Game Theory: The END of Princess Peach! (New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe Peachette / Bowsette)

The recent Nintendo Direct introduced the world to the

super

crown. A power-up that apparently transforms the character who catches it into a "

peach

" version of themselves. They showed off its effects on Toadette and that was all it took to make the Internet's imagination run wild. But while everyone else was busy searching for Bowsette content on, um... less brand-safe sites... Did anyone really stop to consider what happens when Toads other than Toadette touch this thing? Like, say, the Yellow Toad? *Power Mushroom sound effect* *Daisy sound effect* ('Ya-hou!') And what is Toad's other main color? Ah yes, blue. *Power Mushroom sound effect* *Rosalina sound effect* ("Woo!") Did that blow your mind?

Ah; wait, it doesn't matter. You're still busy looking at Bowsette. *Glitching intro theme plays* *Keyboard key clicks, over continually glitchy audio noise* Hello Internet! Welcome to

game

theory

! Where, let's be honest with ourselves, Bowsette would NOT be hot. It would look like this: *Monstrous roar* I hate to burst your "good girl, she gone bad" fantasy bubble, guys and gals. No, my friends, let me tell you clearly: Waluigiette is where she is. Oh yeah... Now, if you have NO idea what I'm talking about, let me catch you up: in the trailer for New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, a name that would make Street Fighter proud, we get to see this nifty new power-up mushroom crown hybrid that can turn Toadette into a new character that Nintendo calls 'Peachette', who, supposedly because she is this new character, looks an awful lot like Peach; she has her own version of the floating jump that Peach has, she has blonde hair, the pink dress;

I wouldn't blame you if you thought it was just Peach in a new costume, but if you look closer, it's clear that the two are separate characters. While the different shoes can be removed as a simple change of footwear, the dress is structured and wrinkle-free, even when on the move. It really appears to be just a large mushroom. Additionally, Peachette has gray eyes, while Peach has blue eyes; which is particularly interesting, since with every power-up Mario and Luigi get, they always keep the same eye color. Lastly, because no Mario episode would be complete without arbitrary pixel measurements, I ran the numbers and Peachette is actually shorter than Peach's canonical height.

Anyway, I think we can safely dismiss Peachette as a simple palette swap and confidently say that she is her own separate, but obviously related, character within the Mushroom Kingdom. But before we start celebrating the arrival of an EXTREMELY unexpected new character to the Marioverse, we should probably take a moment to evaluate the implications of what Peachette's mere existence in canon lore means for the Mushroom Kingdom. Because guess what? The addition of Toadette's evolved form CHANGES THE GAME from a historical perspective and may lead to the ONE darkest event in Mario's overall story arc. So buckle up, Nintendo.

When it reveals the MASSIVE ramifications of making Peachette so close to Peach, you may reconsider any future attempts to quickly throw together some half-realized power-ups in an attempt to spice up a re-release. Let us begin! To start, the Super Crown booster immediately raises a HUGE question. Is Peach REALLY human or is she an evolved form of toad? It seems an absurd perspective; that Peach somehow might be nothing more than a fancy shiitake; more MOREL than man. But looking closer, there appears to be more to this mycelial mystery than meets the eye. I mean, after all, she was originally called Princess Toadstool; something that no one in their right mind had any reason to assume was close to being literal until apparently modern Nintendo is weird today.

But again, that was just a name. Is there anything in Mario canon that could link poisonous mushrooms to real mushrooms? Yes, there is. The clues have been hidden in plain sight from us since the first GAME and we've simply been overlooking the evidence all along in the original NES manual for Super Mario Brothers. It is established that Peach has a father, the "Mushroom". King Quote "The only one who can undo the magic smell of mushroom people and return them to their normal state is Princess Toadstool." "Daughter of the Mushroom King." and if you think it's just a remnant of a bad translation from the 1980s or some poorly thought out story from the first

game

, think again, the 1999 Super Mario Brothers Deluxe manual says exactly the same thing, but again: "It says that only the daughter of the Mushroom King Princess Toadstool can break the evil spell" end of quote.

So if Nintendo really wanted to get this guy out of the story, that re-release would have been their chance to do it. So, it definitely seems like she's a real entity in this universe. Also, does he also have a wife? In Nintendo's official player's guide from 1987 we see the quote: "The mushroom people were ruled by a good king and queen." And what's more, even though they never appeared in any game? We get to see them in a second release in 1987, How to Win at Super Mario Brothers, which is another book created by official Nintendo employees. Images of King Mushroom and his wife, the king and queen, are revealed for the first time.

Stool Does this look familiar to you? They both sport mushroom heads just like their subjects, adding to the evidence that Peach started out as a little baby Shroom-Lance, and besides, that's not his only familial connection here. In Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo, you can peek into the rooms of Peaches' castle and, well, you might be distracted by Samus because Metroid is in the guest room, or Peaches "???" hidden in a corner and that's... uh, that's a

theory

we covered before the link was on the iCard. It's kind of old, but it's good. They are not the only interesting things that can be seen in this room.

You will also find an old toad woman simply called Grandma. Does the name necessarily prove that she is related to her? No, but she's trustworthy enough to be the only other person who knows about Peaches' secret personal item hidden in the corner. So, you know, we have a

princess

named Toadstool who has a family headed by mushrooms, which is definitely starting to add up. credence to the idea that she went from the womb to a mushroom. Now, let's change direction for a minute instead of talking about more mushrooms. Let's talk about bees. Honey bees specifically. I'm sure most of you already have a general idea of ​​how honey bee colonies work with a queen bee ruling over a group of worker and male drone bees.

