Princess Peach (casually Peach, formerly Princess Toadstool outside of Japan prior to Super Mario 64) is a main character in the Mario franchise, and the princess of Mushroom Kingdom. Peach first appeared in Super Mario Bros. and was created by Shigeru Miyamoto to be the damsel-in-distress throughout most Mario games. She resides in her castle along with many Toads, who act as her loyal servants. Her kingdom is often attacked by the Koopatrop, a group led by Bowser. She is the love interest of Mario.
Peach has an affinity for the color pink, which accents her gentle personality and kind temperament. Peach's gentle nature and role as the damsel are often represented with her heart abilities and princess emblems. Peach's initial design was said to represent her stubborn yet cute appearance.
Since her debut, Peach has appeared in installments related to the Mario game series for over three decades. Peach is occasionally a supporting character in mainstream games and almost always playable in spin-off installments. Her most prominent appearance to date is as the heroine of Super Princess Peach.
General information[]
Name[]
In Japan, her name has always been Princess Peach (ピーチ姫 Pīchi-hime), but in the west she was originally known as "Princess Toadstool", due to Nintendo of America renaming her when localizing Super Mario Bros., feeling that "Peach" was irrelevant to the theme of the Mushroom Kingdom[citation needed]. Despite this, one episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show did have the character refer to herself once as "Princess P." in what was apparently an indirect reference to her original name. In 1993, the English version of Yoshi's Safari marked the first time that the name "Princess Peach" was used outside of Japan, but the name did not catch on for western players until it was used again in Super Mario 64. Games as of Mario Kart 64 use Peach as her prominent name. Certain contemporary sources reconcile the two names by listing her full name as "Peach Toadstool", including subsequent re-releases of Super Mario 64, such as the international, Shindō Pak Taiō Version and the DS remake, which had the princess signing her letter using both "Toadstool" and "Peach"[2]. For the most part, however, the "Toadstool" name is hardly used outside of remakes and re-releases of older titles, which most times retain the original localized text. Recently, however, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U refers to "Princess Toadstool" as a name Peach went by in one of the in-game tips, and in the North American version her title on the Boxing Ring stage is "Princess of Toadstools". On a similar note, although she was mostly referred to as Princess Toadstool in various countries outside the United States in most localizations (or "Princess Mushroom" in some cases), the Danish dub for The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 had changed her name to Prinsesse Slørhat, which translated to "Princess Cortinarius", referring to a genus of poisonous mushrooms. Likewise, the Italian dub for the entire DIC cartoon line also referred to her as "Principessa Amarena" or "Princess Cherry".
Physical description[]
Peach is a young, fair-skinned woman with an average build. She is taller than most human characters, exceeded only by Rosalina, Pauline, and Waluigi. It is to be noted that in the NES version of Super Mario Bros. as well as Deluxe, she is depicted as being shorter than Super Mario/Super Luigi (with the difference in size being enough that she has to stand on her tip-toes to kiss Mario/Luigi if they are in Super/Fire form in the latter game). She has a soft, oval face with large blue eyes framed by six lashes (three to four in other artwork), and thin, dark blonde eyebrows. She has long, flowing, golden-blonde hair with both V-shaped and fringed bangs, and a single two thin locks framing her face. She sometimes wears her hair tied up in a ponytail.
The DiC cartoons' version of the princess has been officially stated to be seventeen years old.[13] As for the video game version of Peach, though no fixed age has been revealed, her overall physical appearance suggests that she is in her early 20's.
Peach usually wears a floor-length pink gown with puffy sleeves, a high collar, deep pink panniers at the waist and a ruffle of the same color at the hem. From Super Mario Bros. to Mario Kart: Super Circuit and then once again in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, she originally wore a deep pink band around her waist as well as having half of her dress skirt being deep pink before switching to the panniers and thin deep pink band around the edge of the skirt, respectively starting with Super Mario Sunshine and being finalized in Mario Party 4. The dress has a sapphire brooch, set in gold on Peach's chest, and she wears round earrings of the same color. Her crown is golden with four jewels: two rubies and two sapphires. She wears white evening gloves beyond elbow-length, deep pink high heels, and in some games, has a white petticoat under her gown. Her dress is far more elaborately designed in recent Super Smash Bros. titles, but is otherwise the same. Similarly, because of the Super Smash Bros games using more realistic dimensions for the various characters, Peach is given slightly more realistic dimensions in these games, including a slightly smaller head and having a slightly larger bust.
