mario on his countless other adventures.
Now, let’s analyze a little bit more about the context of this game. It was developed in 2005, so this game likely would’ve been met with a lot less criticism than it would in 2023. The game reportedly sold 1.15 million units total, which made it actually one of the most popular DS games sold at the time. Despite this, the game seems to be a lot more cheaply made than a typical 2D Mario game. A lot of assets from Mario games are reused, and not many creative new enemy or environment types are introduced. They seem to stick with mostly the classic goombas and koopas from the original Super Mario Bros. title. It’s possible that the lack of creativity shown for this title has some implications for games designed around and for women weren’t treated with the same importance as a male-oriented game.
Finally, there’s one big difference between this game and a classic 2D Mario platformer: it’s a lot easier. Primarily you start with three hearts, which equate to six times you can get hit. There are replacement hearts scattered throughout the level, and you’ll likely never fall below two if you’re remotely competent. You are also equipped with a parasol that can act as an attack, so enemy encounters are even easier, and they can provide you with extra meter for your Vibes. Possibly, the developers thought that with a female target audience, they would benefit from an easier adventure because of their assumptions of women’s skill with completing their game.
When compared to a lot of games that came out during the era of Super Princess Peach, its feminist issues are small potatoes compared to a lot of other problematic titles, but this is no reason to discount its issues. Since this game was clearly made for younger children, it’s important to prevent the more toxic ideas from ingraining themselves into the minds of the younger generations. While Nintendo is certainly no stranger to these ideas, we should expect a lot more from them when their games will touch the lives and shape the future of so many people. Even though Super Princess Peach has its fair share of problems, it still makes a good effort to take one of their more underutilized characters and take a step towards equal and fair representation.
