Mario and Peach are just 'good friends' says Nintendo despite kissing for decade
Mario has been saving Princess Peach from Bowser's clutches ever since 1985's Super Mario Bros., but their relationship has always been left somewhat ambiguous.
There have been countless kisses over the years, at the conclusion of various games, including an awkward smacker on the nose in Super Mario 64, but most modern titles have largely avoided insinuating there's any romance between the pair.
At the end of 2017's Super Mario Odyssey, for example, Peach shuns Mario and Bowser's advances and hops aboard Mario's ship to go home instead. In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, meanwhile, there's no suggestion Mario is saving Peach in order to land a quick smooch.
It seems Nintendo is determined to keep things purely platonic, as outlined pretty explicitly on the Nintendo Today app.
In the post, which has been widely circulated on social media, Nintendo wrote: 'Princess Peach and Mario are good friends and help each other out whenever they can.'
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While the latter part has ignited much sniggering online, some have now given up on romance entirely. 'If Mario is getting friend-zoned what chance does any other man have,' one user wrote in response.
'This is like one of the biggest friend zones ever made in the history of friend zones,' another added. More Trending
If you want to know, the last time Peach kissed Mario is in 2019's Super Mario Maker 2, where the plumber jumps in jubilation at the top of Peach's castle, after getting a peck on the cheek. It's not clear if Mario's upset her since then but that would've been around the time Nintendo was working on the movie.
While this might be a kicker for anyone hoping to see Mario and Peach end up together, and goes against Nintendo's own marketing around them for Valentine's Day, Nintendo has a history of being weird when it comes to relationships between its characters.
The dynamic between Zelda and Link has been left similarly ambiguous over the years, and while there are hints at some kind of relationship in The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, the voice actor for Zelda, Patricia Summersett, backtracked when she said they were 'in a relationship'.
'My words are misconstrued and the context is removed, to imply something I did not intend, for the sake of clickbait,' Summersett wrote on X in 2023. 'We are all 'in a relationship' w/ others.'
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