Princess Peach: Showtime's Dress Up Options Are An Important Milestone

I wrote recently about my discontentment with the Barbie games of my youth, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the lack of Barbie games in t🍌he p﷽resent despite the characters enduring popularity (evidenced by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the box office success of the movie). It wasn't so much that I hated that so many of the Barbie games were dress up sims, but that so many were bad dress up sims. And I admitted, in my rantings, that I didn't exactly know what a good Barbie game might look like in 2024. But now I do - it's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Princess Peach: Showtime.

With ten different gameplay sty💃les ဣeach tied to a costume, ranging from combat to platforming to a cooking sim, it's hard to define exactly what sort of game Princess Peach: Showtime is. But therein lies the answer - it's a dress up game. It might not have an endless wardrobe you can mix and match (though there are dozens of dresses to buy when out of costume and levels), but it channels the spirit of dressing up perfectly.

Most dress up games, including Barbie, use the lens of a supermodel or fashion designer to have you constantly trying on the most stylish garbs. In a slightly unsettling sign of the times, Fashion Dreamer switched this classic trope to having you instead be an influencer searching for followers, but the point remains the same. This makes sense as a gameplay mechanic as earning money or clients or adoring fans is easy to gamify, but that's not how dressing up actually works.

Peach Can Be Anything In Princess Peach: Showtime

When we played with a dressing up box as a kid, it wasn't about looking cool, and it definitely had nothing to do with getting 'likes' on social media. It was putting on a tricorn and an eye-patch while yelling "Avast me hearties!" or wearing a tutu and spinning around until you were dizzy. Looking good was a distant second to having fun, and that meant giving the clothes personality, which is exactly what Princess Peach: Showtime does.

It's this decision that elevates what Showtime is able to do from being 'Mario, but for girls!' in a way Super Princess Peach felt like a hackneyed attempt to be. It embraces Peach's character and celebrates the joy of fashion while taking it from a passive position (like putting on clothes and looking in the mirror) to a far more active game where you become the clothes you wear and explore a land of freedom and possibilities where Peach can fight back without compromising who she is.

I have joked with people who have asked me about the game that it would be better if it were Daisy, by far my favourite Mario character. But these themes wouldn't work as well with a boisterous tomboy in the driving seat, and Showtime needs Peach as much as Peach needs Showtime.

Sure, I was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:critical of the gameplay in my review and gave it a so-so score. With so many costumes, you sometimes wish the better ones went further, even with the bonus challenges, and it lacks the unifying appeal to kids and grown ups that Mario's games and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Luigi's Mansion have mastered. A game being necessary or important doesn't inherently make it good, and there are a few places where Peach stabs herself in the foot with her own rapier. But at the same time, a game not being as great for all players as it could have been does not diminish its importance.

Princess Peach: Showtime is not just 'a game for girls' and it's not just nice to see the pink team get a game for once. It's deeper than that. This is a game designed around celebrating femininity without reducing it to stereotypes or fluffy shallowness, and it could be a defining title for younger gamers out there. It transcends being good and bad in this way, and while that might not help it in the Metacritic department, I would bet there are quite a few gamers feeling seen for the first time in a video game that don't care all that much what number critics are assigning this one.

Showtime presents a vibrant world where Peach is encouraged to dress up and look pretty without also being forced to stand in the background so some guy in baggy overalls can jump on turtles. Where Super Princess Peach, its predecessor, offered a Mario lite game where Peach was controlled by her womanly and fragile emotions, this puts her on the front foot without forcing her to abandon her girlishness. It's not Mario For Girls, it's an entirely unique game built around the concept of dressing up and creative uses for each costume, featuring a character from the Mario universe. It's the Barbie game I have been waiting for, only with Peach.