Summary
2024 has been great forNintendo’sleading ladies so far. We sawthe launch of Princess Peach: Showtimein the first half of the year, andthe June 18 Directoffered the first glimpse at the Zelda-helmedThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Though we’ve technically been able to play as both princesses before - in Super Princess Peach for the Nintendo DS in 2005 and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon for the Philips CD-i in 1993 - these games offer a fresh take on what it means to be a princess now that gaming has mostly left the damsel in distress trope behind.
On the heels of Echoes of Wisdom’s announcement, my friend asked, hypothetically, “If they’re going for like, a Triforce of our girls, we’d have Zelda as Wisdom and I’d give Peach Power from the transformations in Showtime. But who’d be Courage?”
I wasted exactly zero seconds before suggesting Daisy. If Nintendo wanted to keep the girl-power thing going a bit longer, since fans are clearly eager to embody their favorite princesses and experience stories from a different perspective, I can think of nobody more deserving of triple-A attention.
Introduced in 1989’s Super Mario Land when the developers sought to move their next adventure outside the Mushroom Kingdom, Sarasaland and its reigning princess Daisy were born - only to be immediately tabled for more than a decade. It wasn’t until Mario Tennis launched for the Nintendo 64 in 2000 that my dear Daisy was taken back off the shelf, and she’s been consistently popular (yet consistently overlooked) ever since.
Oftenseen as a ceaselessly spunky, rough-and-tumble foil to the softer, more demure Princess Peach, I jumped ship to Team Daisy as soon as my tiny tomboy heart met her. Finally,I could play as a princess, but one who looked and acted more like me. Since then, whenever she was an option in a Mario game, I’d always choose to play as her - but unless I’m playinga party game or sports title, I rarely get the chance.
Would a Daisy game finishing this hypothetical princess three-peat bring two Mario characters to the table for only one from another series? Sure, but rather than tipping the scales, I think it would instead exemplify that the Mario catalog is still Nintendo’s deepest well, even decades after the titular plumber’s debut. So many other faces from the Mario universe have gotten their own games - Luigi, Wario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Toad, and most recently Peach - that we know Nintendo is happy for us to play as someone other than Mario.
Daisy has had a few, brief moments in the sun as a playable character. 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder was arguably the biggest, allowing you to play a whole mainline Mario game in her orange heels, but even game director Shiro Mouri admitted she was only in the game tostop his daughters from bickering about who gets to play the princess.
You could use a Daisy colorway for Peach in the Smash games for a while, and though Daisy was added as her own character in 2018’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, being Peach’s shadow fighter gave her the same moveset as the more prominent princess, denying her any sense of individuality. Heck, the only reason she even ended up in Mario Tennis to begin with was because the devs needed more human characters to counterbalance all the wonky non-humans added long before her.
Let Her Save The Day In Her Own Flowery Way
“What would a game based on a princess with so little backstory even look like?” I hear you ask. Easy - we can very believably turn sweet, skittish Luigi into the damsel in distress and make Daisy the hero in their dynamic.
Sports games present her as a fairly technical combatant, and she almost always gets a flowery flair, too, so there could be a floral element to whatever powers she gets. Super Mario Land already laid some groundwork that could be elaborated on, withSarasaland composed of four kingdoms- Birabuto, Muda, Easton, and Chai. We saw them in the iconic 2D style of the SNES era as Mario ventured through Sarasaland in 1989, but the SNES didn’t even have color, let alone the definition we’ve seen improved hardware bring to the later games.
Sarasaland being made up of distinct kingdoms with their own local rulers and overseen by one central figure would technically make Sarasaland an empire. Daisy mentions a father once, but he’s not been brought up again since Mario Party 3. Maybe he’s only there to knock Daisy back down to the title of princess, because Empress Daisy would outshine Princess Peach a bit rank-wise.
Nintendo could bring Sarasaland to life in 3D to expand on a region that was mentioned and then basically abandoned, as many players have hoped it would over the years. From our earliest peeks at Super Mario Odyssey’s Sand Land before its launch in 2017, lots of folks thought we might finally get to see our favorite loudmouthed lady in a bigger adventure, but no dice. It happened againwhen Sand Land was briefly shown in a trailer for the Super Mario Movie, and it didn’t sting any less the second time.
Daisy might be one of the more dunked-on characters in the Mario canon, but therearepeople like me waiting for a chance to play as the titular tomboy instead of seeing our girl relegated to being someone’s spare parts or just an extra human character. If Nintendo is primed to give our girls some games, she’s an easy choice if it wants to do something other than costumes and copy-paste powers. Expanding on the little-known desert region of Sarasaland and bringing Daisy’s undaunting demeanor to the forefront would finally, after 35 years, give our vocal princess a backstory past her just shouting that “(she’s) Daisy!”
