Super Mario Bros rocked the gaming world when released in 1985, and to this day retains the grand title as the best selling video game in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The quest to save the princess took Mario through many exciting and original worlds and spawned hundreds of imitators, as well as countless sequels and spin-offs. Now, Nintendo brings a new Mario-style game to the DS in a form imitating the original - except this it's Mario who needs rescuing and Princess Peach is the one to do it!

Super Princess Peach is a platformer for the DS that borrows heavily from the ideas and worlds of the original 1985 Super Mario Bros game. Gameplay, for the most part, is identical to Mario Bros (and the countless imitations) - jump on a bad guy's head to squash him, or jump on a turtle shell to send it spinning off like a rocket. The old style brick smashing to collect coins is even here too. It looks, and plays, like a good old- fashioned retro platformer.

Super Princess Peach is a 21st Century game though, and technology has come a long, long way since the mid Eighties. Peach collects coins not just to pick up an extra life now and then, but to gain access to a plethora of upgrades, mini-games, puzzle pieces, songs and other extras in the shop located between levels. Her talking umbrella, Perry, can be upgraded with parachute and energy blast capabilities, amongst others. A lot of the fun is discovering the multitudes of powers and upgrades available, so I'll not spoil all the surprises. Finding these coins to buy upgrades can be very addictive though - you have been warned!

Each level sees Peach searching for three missing toads. Why exactly finding toads is so important eludes me, but it seems to be a priority for Peach, so I'll go along with it. Most of them are fairly easy to find, but occasionally they're hidden in locations that require quite a bit of searching. Other than finding toads and jumping on heads, Peach has to solve basic puzzles to make her way to the next screen, or to the next green teleport pipe, Mario-style. If you miss a toad you can just replay the level, so there's no pressure to search every nook and cranny the first time around. In fact, any level you've completed can be replayed, which is handy for collecting more of those silly little coins!

Peach herself is a nice, if extremely emotionally unstable woman. In the game however, this is usually a good thing; Peach uses her emotions to power up abilities and solve problems! Like any good nutcase, she has four (very) extreme emotions - calm, sad, joyful and angry, each triggered by tapping the corresponding heart on the touch screen. When calm, she slowly regenerates health. When sad, she spurts out tears that can turn waterwheels and grow plants. When joyful, she spins, generating a cyclone that kills enemies and makes her fly. Finally, her rage power sets her ablaze, burning anything in her path. She's probably not an easy woman to live with.

These emotions drain Peach's vibe power, which has to be restored using crystals, or by using her magic umbrella to eat enemies. Some players may find this makes the game much too easy though; just eat a few enemies, use the calm emotion for a moment and any damage you've suffered is cured. Truth be told, the difficulty level of this game is considerably low; Peach's emotions and power-ups are tremendously powerful and her health bar allows a minimum of six hits before dying - which just sends the player to the start of the level. In all fairness this is reasonable, however, since the game appears to be aimed at a younger market, most likely a female one that has limited game experience. It's a good move by Nintendo and quite in line with their self-proclaimed mission to bring video gaming to the wider community.

As such, graphics are very cute and nicely drawn, though remember that this is a solely 2D game that does not take advantage of the full graphical capabilities of the DS. Some would argue this is laziness on Nintendo's behalf; personally I like it, since it gives the game a simple and slightly retro look, with crisp and colourful pictures in the style of a children's book. Some of the baddies even run around crying little pixelated tears, which is supposed to make us feel bad about whacking them. The music is suitably cute too, if a little repetitive. Peach herself is voiced by Jen Taylor, the woman behind Cortana in the Halo series and Cate Archer from the PC game No One Lives Forever 2. She's very squeaky.

Each level in Super Princess Peach ends with a boss, but in line with Nintendo's "accessibility" gameplay, none of them are particularly difficult. In fact, before each boss, Perry the umbrella spells out for you what you have to do win. This may be a little too simple for hardcore gamers and if you only like challenging games then give Peach a miss, but for the market it's aimed at, and for those of us who just play for fun, not for knuckle-busting competition, it fits in nicely.

Aside from the difficulty level, there's really only one other problem I found with the game. The controls, as you might imagine, are the standard D pad movement with A button to attack and B to jump, so you'll have both hands tightly wrapped around the machine. Activating Peach's emotions however requires a screen tap, which means you'll need to release either the D-pad or the action buttons to use it. Unless you're quick to spin your finger around and tap the emotion with a fingernail, you're going to have a lot of finger smudges on your shiny touch screen.

Super Princess Peach really is fun game. In an age of ever advancing graphics and game complexity, this return to retro-style gaming, with a few modern touches, is very welcome. What's more is that this game is suitable for all ages, and the help boxes liberally scattered around the land will ease newbies into the platformer scene in no time. If you're looking for some great fun and a few baddie heads to bounce on, you really must get your hands on a copy of Super Princess Peach.

Reviewed by Steve Rosenthal for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).