Nintendo Is Finally Letting Its Princesses Be People
Princess Zelda has been lost, kidnapped, and forced into hiding. She’s been trapped in stone, crystal, and in the twisting body of a dragon. Yet she’s never had a meaningful opportunity to remain on screen in her own video game franchise until this year — 38 years after the original The Legend of Zelda released. Echoes of Wisdom is the first main Zelda game to make Zelda a playable protagonist, helping redefine the concept of the Nintendo princess.
Historically, Nintendo hasn’t been completely allergic to interesting female characters. Since the Eighties, Metroid‘s Samus Aran has had the opportunity to be emotional and capable, soft at times and coarsened at others. Zelda herself often acts like a mentor to Link, guiding and emboldening him to take what he’s given — often, the divine right to be her swordsman. But, being a princess, specifically, assigns most Nintendo girls to doom.
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For the past 30 years, the company has largely pigeonholed women as damsels in distress. In her first appearance, the 1985 platformer Super Mario Bros., Princess Peach is kidnapped by the fanged brute Bowser. In 1989, Dragon Quest has Princess Gwaelin stolen by the bile-eyed Dragonlord. In the initial Legend of Zelda in 1986, Princess Zelda is abducted by the monstrous boar Ganon — and that trope continued for decades. Ganondorf possesses Zelda’s body in 2006’s Twilight Princess, turning her fair skin a nauseous, seafoam green. Similarly, in 2009’s Spirit Tracks, Zelda’s soul is split from her body, which is again left vulnerable for men to invade it. Zelda doesn’t let that slow her down, though. She’s much more present in Spirit Tracks than she is in earlier Zelda games, where she’s sometimes stuck in stone or eternal sleep. But she has to spend most of Spirit Tracks as a ghost, barely able to communicate with anyone other than Link. Nintendo lets her retain only the basics of her personhood.
This is intentional. Outside of Nintendo, after it licensed a few characters to Philips, Zelda got to unleash her starpower much earlier on. Animation Magic’s Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (which fans generally agree is non-canon and, essentially, dogshit) made Zelda a playable protagonist in 1993. Among Gamelon‘s ridiculous voice acting and gloopy animation, Zelda sets out to swing a sword and save Link, who’s missing. But Nintendo has thought of Zelda as an implausible main character as recently as 2016. “If we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do?” Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma asked GameSpot.
“Link is the hero, and that will not change,” series designer Shigeru Miyamoto told the French website Gamekult, also in 2016
But, here in 2024, things have changed. After 2023’s blockbuster Super Mario Bros. Movie made Princess Peach talented at aerial sports and generally impossible to ignore, Nintendo gave her Princess Peach: Showtime! a year later. Showtime! is only the second main Peach game in existence; the first, Super Princess Peach from 2005, disappointed fans with what some found to be rote and sexist gameplay. The DS game makes it so Peach’s power is her womanly feelings, and she can cry so much, plants grow taller. Rage engulfs her in flame, while more agreeable calm restores her health.
Showtime! takes a more holistic approach to Peach’s strength. She’s allowed all the pink and glitter she’s always been associated with — her companion in Showtime! is literally a sentient ribbon, and Peach is at her most powerful while wearing a shimmering Cinderella gown. But she’s adaptable, too. She can harness her wit and nuclear reactor-levels of sparkle power to blast enemies in the face and protect the defenseless. She’s multidimensional, like male Nintendo characters have had so many opportunities to be.
Likewise, Echoes of Wisdom demonstrates Nintendo’s willingness to promote a princess after she’s proven to be marketable. Zelda is a haunting and inescapable presence throughout 2017’s Breath of the Wild and 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom, the two best-selling Zelda games, respectively. Cutscenes establish Zelda to be a self-efficacious archaeologist and, more regrettably, Link’s selfless angel again.
Echoes of Wisdom gives Zelda the chance to discover who she is without Link looking out for her. By creating facsimile “echoes” of monsters and household objects, Zelda adventures around Hyrule to find Link and other lost townspeople. Or, in the words of Sailor Moon and a pair of Sandy Liang earrings, Zelda, at last, has the opportunity to figure out how she’s going to be her own kind of princess. And Nintendo might have figured out that a tiara can’t stop a girl from saving herself.
Correction: This story previously stated that Dragon Quest came out in 1986. It came out in 1989.
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