Princess Peach: Showtime! features the Mushroom Kingdom’s Princess stepping into a starring role for the second time. Unlike Super Princess Peach, Showtime! gives Peach various outfits with different abilities. Not all are created equal though, so let’s rank all the costumes in Princess Peach: Showtime! from worst to best!
There are two ways to think about how good or bad these costumes are. Obviously, there’s the gameplay perspective of how each costume affects the play experience, but then there’s the design component, considering how nicely designed these costumes are, as it’s clear Good-Feel spent a lot of time nailing down the aesthetics. So, we’ll factor both of these elements in our ranking. Because I have an awful fashion sense, I showed my girlfriend each of the ten main costumes and asked her to rank them from one to ten on how much she liked them, then I factored that in with how fun each costume’s stages were. So, with those bases covered, here’s our ranking of all of the costumes in Princess Peach: Showtime!
10) Mermaid Peach
My girlfriend absolutely hated how Peach looked dressed up as a mermaid, calling it the worst costume design in Princess Peach: Showtime!. Fear not, it’s also the worst gameplay-wise! Mermaid Peach stages have you swimming around an environment and singing to control fish to solve puzzles. You have to stand — or tread water, I suppose — perfectly still to control the fish, making these stages way slower than they need to be. Compared to other slower and puzzle-focused stages, these were by far the weakest, and even random rhythm sections were so simple they left no impact on me whatsoever.
9) Mighty Peach
Mighty Peach’s stages come too late in the game to make much of an impact. After several action-focused stages, the Mighty stages blend action with slower-paced puzzle-solving and some shoot’em up elements without excelling at either. Plus, Mighty Peach’s outfit is just kind of dull. Having her don a red power suit should be cooler than it is, with this outfit arguably being the most forgettable one. Is it going for a pulp sci-fi aesthetic or a superhero one? The lack of clarity affects the perception of its stages. No joke, when I was writing this list, I totally forgot the Mighty Peach stages existed, which says a lot about how inconsequential they feel.
8) Figure Skater Peach
While my girlfriend hated Figure Skater Peach’s design, calling her a discount Elsa on Ice, the Figure Skater Peach stages were perfectly acceptable. While sections of these stages have you dodging obstacles as you make your way to a boss, most have you completing choreographed dance numbers. They’re relatively simple in theory, challenging you to skate around and perform one of two moves, but the strict timing can make it frustrating to get all of the collectibles in a stage, as most of them are locked behind your performances. Without that caveat, this outfit would have been much higher, but the number of times I had to repeat the first Figure Skater stage was way more than I care to admit.
7) Cowgirl Peach
I love some Wild West imagery in video games, so Cowgirl Peach put a smile on my face. Her stages involve her lassoing enemies and riding her horse in an autoscrolling section. While they’re perfectly serviceable, they lack tension and impact. Other costumes handle the action setpieces of Princess Peach: Showtime! a lot better and the same goes for the auto-scrolling areas. These also aren’t really the most challenging stages. Though you can make that argument about the game as a whole, I found these sections particularly brain-dead as far as action goes. The saving grace? Peach absolutely rocks that cowgirl outfit!
6) Patissiere Peach
By far the most laid back of all the costumes, Patissiere Peach brings out her baking skills and creates creative confectioneries to satisfy everyone’s hunger. You’ll either mash the B button to create cookies (being careful not to overmix) or decorate large cakes with intricate designs. There are time limits to these sections, but the stages are pretty relaxing overall, and I can imagine seeing an expanded version of the cake decorating sections as a minigame in a future Mario game or even in its own downloadable game. These are the briefest stages though, lasting barely 10 minutes, and Peach’s costume is pretty middle-of-the-road according to my much more fashionably aware other half, but that makes it all the more fitting for the midpoint of this list.
5) Kung Fu Peach
Despite rocking the best outfit in the game according to my girlfriend, I found the Kung Fu stages to be merely above average. These are the last stages in Princess Peach: Showtime! and by then you’ll have seen plenty of other action stages. I love how Kung Fu Peach can zip around and take down hordes of enemies, giving these stages a certain thrill that the other lack, but the game doesn’t take the time to explain how its controls work, making certain sections feel more trial-and-error than they should. Once you understand the mechanics, they’re not an issue, but a somewhat rough first impression dilutes what should have been a stand-out action stage.
4) Swordfighter Peach
As the first costume you’ll unlock in Princess Peach: Showtime!, Swordfighter Peach is a simple yet satisfying costume. Donning a killer hat, Peach uses a saber to defeat all kinds of enemies, employing basic parries and sword slashes to defeat her foes. It’s never too complex, but they’re still fun and lead to some satisfying early-game highlights. The only problem with this costume is that by the time you finish the second area out of five, you will have seen all of the Swordfighter Peach stages. With a bit more complexity these stages could have been the best, but instead, they’re merely good.
3) Ninja Peach
Whenever a Ninja Peach stage popped up, I let out a smile because I knew I’d be in for an entertaining experience. Ninja Peach stages start with stealth sections where you need to sneak up on guards to defeat them and search for all sorts of hidden collectibles. You can disguise yourself in a variety of different ways that make each moment of these sections cute to watch. By the end, the stage will transition into an auto-runner where you’re jumping between the foreground and background using ninja abilities to save the day. Sure, this costume may not be the most exciting, but the spectacle of running up walls and riding a dragon overshadows any aesthetic criticisms.
2) Detective Peach
The slowest of all the stages, yet strangely one of the most satisfying you can encounter. Once Peach dons a dapper Sherlock Holmes outfit, she makes her way through environments and attempts to solve crimes using only reasoning and deduction. These stages can actually be somewhat of a challenge if you just go around accusing everyone you meet, and there’s a certain satisfaction to correctly deducing a criminal and their evil schemes. It loses a bit on the replayability front once you know the solutions to these mysteries, but that doesn’t deter them from being surprisingly charming little mysteries for younger audiences.
1) Dashing Thief Peach
Maybe it’s the Persona 5 vibes we both got from these sections, but the Dashing Thief costume and its respective stages easily won over both my girlfriend and myself. There are more active and challenging stealth, platforming, and auto-scroller elements here that made it exciting to replay to get all of the collectibles. Add on an absolutely dynamite costume and a nighttime aesthetic that captures everything that makes the gentlemen thief archetype such a winner, and it’s no surprise that these stages impressed both of us so much. In nearly every way, the Dashing Thief is the runaway winner of all the costumes in Princess Peach: Showtime!, but then again that shouldn’t come as a surprise from a costume dedicated to stealing the hearts and minds of the people.
And that’s our ranking of every Princess Peach: Showtime! costume from worst to best!
Published: Mar 24, 2024 11:05 pm