Early Official Nintendo Art Shows Wildly Different Design for Princess Peach

By Marc Deschamps

In the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the console's 8-bit graphics left a lot of room for interpretation from artists. Throughout the '80s, many artists came up with unique takes on Nintendo's characters, before the company had established standard designs. Japanese artist Gaku Miyao has revealed a design he created back in the day that appeared on a pair of officially-licensed slippers aimed at girls. The slippers feature Mario, Peach, Bowser, and a pair of Toads. Miyao's designs for Mario and the Toads are pretty close to the ones we still see today, but his take on Princess Peach is quite a bit different!

Images of the slippers can be found in the Tweet embedded below.

According to a translation shared by Twitter user @Gosokkyu, Miyao was provided just two images as reference materials: one was Peach's 8-bit sprite from Super Mario Bros., while the other was her appearance on the Famicom box art (Bowser's appearance on the slippers is also clearly inspired by that art). Miyao came up with his own take based on the limited art he had to work with, and his design was approved by Nintendo. Miyao apparently "shed a few tears" over people assuming that his work was a fake! In addition to sharing the original design, Miyao shared a new piece of art based on his old design. Miyao says that this might be the current version of Peach, had his design taken root.

In the Tweet below, readers can see the two pieces of reference material Miyao had to work with, as well as his new design.

Given how little reference material artists had to work with in the early video game era, it's not surprising that many of today's designs look significantly different from early official art. The Captain N: The Game Master animated series from the '80s was forced to take a number of similar liberties, and many of those designs now seem pretty laughable. Comparitively, Miyao's art is quite a bit better, but it's easy to see why some fans might have thought it wasn't officially-licensed. The whole situation really does show how far video games have come over the last 40 years!

What do you think of this official Princess Peach art? Do you prefer Miyao's take yo the one Nintendo went with? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

[H/T: Nintendo Everything]

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