The Princess Peach he is one of the key figures of the Super Mario franchise and beyond. She is technically the female character with the most appearances in the history of video games. Despite this, however, she has almost never really been a protagonist (with the sole exception of Super Princess Peach in 2005, only on Nintendo DS). But now everything is about to change Princess Peach: Showtimewhich we were able to preview in a dedicated hands-on.
Princess Peach: Showtime, what did we see in our hands-on?
During the hands-on we attended we were able to play Princess Peach: Showtime for about an hour. Enough to be able to explore the beginning and early stages of the game and get a general idea of what the continuation of the title will be. Above all we were able to appreciate the variety that they offer different transformations of the protagonist, who we are slowly discovering in the trailers.
The introduction is faithful to the classics of the franchise, immediately calling to mind Super Mario 64. The Princess finds an invitation to a special theater performance and accepts it. Once there, however, something goes wrong and our heroine finds herself trapped. She will then have to roll up your sleeves and venture into the different stages (creating a fun game in English on the different meanings of the term “stage”) and restore order.
Each of the levels therefore is tied to a different show, where the Princess takes on the role of the protagonist from time to time. From this comes the change of costume, which naturally brings new powers. And so in our hands-on of Princess Peach: Showtime we took on the role of Peach Spadaccina, NinjaCowgirl e Pastry chefwith many other transformations to discover in the subsequent stages.
This creates an incredible variety of gameplay. It’s not a series of minigames (as some trailers might have suggested) but rather real levels, which however, thanks to the characteristics of each transformation, become extremely different from each other. Everything changes constantly, even within a single stage, leading us to always have to reinvent ourselves.
An accessible but not insignificant challenge
Don’t be fooled, decorating a cake is much more complicated than it seems
The intriguing aspect of this variety is how it is noticeable even when the levels appear very similar. If the Peach Pastry Chef internship is in fact radically different from the others, throwing us a cake design challenge, the others are more similar to the classic side-scrolling platformer model, which defined the franchise. But However, they have a different tastecharacteristic for each.
What is striking, as they also underlined during the presentation of the game, is that everything is managed with a minimum number of buttons. An extreme work of synthesis was evidently done, to reduce everything to just a few commands, but still maintain a complete experience. You can easily play Princess Peach: Showtime! with a single joycon.
This simplicity is also reflected in the ease of the title, on which some reasoning must be done. Passing the single stage is rather immediate, we did not encounter any real obstacles. There greater challenge is of course collecting all the collectibles and secrets. We weren’t able to do it on the first try at any of the stages, but the impression is that a second round at each would have been enough.
They are there though a series of unknowns to take into account. We don’t know how many levels there will be in total, nor how much the difficulty will increase. We tried only the introductory levels of Princess Peach: Showtime! and in any case we felt an increase in the challenge: how much more will it rise? And among the things we don’t know there is also exactly how many collectibles are there?.
We got to the third stage before we realized there was another kind, which we had totally ignored in previous levels. Who knows, there might be other collectibles that we not only haven’t found, but whose existence we know about completely unaware.
Princess Peach: Showtime! shows classic Nintendo attention to detail
The wires that keep the horses upright, the shadows in the background, the obviously wooden cactus… We are truly on a theater stage!
One side of this game that is unquestionably extraordinary it is the vitality of the context. We really find ourselves in a completely new world (even with an obvious inspiration from Super Mario 64, as we said before, but we’re just happy about it) which captures every possible idea for characterization.
The idea of the journey through theatrical shows is not just a narrative and gameplay device, but it comes continually underlined. All the level design always reminds us that we are on a stage and that we are taking part in a play, however bizarre.
And the general impression is still that of having only scratched the surface of what this title will offer. We have concluded ours hands-on di Princess Peach: Showtime! with a great desire to move forward and see what awaits the Princess in the continuation of the adventure (as well as a bit of completionist frustration for having left a couple of things behind, but that’s our problem).
Princess Peach hands-on: Showtime! it made us even more curious
Our impressions are decidedly positive. This hands-on di Princess Peach: Showtime! showed us a title that once again shows the care and genius that Nintendo puts into everything related to this franchise. It’s a continues surprisewith each level having a great personality to discover step by step.
Of course it is a judgment that by its nature is incomplete. We’ve only had a small taste of what awaits us: there are already six other transformations of the Princess already revealed on the official website in addition to the ones we’ve tried and it’s easy to think that there are many more to come. In a possible overall rating of Princess Peach: Showtime! the overall number will be very significant. But there will be time to think about it between now and March.
We have only seen Peach’s new career as a protagonist a first step of a first stretch. But it is undoubtedly one exceptional start and we can’t wait to find out how the journey will continue.
Princess Peach: Showtime! will arrive on March 22nd for Nintendo Switch.