Alternate outfits[]
The earliest alternate outfit Peach had was in All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros., where she was dressed up in a Kimono and had her hair in a geisha-style complete with chopsticks. This was because of it being released during a Japanese holiday. Although this particular outfit has not appeared in any games since, Peach wore similar Kimono outfits that appeared in an advertisement for Nintendo's involvement in the Kyoto Cross Media Experience 2009, a Club Nintendo calendar award, a New Year 2017 wallpaper (which was reused from one of the artworks from the Kyoto Cross Media Experience 2009) and her outfit in Bowser's Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey.
In NES Open Tournament Golf, she is seen wearing a sundress due to the golfing aspect of the game. Although in the artwork and during actual gameplay it was colored pink, the in-game sprite for the title screen depicts her with a green dress, presumably due to the graphics limitations of the NES.
Although not seen wearing this outfit in-game, one of her character arts for Super Mario World depicted her with sunglasses, heart earrings, as well as a purple-pink two-piece bikini, with her crown featuring three points as well as a red bottom with at least four diamonds. She wore a similar outfit in the KC Deluxe Super Mario Kart gag manga, only the bikini was slightly more skimpy, it lacked the crown, sunglasses, and earrings, and she was wearing a sash that said "Racingqu" (presumably meant to say "Racing queen"), as well as carrying a parasol, due to her implied role as one of the racehands. On a related note, the Japanese advertisement for Super Mario All-Stars, owing to the basis being events like the Oscars, depicted Peach wearing a sparkling lavender sequined dress as well as matching heels and opera gloves, as well as a fluffy scarf.
In Mario Party 2, aside from her traditional pink dress that she wears on Rules Land/Bowser Land, as well as the opening and ending of the game, she also wore five distinct outfits fitting into the five themes for Mario Land (a female pirate, a cowgirl, a space cadet, an explorer, and a witch for Pirate Land, Western Land, Space Land, Mystery Land and Horror Land, respectively).
In Super Mario Sunshine, Peach wears a lighter, sleeveless version of her dress, and wears a ruby ring and gold bracelet in place of gloves, due to the tropical setting of the game. In addition, similar to in Super Smash Bros. Melee, she also wore a ring, only it was ruby and placed on her right middle finger. In the Dr. Mario series, she wears a pink nurse's uniform with matching sandals.
Although technically not an alternate outfit, her standard dress was slightly modified in Melee to feature gold, flame-like designs as well as silk extensions near the bottom of her skirt, plus similar flame-like designs near her brooch, plus a sapphire ring on her left middle finger. In Brawl, said dress is radically altered to possess frills at the front of her skirt that split down the legs, flame like designs near these frills, as well as pink and red portions of the bottom portions of the skirt, plus a silk front near the brooch, with it being given a slightly more realistic appearance. The dress in Wii U and 3DS is largely similar to the one in Brawl, although it is slightly less detailed due to her returning to a more cartoon-like design. Aside from the standard dress, she also has several alternate costumes in each of the games (four in Melee, five in Brawl, and seven in 3DS / Wii U). Her blue and green dresses were based on similar palette swaps used in the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis series (and to a lesser extent on Daisy and Peach's respective sprites in NES Open Tournament Golf in Melee and 3DS / Wii U, respectively). Her white dress, depending on the game, is either based to a certain extent on her NES appearance (Melee) or otherwise on the wedding dress she wore in Super Paper Mario (Brawl as well as 3DS and Wii U). The white dress in Melee is notably the only one of her dress options that has her wearing different undergarments. Her yellow dress is obviously based on that of Princess Daisy. Likewise, her red dress option in Brawl as well as 3DS / Wii U is based on Pauline's dress, and she also possessed a black dress, as well as a dress based directly on her Fire Peach form in Super Mario 3D World. She retains most of her outfits from 3DS / Wii U in Ultimate, although her yellow alternate color is replaced with a gold dress and matching parasol that resembled Gold Peach from Super Mario Party, most likely due to Daisy being an echo fighter in the game.
