It's been a long while since Nintendo has made a traditional 2-D Mario game, so you could imagine what excitement I had when I found Nintendo would be releasing one. To my surprise, Super Princess Peach was nothing I thought it would be like. Sure it was 2-D, but it was different from the traditional Super Mario games. Princess Peach is controlled differently and features many powers that neither Mario nor Luigi carried.

The game starts out with a short four-minute intro. It turns out that Bowser has found a magical scepter on an island not too far from Mushroom Kingdom called Vibe Island. The Vibe Scepter was used to capture Luigi, Mario, and a very large amount of Toads who were inside of Peach's castle. While Bowser and his minions were raiding the castle and kidnapping everyone inside of it, Princess Peach was out for a little stroll. She returned to the castle to find a note from Bowser saying that he has kidnapped everyone in the castle and that there is no one left to save Mario or Luigi.

Reading this, Peach sets off to Vibe Island to save Mario and the gang, and restore power to her kingdom. She receives a magical umbrella named Perry, who helps her throughout the entire game, and serves as her weapon. Together, Perry and Peach must fight through Vibe Island to save Mario and her kingdom from the evil grasps of Bowser.

That's right folks, you play as Princess Peach in this game, and you actually get to save Mario. Peach's powers are nothing of Mario or Luigi's. Princess Peach has four emotions that can be triggered by icons on the touch screen. The four emotions are Joy, Rage, Gloom, and Calm. When the Joy emotion is triggered, Peach can float in the sky and attack enemies by spinning around in a cyclone. This can also be used in the game to reach normally hard-to-reach areas. The Rage has Peach surrounded by flames and able to torch enemies that surround her. She can also smash heavy objects down and burn bridges. The third emotion is Gloom. While she is sad, she will cry fast-running tears, and run very fast. Her final emotion is Calm, which can revive her heart containers, which serve as your life. The emotions can only be used until the Vibe Gauge runs out of power.

Activating the each emotion using your stylus during game play is very straining to the hand. This makes me ponder if this game even needed touch screen emotions in the first place. I was forced to use my fingers to touch the screen instead of my stylus, thanks to the uncomfortable position my hands were in.

Each emotion can be used to bypass certain obstacles. For example, in some levels there are some dusty clouds blocking a pathway. You can use your Joy emotion and blow that cloud away. A bridge can be burned down by your Rage emotion. You can use your Gloom emotion to cry tears down on a wheel to spin it and unlock a certain area of a level.