A bit of trivia I learned about thirty seconds ago, Daisy is the only major female character in the Mario series not created by Shigeru Miyamoto.
So let's talk Princess "Hi, I'm" Daisy. When you consider any of the Mario sports/racing titles that progress according to 'cup' difficulty, the sequence always goes Mushroom-Flower-Star-and usually Special. And while Nintendo hasn't given us that "Special" Mario princess as of yet (unless you want to argue in favor of Zelda's extension) we've got our big three represented by Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina.
Now don't get me wrong, I love Rosalina. She's a great addition to the lineup. But I can't help noticing that she got fast-tracked around Daisy, appearing in both a main console platformer and the Smash series before Daisy has been invited into either. As such, Daisy has gone from decades of living in Peach's shadow to a classic middle child relegation. Warning Nintendo: do you really want Miss 'Yay-Hah!' Extrovert to start repressing those feelings?
But let's back it up some. Daisy admittedly started out as a Peach clone, and many of her well-defined characteristics come from various game designers intentionally distinguishing her from her predecessor. And that reminds me of an anecdote.
Do you remember Fraggle Rock? Well, damn it! Go watch the entire series right now! No, not the animated one, just the good stuff. That wonderful performance of the athletic powerhouse Red Fraggle was given to us by a then-scared fledgling Muppeteer named Karen Prell, who wanted so badly to get cast as the motherly artist Mokey (the character she related to). Prell didn't connect with Red at first, and you can see in the earliest episodes how she's playing at the character without really finding the heart of her.
It wasn't until episode 7 "I Want to Be You" where Prell figured out who Red was by figuring out who Mokey was, and stripping that away. From then on, Red became a much stronger character, maybe even an unofficial template for strong female characters before that demand was really voiced. At that time, traits like 'headstrong', 'opinionated', and 'competitive' tended to have negative connotations; especially when applied to females. But through Red, these aspects were presented in a positive light, both as strengths to be used constructively and as weaknesses to be overcome in constructive ways.
There exists a parallel between Red/Mokey and Daisy/Peach. Daisy was created in Peach's mold, and for a while she may as well just have been Peach in disguise. But then the characters started growing and getting voice actresses. Peach became Nintendo's 'Disney Princess'. Peach is proper, refined, and concerned with behaving "the way a princess should", which naturally opens her up to a lot of the same criticisms Cinderella and that crowd get regarding passiveness.
Certainly fair conversations to have, but it's also worth putting into perspective. Peach is in a traditional homemaker role; baking, having dinner parties, pouring tea. In Japanese culture this role is treated with high respect. Here in the States it tends to be associated with patriarchal expectation. Let me go on record at this point and say that feminism is a really REALLY good thing that we honestly all need, but it's also important to remember that people can express feminism in different ways. A woman who wants to be a homemaker has as much claim to feminism as a woman who wants to be an auto mechanic. So no shame in homemaking, that's who Peach is.
Daisy is not that.
The Mario Party series began claiming pretty early on that Daisy was a tomboy, but at that point you just had to take their word for it.
Then she got a voice. God. Bless. Deanna. Mustard. How can you not find that passion for everything contagious? "Woo-hoo! The mail came! Water bill? YES!" Mustard delivers every line at an eleven on the exuberance scale, and it creates a unique dynamic with the character. She's excited. About whatever she's doing. And she's so happy to be doing it. And somehow it comes across as pure confidence without ever crossing into pride. Whereas Peach forces herself into "Oh, did I win?" humility, Daisy doesn't need anyone's permission to feel good about her success. And yeah, I know some people find her annoying, but I happen to find those people annoying so let's never acknowledge them again.
So why should Daisy have her own game? Well, let's look at it from a marketing standpoint. Girls play video games. They've been playing as long as boys have, even if the market itself has been less than encouraging to them. Now I don't think there's any real demographic of non-gaming females who have just been waiting for Super Princess Daisy, but there's something to be said for the industry recognizing a demographic that already exists. With Daisy, there would be a whole subtext that would speak volumes for itself. Namely, if video games appeared within the Mario universe, Daisy would most likely be a gamer girl. And she would kick ass doing it. A game with Daisy as the protagonist would read as Nintendo's acknowledgement and/or gratitude to the vast number of women who have supported the years of Mario and Zelda titles.
There's also the problem of saturation that the revolving door of Mario platformers often seep into. With a platforming game, you want familiarity but you also want individuality. Super Princess Daisy would have a character we already know, but one we also don't know enough about. Hence, there's a real potential to play with the formula and moveset. We already know how Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Peach move through a level, but Daisy has some wiggle room. Depending on the hardware, you could create a whole new arsenal of athletic stunts to employ in defeating obstacles; a thing or two that only Daisy can pull off.
And then there's the fact that Daisy has such a strong personality, yet we really don't know that much about her. It would be nice to explore her thought processes a little, get to know her more. Maybe use her to help flesh out a smidge more about the Mario universe as a whole.
This is what I think Super Princess Daisy should be like. It's a platformer (I'm not going to try to describe level design ideas), but unlike her colleagues who always require rescue missions as motivation, Daisy only needs the call of adventure to get her out the door. Maybe it's a mountain that needs climbing or a wilderness landscape that has yet to be explored. Maybe Sarasaland is responsible for building the pipe transit systems that everybody uses to get around, but it requires someone of prowess to get into difficult to reach places first.
From there, it's about style. Mario has a tendency to break the fourth wall at the beginning and end of an adventure, welcoming and thanking the player respectively. Daisy should talk to the player the whole game. She knows she's in a video game and she knows you're out there. Small victories shift from "I did it!" to "We did it!" She cheers you on as much as she cheers herself. And failure results in a death glare from her (you're the one with the controller). In the end, whatever location she's been trying to get to is reached. The reward is the arrival of her Mushroom Kingdom friends through the planted pipe to spend a little leisure time in some virtual playground at the top of the mountain.
Or maybe she even gets to sled or hang glide back down. What could be more Daisy than that?
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