| Super Princess Peach review |
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It is a stroke of luck that Mario got kidnapped during Princess Peach’s time-of-the-month. Whilst it may seem that the monthly cycle brings super powers to normal women, Princess Peach really does have a little something extra up her sleeve. She can fly, set fire to things just by looking at them, cry floods of tears, sprint really fast, stamp REALLY hard and even heal herself. These abilities really put the “super” into Super Princess Peach.
A traditional 2D platform game, it stars many of the usual crowd from the Mario games and it is Peach’s job to rescue Mario from the evil, and seemingly indestructible, Bowser. While she runs and jumps her way through 8 worlds with multiple levels, she must rescue a whole raft of Toads (3 per level) if she is to have any chance of getting to fight Bowser. To help her on her way through the rather pretty levels, with their parallax scrolling and detailed scenery, Peach has a trusty parasol which doubles up as a boat, a parachute, a hook (for deathslides), a submarine and even a beam weapon. Or she can hit things with it. Be afraid, this parasol is fierce! Controlling her is fairly straightforward, apart from the emotion functions (laugh = fly, angry = fire/stamp, cry = tears, chill = heal) which are activated from huge buttons on the touch-screen, so it’s a game that could have been done on another platform.
The gameplay isn’t going to set you on fire – much of it you will have seen before, but what’s there is good fun. The main criticism is that it’s just too easy. It’s not until halfway through the worlds where the difficulty of jumping around the levels hots up on the lava level. The puzzles (including how to kill the bosses) are normally just a case of pressing the special move buttons on the touch-screen until finding the right one for the job. Some are more obvious, like crying on a plant to make it grow, whilst others are more trial and error like finding the weaknesses of some of the bosses - although one boss just needs their head jumping on a few times. Also, contributing to the overall ease of play, Peach has a life-bar. When it runs out you will have to replay the level, but any collected Toads and other major items will already be in your inventory so there's no need to get them again. It won’t run out very often though, especially if you start using the heal button. Dotted around the levels are blue orbs that recharge the emotion bar – using the touch-screen specials depletes this at various rates, and if you ever need to (which we doubt), the chill button increases your health bar while the emotion bar depletes. Try to avoid this in order to increase the challenge. If the need arises to quickly replenish the emotion bar, enemies can be scooped up with the parasol and are then what is best described as enveloped. Your biggest danger will probably be being lulled into a false sense of security, leading to foolish mistakes and leaving a renewed urge to nail the level. However, despite the lack of difficulty, there’s enough fun to be had to make it fairly compelling, especially once you reach the second half of the game.
It’s probably not supposed to be a game that you race round, with emphasis being placed on exploring, via branched levels as well as tall areas with hidden platforms that can be reached while flying. This won’t stop you trying to peg it everywhere though. Unlike some more harsh platformers that require absolute pinpoint precision and exact knowledge of how far the sprites can go before they fall off a ledge or don’t land on the other side, any mistakes here are fully the player’s fault. An easy high-speed rhythm can generally be kept up, jumping between platforms and bouncing off the heads of enemies.
Coins collected around the levels can be used in Toad’s shop to buy power-ups for the parasol, Peach’s health and emotion bar and various other items like mini-games, which must be found in the game world before appearing on the shelves. The mini-games are worth collecting: blow or shout "jump" into the mic to make Toad hurdle enemies, drag Toad around a maze of fire within a time limit or tap floating points to win more coins – each mini-game comes in 10 levels, purchased separately, so there’s lots to collect. If you see a Star with sunglasses on, grab it quick – we still haven’t managed to catch one.
For those playing the Japanese version, the menus are easy to navigate, and the in-game text hints are superfluous. The only thing you might miss out on is a tiny subplot to do with the parasol’s dark past. There is a feature to save the game state so that an exact point in a level can be returned to, without having to leave the DS on standby. It looks good, it plays well once familiarised with the “buttons” on the touch-screen, and makes you wonder what is going to be around the next corner. It can be completed in a reasonable amount of time too and a second play through reveals a few more items to collect. The calmer style of platforming in Super Princess Peach will not appeal to everyone, but for those that found Sonic too intense to play all the way through, this has a lot to offer.
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System: Nintendo DS
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Apr 2006
Writer: Charles Rodmell
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Pros:
- Traditional platforming fun
- Clean bright visuals
- Natural controls
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Cons:
- Quite easy
- Cliched level themes
- Not quite Mario
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Super Princess Peach Video: 2.9MB
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