When the dedicated Mario sports installments started with Mario Golf and Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64, Peach's sports uniform was simply a shorter, sleeveless version of her usual dress, with white knee-high socks and orange-and-beige tennis shoes. In Mario Golf, her animation when doing a hole-in-one has her dress transform from her sports uniform to her usual dress in her excitement. Starting with the GameCube Mario sports games, however, she started to have more variety in what she wears. In many earlier games like Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and Mario Power Tennis, the standard outfit that she wears is sporty miniskirt that resembles her current main dress with some slight differences. In World Tour, while otherwise similar to her uniform from Toadstool Tour, Peach's miniskirt, in a similar manner to Mario Golf as noted above, will transform at the wave of her parasol into her trademark dress whenever she gets an Eagle or a Birdie. In other general sports installments which require Peach to be more active, her standard outfit for those games is a pink tank top and shorts with white accents, similar to Princess Daisy's usual sports garb; in both cases, she uses white bobby socks and red-and-pink tennis shoes, and retains her characteristic blue brooch, earrings and her crown.
For the Mario Strikers family of Mario sports installments, Peach wears two-piece, midriff-baring soccer outfits and cleats. In the case of Mario Strikers Charged, armor is added to the ensemble due to the increased intensity of the game. Her color scheme is still pink, with blue accents and yellow accents. Along with her nursing outfit in the Dr. Mario series, these are her only clothes that lack her signature blue brooch, although unlike in Dr. Mario (and NES Open Tournament Golf), she still has her crown here.
In Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 / Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Peach wears a primarily white jumpsuit with pink stripes when riding motorbikes, as well as ATVs in the latter two titles, with a pink scarf, belt, boots, gloves, and other detailing, including a heart-shaped pattern on her back. The gloves are styled similarly to her typical ones, and are pink with a white trim to match the boots, which have white soles. She keeps her regular crown, earrings and brooch, but has her hair tied up into a ponytail with a blue band.
For the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games installments, Peach wears a pink sleeveless mini dress with a white trim around the bottom, and darker pink leggings and sleeves, and white gloves and ankle boots.
For Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Peach wears a light pink leotard with dark pink stripes on the sides for the gymnastics events, which is additionally used as swimwear for the swimming events.
A Super Mario Relaxing Life digital sticker depicted Peach wearing a faint pink nightcap as well as a matching nightgown with no sleeves, which she quickly changed into her formal attire.
In Super Mario Odyssey, aside from her traditional pink dress (which only appears in the prologue and when encountering her at Mushroom Kingdom in the post-game), she has a large amount of outfits, such as the wedding dress she wore for most of the game (later revealed to be the Lochlady Dress), as well as various outfits she wore in the post-game, with the specific type depending on the world visited. For the Cascade Kingdom, Wooded Kingdom, and Lost Kingdom, she wears an explorer type outfit with short beige shorts, white knee-length socks, brown shoes, a brown shirt with rolled up sleeves, a roll-up backpack, white gloves, and an explorer's helmet. For the Sand Kingdom, Ruined Kingdom, Cloud Kingdom, and Metro Kingdom (and to a certain extent the Mushroom Kingdom), Peach wears a knee-length pink dress with a white blouse, white mary jane heels, a purple mini-scarf, and a white and pink sunhat. For the Cap Kingdom, Snow Kingdom, and Moon Kingdom, she wears largely black attire: a black wool coat reaching her knees, black gloves, a black beret, and black tights. For the Luncheon Kingdom, she wears a pink shirt, blue overalls, pink boots, and a pink sunhat. For the Seaside Kingdom and Lake Kingdom, she wears a pink pearl necklace, a pink bikini top with a blue brooch similar to the one on her trademark dress, pink sandals, a pair of sunglasses and a sarong with pink crescent moon patterns. For Bowser's Kingdom, she wears a Fire Flower-patterned blue kimono and wears her hair in a ponytail with a Boo mask on the left side of her head, as well as having a blue uchiwa fan with a Blooper on it on her back (this particular outfit also had two planned variations, specifically a pink yukata with a school of Cheep-Cheep on it as well as a Super Leaf-style mask and green uchiwa fan, and a dark blue yukata with mushrooms on it and a mushroom-style mask and red uchiwa fan[14]). The outfits listed here can also be accessed by using the Capture on a pole at the top of Peach's Castle after gaining all 999 Power Moons.
