Nintendo Has Unexpectedly Turned Its Damsels in Distress into Icons for Young Girls

By Maddy Myers | July 29, 2025 | 10:32am

Video Games Features nintendo

Nintendo Has Unexpectedly Turned Its Damsels in Distress into Icons for Young Girls

In recent years, the game developers at Nintendo have been taking a different approach to the company’s most famous damsels in distress. I’m referring, of course, to Princess Peach, Princess Zelda, and Pauline. And the changes have not exactly been what I would have expected.

It’s hard to pinpoint when this trend first began to take form. Maybe it was in 2013, when Nintendo’s lineup of games at E3 all featured playable female characters. Shigeru Miyamoto told Kotaku at the time that this was because the company had noticed the changing demographics of its player base: “Back in the days when we made the first Donkey Kong, that was a game we first made for the arcades, the arcades were not places girls went into often. And so we didn’t even consider making a character that would be playable for girls. But typically with the DS era, what we found is, you know, gradually, more and more women began playing games—both young girls and adult women.”

Back in that 2010s era of first-party Nintendo games, these newly playable female characters were often presented as an additional option, not the default. When it comes to first-party Nintendo games, it’s only the Metroid series that stars a female character all of the time, with no exception or any other option. But Metroid games get released infrequently and don’t tend to sell as well as the other franchises in the Nintendo first-party lineup. Also, heroine Samus Aran is depicted as a cypher onto which any player could reasonably project themselves; she rarely speaks, and the few times she’s shown emotion have tended to go over poorly. Her full suit of armor is also an obvious contrast with the floor-length gowns of Peach, Zelda, and Pauline.

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What’s most interesting about this contrast, though, are the types of games in which these characters currently appear. Metroid games are difficult—even the modern ones. Metroid: Dread was very punishing, so much so that an easy mode got added later. And while Metroid Prime Remastered looks prettier than the original, it sure isn’t any easier. All this to say, it’s very clear that Metroid games are for older players, and the subject matter and tone of the games are serious as well. These games are inspired by the Alien horror movies, after all.

The other heroines of Nintendo’s first-party lineup have been in games with very different vibes—more kid-friendly, and more likely to give the female characters overtly feminine outfits and attributes. Figuring out how to make a suitably girly girl game was apparently not something that came naturally to Nintendo right off the bat, though. Way back in 2005, when Princess Peach got to star in her very own video game on the Nintendo DS. It was called Super Princess Peach, and it’s widely considered one of the biggest embarrassments in gaming nowadays. Peach got to rescue Mario and Luigi, rather than the other way around, but she did it through the power of her overpowered, magical mood swings; her tears could drown enemies, or her rage could destroy them. Somebody thought to themselves, “How would a very feminine lady like Princess Peach go about engaging in combat?” And that was what they came up with. The result remains a jokey talking point for describing the worst of the early “games for girls” era.

As somebody who grew up playing games and very rarely got to play as a girl back in the day, I relished my few opportunities to select Princess Peach (Mario Teaches Typing is my first memory of getting to do it, back in elementary school). Nowadays, even though I have tons of other options in modern Nintendo games like Mario Kart World, I still pick Peach every time; I feel like we’ve “known” each other forever. That’s why I was so excited to see the announcement of Princess Peach: Showtime!, a 2024 video game starring the princess. It was still a game that embraced feminine traits as a form of power; in Showtime!, Peach would essentially be “playing dress-up,” but every outfit she changed into would grant her a different set of abilities.

Unfortunately, after spending months excited about it, I never even completed Princess Peach: Showtime! Why? Because it very literally was not for me. Showtime is designed for very young players; the game may be rated E10+, but parents’ reviews of the game make it clear that a six to seven year old could enjoy it. The game has been designed to be simple and easy, and the circumstances of the plot are pretty low-stakes. Yes, Peach has to rescue people from danger, but it’s a breeze. I played several levels before finally accepting that, as an adult woman, I would be having a much better time playing just about anything else in my huge gaming backlog.

And yet that whole experience didn’t stop me from getting extremely excited about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, only to have the same thing happen all over again. Princess Zelda was finally the main character, after so many years of getting sidelined (or getting kidnapped, natch). I was so ready for Echoes of Wisdom to become one of my all-time favorite video games. But instead, I ended up playing a game that just wasn’t as complex as I hoped it would be. Yes, it was fun, and it introduced some fascinating ways for Zelda to fight without using traditional weapons; it’s undeniably creative. But the cutesy design and relative ease of play make it very clear: Echoes of Wisdom is aimed at young girls.

Don’t misunderstand me here. It’s great that there are major first-party Nintendo games in which you play as a girl, aimed at young girls. If I were seven years old right now, I’d be living it up. And that’s what I kept thinking to myself as I played Donkey Kong Bananza this past week, in which the second player can cooperatively take on the role of young Pauline, presented here as Donkey Kong’s surrogate daughter figure, rather than the ripped-dress-wearing, adult-aged damsel of the olden days. This version of Pauline is supposedly 13 years old, but she’s written in such a way as to appeal to much younger girls who could look up to her. She doesn’t really act 13 so much as 10 or 11, tops, and she’s definitely the kind of girl I would have thought was “cool” when I was a much younger kid. Her super-simple hero’s journey towards gaining the confidence to sing in front of other people is a sweet and obviously kid-friendly story.

This third game made me feel like the market is not just young girls, but specifically older gamer dads who want to introduce their young daughters to their favorite video game franchises. Again, this is not a bad thing by any means. I’m just also wondering whether Nintendo is aware that adult women gamers exist.

Specifically, adult women gamers exist who want a Princess Zelda game that’s a bit more complicated, both mechanically and narratively, than Echoes of Wisdom—something on the level of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. I might be in the minority on this next bit, but I also don’t think it would be so hard to sell a Princess Peach game that’s as difficult as some of the Mario games that are clearly intended for slightly older players. And I don’t mean a game in which Peach is just one of many playable options—I mean a game like Showtime! that truly centers her. As for Pauline, it’s awesome that she’s the mayor of New Donk City when she’s an adult—but that’s not the version of her that we get to play. We see the insecure child Pauline who needs help from dad—er, Donkey Kong. Again, this is not a bad thing; it shows how far Nintendo has come when it comes to acknowledging and catering to its female player base. The company clearly wants to get young girls into gaming on the ground floor.

But that’s the thing: gaming as a pastime was actually already getting young girls in on the ground floor, even when games barely catered to them. Although many women grow up playing games as kids, they tend to stop as they get older, even though their male peers don’t, at least not at the same rate. The problem isn’t that little girls don’t want to play games, although making games where they can see themselves is a huge boon and has almost certainly diversified the younger subset of video game enjoyers. It’s really just that game developers should care just as much about keeping those players engaged when they pass age 12.

Maddy Myers has worked as a video game critic and journalist since 2007; she has previously worked for Polygon, Kotaku, The Mary Sue, Paste Magazine, and the Boston Phoenix. She co-hosts a video game podcast called Triple Click, as well as an X-Men podcast called The Mutant Ages. When she is not writing or podcasting, she composes electro-pop music under the handle MIDI Myers. Her personal website is midimyers.com.