Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and it doesn't seem likely it will do so before its debut later this month.
“The development team will appear in the game's credits,” a Nintendo spokesperson told me simply today when I asked which developer created the game.
There is no reason why Nintendo has I can't say who created the game, of course, but fans have said it feels strange that the answer remains a mystery, just weeks away from the debut of Princess Peach: Showtime! on March 22, after the press had already reproduced a preliminary version. of the game and following the release of this week's public demo.
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Datamined files from that demo point to Good-Feel, developer of Kirby's Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Crafted World, being behind Princess Peach: Showtime, something Nintendo itself couldn't confirm when asked today. Founded in Japan in 2005, Good-Feel has developed exclusively for Nintendo hardware and has regularly worked on the company's major franchises.
The overall situation is similar to when Nintendo refused to announce Mario's replacement voice actor last year, following Charles Martinet's retirement from the role. Likewise, Nintendo did not confirm that said voice actor (Kevin Afghani) was also the mustache behind Wario in last November's Wario Ware: Smooth Moves.
“The voice actors for Mario and/or Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder will appear in the game's credits, so please wait for the game to be released,” a Nintendo spokesperson told Eurogamer at the time.
On the one hand, it's perhaps understandable that Nintendo simply wants its games to speak for themselves, free of preconceptions or information that comes to light before release. On the other hand, it's an unusual level of opacity for an unacknowledged game developer, and ultimately only fuels speculation about something that seems unlikely to have otherwise attracted attention.
“It offers a gentle adventure for younger fans of the Mario movies,” I wrote about the game after testing Princess Peach: Showtime. last month. “At best, there are shades of Luigi's Mansion 3 here, in the themed stages found behind different doors, accessible from the theater's multi-level lobby, and even Paper Mario, as the elements of each stage “They are charmingly constructed from tactile settings, such as grass and wooden trees.”
