Issue #70: Peach in the Limelight – March/April 2024

I've always been a Toadstool supporter.

Every since my first time playing Super Mario Bros. 2, all the way back at the end of the '80s when I was only seven years old, I've been cheering her on. She won me over with her incredible hovering long jumps in that adventure, and I'd regularly choose her over the others on the character select screen time and time again. I dabbled with Luigi. I gave Toad a shot once or twice, just to see for myself how his speed differed from the others. But in the end I always returned to my first love -- even now, decades later, I still pick the Princess every time I replay that classic game.

I know I'm not alone in that, and the community of players who appreciate the Princess in particular is a large one. But -- and those other Toadstool supporters will back me up on this -- it hasn't always been easy to keep the Princess as a preference.

She just wasn't a playable option any more after that one-time appearance on the select screen! Not for many more years afterward. She went back to being just the series' regular kidnapping victim over and over -- just the reason why Mario'd get up out of bed in the morning. I missed the Hero Princess! I missed getting to beat up bad guys as her, instead of beating up bad guys just to get to her, then see her on-screen for less than a minute before the credits rolled.

Well, with all that in my background, you can bet I'd want to celebrate the upcoming release of Princess Peach: Showtime! in a major way! So this milestone 70th NF issue is dedicated to Princess Peach. We've got a big final preview of Showtime! that introduces 10 of her new costume changes. We've got an "18 Years Later" retrospective on Super Princess Peach from the DS, her last headlining role. We're even taking a page out of Taylor Swift's playbook for our central feature, which we're calling "Princess Peach: The Eras Tour." Walk back through her whole career up to this point, to better prepare you for the beginning of her next chapter!

Will Showtime! be a showstopper? Will the Princess find sales success? We certainly hope so, so we're playing our part!

Print subscribers! Your physical copies are in production now. We held off on starting the printing process until about a week later than we normally would, because we wanted to get some coverage of the recent Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase and yesterday's Pokémon Presents broadcast into the issue at the last minute. So you'll get your printed issues a little later into March than you otherwise would have . . . but, to counterbalance that, we're moving the production of NF #71 forward a bit, so your wait between issues will be less than it usually is!

Digital subscribers! Keep an eye on your email inbox, as I'll send download links for the PDF version of this new issue on Friday, March 1. It is the March/April issue, after all, so a March 1 digital delivery makes a certain amount of sense. :p

We're already under way with work on the next one. Stay tuned for its reveal soon!

~ Lucas M. Thomas