Princess Peach: Showtime! review: Peach’s solo adventure is a fine first act

21.03.2024 - 11:11 / digitaltrends.com / Giovanni Colantonio / Nintendo

Princess Peach: Showtime! MSRP $60.00 Score Details Pros

• Inventive powers
• Lots of collectibles
• Charming visual touches

• A few dud abilities
• Slow pace hurts level replays
• Underused theater gimmick

The Nintendo Switch’s life may be moving towards its end, but Princess Peach: Showtime! arrives at the dawn of a new era. The Mario series is in a bit of a renaissance thanks to the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Nintendo is making sure to capitalize. In addition to a sequel, the company is pushing out a flood of game ports, remakes, and spinoffs. Each one isn’t just expanding the Mario universe; they’re preparing its wide cast of heroes for their Hollywood spotlights. They aren’t just sidekicks anymore. It’s showtime.

In that context, Princess Peach’s first solo adventure since 2006 is a necessity. Even if Princess Peach: Showtime! isn’t the most exciting spinoff in the franchise’s long history, what’s important is that it places the series’ leading lady at center stage. The colorful puzzle platformer establishes who she really is when she’s not getting kidnapped or serving as a player two. It’s a foundational move, one that both Nintendo and its movie partners can build on to better flesh out a character who’s rapidly becoming a mainstream role model apart from Mario.

As the kickoff for a new series, Princess Peach: Showtime! is an uneven but solid building block. It gives the princess a creative, endearing adventure custom-built for kids who will benefit from seeing Peach shine. The transformative concept still has room to grow, though, as its underutilized theater gimmick and simplistic gameplay make for a game that feels like a dress rehearsal before the big show.

The many roles of Princess Peach

Princess Peach: Showtime! is a puzzle-platformer with a Kirby-esque twist. After getting trapped in a theater that’s been taken over by the evil sorceress Grape, Peach must jump into a series of plays to try and save the theater’s acting troupe. To do that, she takes on the leading role of 10 different plays which each unfold over three stages. Each gig gives her a different power, which allows Showtime to dish out a good deal of variety over its lean six- to eight-hour runtime.

The bulk of Peach’s powers are fun to toy around with, especially in each’s introductory stage. When taking up the mantle of Swordfighter Peach, I’m dropped into a fantasy-action play that has me slashing through baddies and even pulling off very generous parries to leap behind them in slow motion. Dashing Thief Peach, on the other hand, has me sneaking past watchful robots, grappling around on hooks, and paragliding through the night sky to pull off a successful heist. In its first half, the consistent joy comes