Almost in response to my earlier post on women in videogames, but not quite since the response arrived before my post, and was in preproduction for longer, and .. well, whatever. It is interesting that some time after my post I find tell of a game that sort of tries to reverse the Damsel in a Dress cliche plotline I mentioned before.

Super Princess Peach is the game, and boy, is it pink. I haven’t played it, not likely to either, but the screenshots indicate quite the pinkness. And it shows that even when they try to reverse the trend, and give us the flipside, in this case being that the Princess is to rescue Mario, they screw it up (in my opinion) by making it cutesy, and rediculous.

Hell hath no fury like the princess’ wild mood swings

I seem to recall that in Super Mario Brothers 2, the Princess did quite well as a character, all by herself. In this game however, she has a parasol, as her main weapon. Well, at least it isn’t a frying pan, or say a vacuum cleaner like Marge had in that weird Simpsons arcade game. But still, I guess the umbrella is her ‘Yoshi’.

Where…. *sob* … is … *sob* …. my….. *sob*… lithium

What I think is sillier, is the special abilities she’s endowed with. Which are, essentially, her womanly runaway emotions. When you power up anger, you’re all firery and boomy. When you power up your amazing capacity for sadness, you let loose torrents of salt water that somehow inspire the plants around you to grow. Happiness causes you to trip out and float around the screen. And apparently there is a Restore-Life emotion that I wish I possessed myself.

I see angry, happy and sad, that last one must be climax

So you, your parasol that eats people while smiling, go in, beat easy easy enemies (remember, this game is for girls), and rescue Mario. I say she should leave him for Luigi, but what do I know.

I’m being intentionally hard on this game, partly for the laugh. I mean, obviously this is meant for little girls, but I think even little girls are capable of thinking little of a condescending, non-challenging game where everything is a uniform shade of hyper-pink.

If they truly wanted to exploit women, what they should do is just release two versions of a mario game, the normal one where Mario shows what a stud he is, and the alternate with the Princess in the drivers seat. That way they will still sell the original to all the boys, probably sell the personalized ones to the girls, and probably a number to those people who want every possible edition of everything who will buy both. To sweeten the deal, make it so they are slightly different, and call it Pokemon. Then watch the cash flow.