Princess Peach floated so Rosalina could fly

Illustration for article entitled Princess Peach Floated So Rosalina Could Fly

Statue: Nintendo

35 years later, Princess Peach’s fate is somehow still mostly about being kidnapped and saved. But is there hope on the horizon? And would it have taken the introduction of – gasp – a second female regular to the cast for the changes to take effect?

Super Mario’s World is a look at the characters who have made the Mario franchise a household name for 35 years.

Princess “Peach” Toadstool is here to keep players grounded. Everything in the original Super Mario Bros. was somehow revolutionary or unprecedented. From the graphics, to the side-scrolling platforming (goodbye, single screen gameplay!), To the music, to the central concept of playing as a human male with a 20-foot vertical jump and a blood feud with an army of turtles the Mario game that started it all unknown in all respects.

Not that Shigeru Miyamoto and his team of developers didn’t take advantage ingenious game design to teach generations of players how it would work from now on. World is 1-1 literally studied as a perfect example of how to introduce new ideas in an organic, intuitive way. But the most famous element is introduced once you clear your first world, four levels later.

After navigating a pitch-black castle and throwing a fire-breathing lion turtle (??) into a lava pool, a vest-covered mushroom motivates the player: “Thank you Mario! But our princess is in a different castle! “

There it was. A universal touchstone: the damsel in need. From space to the Mario world equivalent of Sandals Jamaica, any main line Mario game finds the titular plumber rescuing a damsel in distress. And (almost) every time that damsel is Princess Peach.

Except that Princess ‘Peach’ Toadstool would only get her first name outside of Japan for eleven years, and finally appeared with her voice actors letter in the opening moments of Super Mario 64. (She was always called Princess Peach in Japan. “Toadstool” was a change made to the localization of the original game to better align her character with the identity of the Mushroom Kingdom.) Peach, like too many fictional women in pop culture, exists as someone whose status is in her world often surpasses her plot agency. Like Princess Leia from Star WarsThe most interesting things about Peach seem to be what happens off-screen between kidnappings. Why does a human woman unquestionably rule a kingdom of intelligent fungi? What about her and Mario anyway? Was she chosen, or is Bowser a low-key anti-fascist hero?

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Statue: Nintendo

I thought about her a lot as a child for a simple reason: she was my favorite character to play Super Mario Bros. 2.

It is a age-old story at this point: Nintendo of America, believing that the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros. was too difficult for the western audience, asked for an easier version of the game to sell. Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, a promotional video game Nintendo developed for a Japanese media technology expo in 1987, whose four (vaguely Middle Eastern) main characters and a handful of other game items were repurposed with a Mario facelift. The resulting title was released abroad as Super Mario Bros. 2.

Like many gamers who are too young to catch the NES wave, I played first SMB2 as part of Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES, and it quickly became my favorite title in the collection. The birds, the cheerful soundtrack of the saloon piano, the light feeling of Alice in Wonderlandthreat in style that hung over everything. Most of all, I loved piloting Princess Toadstool! She could float, she was tall, she wasn’t just Mario all over again. I wanted more and assumed it would come.

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Statue: Nintendo

It wasn’t. Since then, Peach has been a major playable character in precise a main line Mario platformer (we’ll get to that). And for anyone who had the pleasure of finishing Super Mario Bros. 2, the end credits add another classic plot twist: the whole game was just a dream! Now Mario canon is impractical and no boundary line exists, which makes sense for a franchise that has expanded across most of video game history itself. But if you grew up in North America, Princess Peach / Toadstool was renamed 11 years after her debut and was only actually playable in a dream sequence.

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It’s never a bad time to appreciate Mario Strikers Charged.
Statue: Nintendo

In sports titles and party games, Peach is everywhere. She even starred in her own Nintendo DS platformer, Super Princess Peach, where her main force affected the world around her with her powerful, fleeting emotions. (I’ll just leave that there and move on.) But when Mario had one more of his adventures, she was relegated to her original role: the prize at the end of his quest.

That was, until 2007, when Super Mario Galaxy has introduced Rosalina to the world. Make no mistake: universe still starts with Peach kidnapped, and it still ends with her safe return / end of all life in the universe. (universe goes there.) But she is no longer the only human woman in existence. Rosalina is a melancholic, stoic, cosmic entity. As players progress through the game doing Mario Things, her sprawling home – the Comet Observatory – comes back to life. Every new section of her makeshift island for quirky Lumas (what if Toad’s stars were, too really to sacrifice itself?) is amplified with a new level of orchestration added to the beautiful waltz of the hub world melody. It feels regal, powerful, rad. It suits her.

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Statue: Nintendo

At the same time, players will unlock something rare for each Mario title: lore. New chapters from a picture book that Rosalina reads to her Lumas earn during the game and tell the story of a little girl who ran to space to escape the grief of her mother’s passing, but instead became a foster parent for the baby stars they met on the way. It’s sweet, sad and wax written in secret through universes director and slipped into play late in development.

Mario helps Rosalina, but he never saves her. In the game’s climax, Rosalina and her Lumas undo the damage of Bowser’s newly formed sun that collapses on its own, destroying the universe. In her farewell to Mario, she grows to near Bowser size, talks about the birth of new stars, before saving all of creation. She’s the closest we’ve ever seen in general Mario games (not @ me, Paper Mario fans) to God.

Rosalina’s later performances were similar to Peach’s; she shows up to play tennis, ride hoverkarts, or fight Sephiroth. She’s always floating and aloof, but has dropped the cosmic tragedy’s backstory for something a little more on-brand for Nintendo’s returning cast. She’s even playable in a single game – the same game that finally lets Peach be her own hero again.

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Just like before.
Statue: Nintendo

Super Mario 3D world, which will be re-released on Nintendo Switch soon Super Mario Bros. 2 nostalgia on its sleeve, from the soundtrack to the four central characters. Late in the game, after a by now standard journey to space, you can unlock Rosalina, found just chilling out with a pair of Lumas. Not many people played 3D World when it was originally released on Wii U, so for many, this is the first time they have just played two playable women in one Mario game. (It should be noted that Mario is now rescuing seven Sprixie princesses in her stead, as old habits die hard.)

I like to think that a Mario or Zelda game could succeed without having to save a princess at the end. (Oddly, Wario never had this problem. Wario rules.) This isn’t alone Super Mario Bros.Finally, 35th anniversary; Princess Peach also debuted in that game. Even Nintendo seems to be resisting its self-imposed reliance on ailing ladies. 2018’s Super Mario Odyssey doubles the trope, upgrading Peach’s danger from ‘nebulous kidnapping’ to ‘forced wedding’. That is not to say anything about the reinvention of Donkey Kongis Pauline, now the mayor of a metropolis named after her former kidnapper. (Also: Peachette. That’s one thing.)

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Statue: Nintendo

But in Odyssey‘s last scene, Peach rejects both Bowser and Mario’s genuinely embarrassing fight to win her hand leaves them both stranded on the moon. She spends the entire post game on a whirlwind tour of the planet, rocking iconic new outfits at every level. It’s hilarious, smart and more than a little overdue.

If it Mario franchise may give way to a distant celestial goddess, it may find reasons for Bowser to go to war against a single plumber without reducing Peach to the utilitarian plot device she was created for. And maybe we’ll get more games like 3D World, where she and Rosalina can kick grenades and fire balls like the best. Because she belongs there.

Mike Sholars is a freelance pop culture writer who believes that the best way to get the things you love is to roast them relentlessly. He likes video games and anime. Follow him on Twitter @Solarsenic.

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