But do you know how a queen is chosen? In a bee hive, workers who are selected as potential queens, are taken to special cells within the hive to frankly receive "royal treatment", in addition to having personal servants to do whatever they want, they are fed by nurse bees with huge amounts of royal jelly. a substance that is packed with nutrients that allows the select few to become queens, mature, rule, and reproduce until they age or leave the hive, at which point the process repeats. Now, why should I digress and tell you about this little bee plot?

Well, think about it. The Mushroom King literally disappears from the Mario Canon after one last hurrah in a 1980s coloring book, the only royal left, Peach is without a doubt the acting Queen in the Mushroom Kingdom. Notice how in Super Mario RPG we see the throne room. and there is only one chair and it is specifically hers. Sure, she might refer to herself as a

princess

, but for all intents and purposes, she is the queen, this is important because the toads are servants of Princess Peach. It's confirmed in the Super Mario Brothers manual and reaffirmed pretty much every other time.

The role of toads is made clear in the story. They are literally the worker bees and drones of the Mushroom Kingdom. Hello, serving the female ruler of her among

peach

es, it is also worth remembering that, according to qu Ichi hayashida, the codes are genderless and simply express gender characteristics. There could be any number of drone or worker toads, and we wouldn't be able to notice. Now, what has the

super

corona shown us than a normal worker? Toadette can be fed a special item and become like the Queen, the super crown is literally royal jelly. From the Mushroom Kingdom, taking a normal worker and transforming him into ruler of the colony, I can now understand some skepticism here in making the mushroom leap. to B isn't the most obvious connection, but it's worth noting that most fungi are closer to being an animal than a plant.

Look at a cladogram, which is a branching diagram showing the relationship between species, and you can instantly see that fungi cluster closer to us than they do to plants or bacteria. I mean, after all fungi, cells receive most of their structure thanks to the fibrous substance known as chitin, the same type of chitin now found in insect exoskeletons, of course. I'm not saying that the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom are insects. Not only would it be scary, it would make less sense for the entire peach to be a fungus, but I'm saying that the evolutionary basis is there for a fungus to somehow Miraculously make it to the human level even changes in eye color support the idea of a maturation process from Toadette to Peachette to Peach When babies are born, especially light-skinned ones like Peach, they have light-colored eyes because they have very little melanin, a type of pigment. which gives color to the eyes, skin and hair, but after birth the light stimulates the production of melanin.

This is why eye color can darken or change over time. True story when Ollie was born. She had blue-gray eyes, which have now turned brown due to her melanin. has increased in the last three months. Now, he looks at Peachette. As I mentioned before, she has gray eyes that clearly differentiate her from peach blue eyes. But what if that's just because she's an early form of peach? I mean, she just gave Changeover a year or, in the case of peaches, a few decades and that ripe blue color will shine. That's right, what if Peachette is simply an immature form of peach, a young queen?

She's freshly groomed and ready to start a period only to grow and her eyes change color as she continues to develop. Over the years, the evidence, frankly, is there, but why now? Why would Nintendo keep this? Absolutely, a great lore was quietly revealed until this particular Nintendo Direct. Well, remember what I said before, queen bees are not constantly being groomed, it only happens when the hive senses that the current queen is getting old or dying or just not around anymore. and they want to annul the current queen with a new one and it is that last reason that stands out how many times our princess has been in another castle or playing tennis or on the moon rejecting the advances of fertile males, I would dare to say that With all the kidnappings and spin-off titles, the Mushroom Kingdom might feel a little abandoned, a little sterile.

If you do, after decades of Peach being away from the hive, the natural response would be to begin the grooming process and make room for a new queen. I mean, it's not like they didn't give Peach a chance, right? Toadette didn't officially arrive until 2003, that's enough grace time for Peach to get her act together, but alas, she never did and along the way, Toad Ed has appeared more. More and more Little by little, making her presence known in the kingdom, until the day she would finally arrive, the day she would finally transcend her worker toad form, take the super crown and become the queen bee that the Kingdom Mushroom deserves.

But to be able to do it. One thing stands in his way. Princess Peach remembers all that talk about caring for the queen bee. Well, there was one little part that I left out. Once the first virgin queen emerges from her royal cell, she begins to communicate with the other queen candidates through a process called piping where she makes a sound called Tooting Yes Tooting like a fart It is a signal to say that this new queen is Ready to fight for the honor of being the only one to sit atop the wax throne, the rival queens respond with a sound known as a squawk.

When the Virgin Queen here is squawking, the Queen goes to each of the squawking sister cells and kills us because in the Hive Game, you win or you die after being too Danette to actually get to the top of the kingdom. A peach will still begin to tune in and will have to put an end to the reigning queen. You heard me right ladies and gentlemen, the introduction of Peach It. could mean the death of Princess Peach, this time there are no extra lives, that's why there's only one peach and that's why it's been so long until Nintendo revealed this.

The hive is ready for a new queen. are being producedsuper crowns and are preparing tow debts for the throne by consuming their power by growing into a peach and eventually hoping to be the last one standing so they can mature into a fully grown peach, the worst part of this whole ordeal is that when peach finally returns to the kingdom he is finally rescued by

mario

. You will probably be killed by your own subordinates, your days of being chased by men and leisurely kidnappings across several galaxies have finally caught up with you, Peach, Peach's deceptively cold, murderous eyes, but they will be the last thing you see before you are eaten alive by small The mushroom men greet Peach ATS long may she reign as the queen deserving of Room's kingdom, but hey, that's just a theory.

A THEORY OF GAMES Thanks for watching *Fire crackles in the background* *Smells thunder*