Personality[]
Princess Peach is classy, kind, clever, sociable, and adventurous. She has a warm heart and often acts unselfishly, putting her friends, loved ones, and citizens ahead of herself, and apologizes excessively for getting into trouble and requiring Mario to rescue her. She even shows concern and compassion towards her enemies, such as saving Mimi in Super Paper Mario, despite the girl's constant antagonism of the princess, and in the same game and other games, her pure and noble characteristics are often shown in different ways, from being the only person who can activate certain powerful objects (including but not limited to the Beanstar and Dark Star) to landing in the Overthere, the Mario equivalent of heaven (after Dimentio knocks her out). She often acts as a peacemaker, such as in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's story mode, where she offers tea to Fox and Sheik in order to calm them down, and later converts Mr. Game & Watch to their cause. While gentle by nature, Peach is also strong-willed and can hold her own in sports competitions and battle, provided she is not already being held captive. Her strong-willed nature is best demonstrated in the beginning of Super Paper Mario, where she managed to outright resist Nastasia's mind control abilities during the "wedding," which Nastasia indicated was unprecedented. A similar demonstration of her strong will was also shown in The Thousand Year Door, where she managed to fight off the Shadow Queen's possession long enough to not only offer words of encouragement to Mario and his party but also heal the party (with the Shadow Queen, due to possessing Peach's body, being forced to go along with it). Largely because of her frequently being kidnapped, she has frequently been the subject of a running gag in the Super Smash Bros. series where several characters refer to the frequency of her abductions and infer she's useless for it, such as Snake in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as well as Pit and to a certain extent Viridi in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U. But while Peach is often considered the archetypal damsel in distress when it comes to video games, she is often showed to be actively working against her captors, such as sneaking around searching for power-ups and/or information to send to Mario in games such as Super Mario Galaxy and the Paper Marioseries, even engineering a prison escape in Super Mario 3D Land.
While she occasionally seems naive, she is generally level-headed and expresses more common sense than those around her, such as noticing a doppleganger in the Isle Delfino vacation guide video's background in Super Mario Sunshine, insisting that an emergency meeting continues even after it is briefly interrupted by Bowser and deducing what Fawful was planning regarding her in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, and talking a stubborn Bowser into joining her and Mario in Super Paper Mario. In the Super Mario World cartoon, she is a motherly figure to the young Yoshi and Oogtar, and in the cartoons overall, she is practical and generous to a fault, such as trying to convince the Mario Bros. to return home despite the fact that she is still under the threat of Koopa. She also has a feisty side, which shines through particularly well in her comic appearances. Besides sports, Peach is also into ballroom dancing, video games, and gardening, and seems to enjoy exploring and trying new things. In the Japanese version of Super Mario Kart, she is also implied to get drunk easily from champagne as she was seen flushing in the face while drinking from the champagne bottle.
Although she is generally depicted as kind, clever, sociable, and generous to a fault in most games, the game Super Mario Strikers does show a slightly more arrogant and petulant side to Peach, including her pitching a fit to one of her teammates and eventually jumping up and down in an apparent tantrum if the opposing team scores. A similar temperamental nature can be observed if the player fails to flip food in time and have it land on the floor in the Modern versions of Chef, where Peach will either stamp her foot in anger (Game & Watch Gallery 2) or otherwise put her hand over her head and scream repeatedly in frustration before proceeding to wince (Game & Watch Gallery 4), in either case causing Yoshi to crouch down in fear.
Although most games emphasize her innocent nature, the Super Smash Bros. series tended to depict her as having a slightly more flirty, mischievous, and confident attitude, including having one of her taunts depicting her as making a flirtatious wink, as well as making some victory remarks that at times directly taunt the player such as asking if she won a match in a faux-excited tone or commenting that their match was fun. In Brawl, she is also shown to be slightly eccentric, such as offering a stalemate between Sheik and Fox by offering them tea while aboard the Halberd, and earlier her casually strolling across the Halberd's deck while Fox and Falco had been undergoing a bombing run on the deck in their Arwings.
