Super Princess Peach (Nintendo DS) Preview

Okay, people. Grab a mushroom and sit down. Brace yourselves. Mario has been kidnapped. It seems Bowser has developed some grey cell and realised that Mario is the one who always saves the day, so if he is kidnapped then Mushroom Kingdom will be Bowser's forever (cue evil laugh). Just to be safe he's swiped Luigi as well (Boo must've told him about the mansion incident). He's even got a new weapon, the vibe sceptre. Surely Bowser is onto a winner here... well not quite. Peach stands in his way.

The feminist movement must hate Nintendo; they hardly push the cause of strong females. Actually, aside from Samus, most of the Ninty females are pretty ineffectual. A study by Provenzo in 1992 looked at 47 of the most popular Nintendo games at the time and found that there were only 9 female characters in them. Also 13 of those games depicted the female being kidnapped and the strong male battling alone against an evil force. But that was in 1992, we are now in the enlightened millennium... so now Peach is the leading character. Hurray! But there is a downside as she attacks using mood swings.

Yes, mood swings. Trust Nintendo to both empower and mock in one sweeping development cycle. What's next? Zelda attacks Ganondorf using realistic nagging? Perhaps our mocking is too premature, as it does seem like an innovative way of doing things. Essentially you have an emotion bar that gets refilled when you absorb enemies, this bar gets emptied when you tap one of the emotions on the bottom screen. You have four emotions, happy, sad, angry and content. Happy replenishes health, sad makes Peach cry (aw) and create gushes of water, angry makes flames appear around you and content... well... it makes you float a bit.

Those aren't the only way of attacking, but it's certainly the main way. You can jump, slide, hit with umbrellas and chuck the enemies at each other. However these are by no way meant to be used all the time and seem to be made as a way to refill your emotion bar. Which isn't that hard to do... which leads to a massive problem on the horizon for the game.

To put it simply it seems too easy. The emotion bar doesn't get empty that often and even if it does refilling it isn't a chore. Peach can get hot several times before dying and even then we have a handy emotion that heals her. Even boss fights aren't that difficult as the solution is spelled out to you prior to starting. The puzzles seem easy enough and even certain "secrets" aren't well hidden. Actually the game alerts the player when you enter a room containing one.

It also doesn't make great use of the DS's unique capabilities. The bottom screen is used to choose emotions and there are a few mini games but it all feels tacked on. Combine that with the distinctly fuzzy graphics and I think you have a game that was initially a GBA game and has been the subject of a sneaky port by the guys and gals at Nintendo.

Now that doesn't make it a bad game, however it does immediately taint our view of it. The DS is all about innovation and new experiences and we could play this on the GBA, GC or even (at a push) the old GBC. This was made to further enhance Nintendo's penetration into the new demographics (in this case females) and it is doing it well. But it will not deliver what the DS is there to deliver and that must be remembered.

On saying that it has the usual high standards of a Nintendo platformer and does play well. The levels in the Japanese version are well designed and it is quite fun and not much is changing for the US/UK version. It just seems difficulty and innovation will hold this back to being "just another platformer".