Speech[]
Early in her history, while Peach did speak, it was largely done via text dialogue. It was not until Mario is Missing where Peach got some dialogue, and it wouldn't be until Super Mario 64 onward that she maintained having voiced dialogue. In Super Mario 64, she largely spoke with a mature, feminine tone, though in Mario Kart 64, Mario Party 1-3, and Super Mario Advance, Peach spoke with a slightly higher-pitched, somewhat shrill tone, albeit one that exuded confidence, and also possessing a slight Italian accent in the case of the last game. Starting with Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Mario Sunshine, she was given a very soft, very girlish tone of voice that exuded innocence and simplicity, yet at times grew sharp when yelling, which was largely retained to her current appearances.
Powers and abilities[]
Like other Mario characters, Peach can Jump, Ground Pound, and use slap attacks, which is her specialty. While not very strong physically, she makes up for it in technique and skill, and many games reveal her to be fast and agile as well. She is also shown to be very graceful, often embellishing attacks and victory scenes alike with elegant movements, twirls and dances. With the release of Super Mario 3D World, Peach is able to use power-ups, such as the Fire Flower, the Tanooki Suit, the Cat Suit and the Double Cherry, among other power-ups and items. She also has the unique ability to float in mid-air, first seen in Super Mario Bros. 2, and can also use her her parasol to achieve this effect or slow her falls. This ability returns in Super Mario 3D World and the Super Smash Bros. series. In New Super Mario Bros., New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and New Super Mario Bros. 2, she is also shown to slow down her descent from a fairly large height.
Peach's Super Strike, the "Royal Strike", in Super Mario Strikers
In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Peach is shown to have impressive healing abilities like Therapy and Group Hug, and this ability is seen again in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when she overcomes the Shadow Queen's mind control over her to heal Mario and his party. She has occasionally been shown to have telepathic powers, like in Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 when she calls out to Mario as a hologram in Dark Land, or when she and Starlow combine powers to drain and then send Bowser flying in the beginning if Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Additionally, in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, her final smash, Peach Blossom puts her opponents to sleep. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Peach has a powerful special attack called the Peach Bomber, where hip-checking her opponents engulfs them in an explosion. Earlier, Super Mario RPG also linked her with explosions, as one of her attacks, Psych Bomb, involved throwing a Bob-omb at her opponents, and a similar scene occurred in the Super Mario Adventures comic, when she used a barrage of Bob-ombs against the Koopalings. In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, she was also shown to have enough strength to not just telekinetically throw Bowser out of the castle, but throw him far into the forest outside the kingdom. However, it's implied that she was only able to do this with Starlow's help, largely because Starlow had weakened Bowser earlier. She also was powerful enough to counteract Bowser's magic, which was the initial reason why Bowser had abducted her in Super Mario Bros..
In general, however, Peach's special abilities and powers usually involve hearts, not bombs. They're mostly seen in the sports installments including, but not limited to, Mario Power Tennis (Sweet Kiss Return), Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (Heart Shot), Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and Super Mario Strikers (heart trails follow the balls after special hits). Her special item in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is also a heart, and allows her to co-opt others' attacks. Besides hearts alone, Peach will sometimes use the power of love to combat her opponents in sports, such as her Super Peach Spin offensive shot in Mario Power Tennis, or how her Heart Swing in Mario Super Sluggers dazes any male player who tries to catch it, while the other females are immune. In addition, many of her abilities in Super Mario RPG have a heart as her magic symbol.
Aside from her magical abilities, she's also shown in a few games to be a good chef, or at least a good baker, such as the Modern version of Chef in some of the Game & Watch Gallery games, as well as Paper Mario when she has to bake a cake for Gourmet Guy in exchange for information regarding Mario. She also was shown to be good at chemistry, having created with the help of TEC-XX an invisibility potion in an attempt to retrieve vital information on the X-Nauts' plans from Grodus's office.
